DIVORCE

Ultimately, the establishment of a Signal Corps of highly trained engineers emerged from an intensive period of involvement with the Marconi Global Communication Systems. Having now obtained a vast experiential fund of wireless science, the were in a possession to develop superior forms of the same systems for their own purposes, an eventuality which Marconi anticipated. As the split between himself and mihtary was occurring, Marconi tried suing the military. Military claimed independence, and developed Marconi technology into a power technology which he would never duplicate for sheer size. Once thus established in the attendant expertise of such technology, military personnel soon divorced themselves from commercial contractors. Marconi, one who was used to “getting his way” in court proceedings, could not win a battle with such forces.

The precedent having been set, military radio technology began a separate developmental agenda. In this clean break with Marconi, military established an historical precedent in which they now hold complete and unobstructed authority in projects over which they retain high priority classifications. In this precedent, military rulership of certain technologies exceeds certain Executive access privileges. By World War I, privatized military VLF stations rivalled those of Marconi for sheer size and power output. Subterranean and subaqueous radio was developed into a powerful tool, the technology of Murgas and Rogers having been periodically classified and unavailable to researchers. Naval authorities began researching deep VLF and ELF frequencies without supervision or assistance from civilian sectors just after World War I. These systems were better equipped, larger installations. Fitted into natural geotopography with engineering precision, the powerful waves from these surprisingly powerful multimegawatt power stations were piunped into the seas through deep

Submarine valleys and natural channels.

Radio wave systems which were developed by James H. Rogers stimulated interest in deep-sea communications. His wave radio systems made direct communications with deeply submerged vessels possible, designs which employed buried antennas. Rogers began conducted tests with a great number of such systems before the first World War, continuing his developments with various buried and submerged antennas throughout the 1920’s. Naval authorities approached Rogers during the War, classifying and implementing his numerous patents.

These submergible antenna systems had no precedent in the wave radio arts, representing an anomalous and unexpected variant of the Marconi powerline aerial. The performance of these systems, in both transmission and reception, proved quite remarkable. Static and interference were virtually eliminated by the buried lines, filtered as it were by direct contact with a the sofid medium of the earth. Because of the obvious implications of such wave propagation, Rogers contacted Dr. Tesla. The two corresponded quite often in a fiiendly and filial scientific relationship lasting several years until the death of Rogers. In the strangely empowered operation of these wave radio antenna systems, Rogers indeed glimpsed something of the aether theories put forth by Dr. Tesla. Required in maintaining worldwide deep-sea communications with submarines, the NRL quickly implemented experimental findings in these directions throughout the period leading to and following World War II. Dr. Thomas Hieronymus, a significant early researcher in radionic science reported the impossibihty of obtaining Rogers antenna patents during such times of national emergency. These designs later became components in the Naval F. T.F wave radio system known as SANGUINE and SEIAFARER.

Military engineers experimented in worldwide communications, encryption, jamming techniques, and hybrid combinations of radio systems yet largely unrecognized. In this latter aspect, were those systems which employed luminal carriers for radio fi-equency pulsations, beacons and beams closely patterned after Teslian descriptions. Despite these extensive experiments, military engineers found Teslian Technology mysteriously impossible to reach, a token which some considered as proof that Tesla was exaggerating his claims. Nevertheless, and most importantly, military researchers became fixated on themes which Tesla was enunciating. Though viewing his claims as the exaggerated ravings of a dreamer without substance, they thought to implement his inspiration, interpreting his visions to achieve his objectives. They were wrong. Using the lessons learned through their contaminating tutelage at Marconi’s feet, military found themselves forever being eluded by Teslian technology, the demonstrations which some experts had indeed witnessed.

The bitter lesson, learned in the World War I conflict with the Kaiser’s scientifically equipped Army, would not be forgotten. Empowered with the cruelties of chemical warfare, large tanks, and aerial bombers, this rolling force was virtually unstoppable until met by equivalent and superior “scientific” opposition. Science became more than the communications wave medium. Science was the war wave of the future. A new corps-elite which appreciated the power of science to deliver new kinds of weaponry was now actively supported and applauded. Science gave the winning edge. Science determined the wins and losses, turned the battle, ended the war. Science was the victory wreath. So complete was this conversion from the former martial attitude, which relied on infantry muscle and brilhant field campaigns to win conflicts, that one cannot now think of the military without its sizable investment in every conceivable new technology. Martial technology rivals the research volumes of industry as a matter of necessity. Maintaining the upper hand on any possible state of art weaponry is now an absolute and continuous pursuit. One could not tell when an opposing force might develop some new and threatening weapon capable of breaching the national borders. It was especially after the First World War, a horror from which many have said the Century never recovered, that science became the prime military source for the development of new war tools. And then an amazing phenomenon swept the world.

Experimenters throughout the world had begun observing strange radiant phenomena in their course of research, phenomena which closely resembled effects claimed by Nikola Tesla. Implementing the same in equally bizarre apparatus, these inventors began assailing patent offices the world over. This new flood of developments from the amateurs deeply intrigued the military in every nation. Pandora’s Box had been opened, and the horrors had been unleashed. Many of these apphcations were very obvious weapons-potential systems. Because of this unexpected tide of such inventions fi-om amateurs and privateers, military now entertained the possibility that radio wave technology might be transformed into a new a frightful kind of weaponry or communications technology. It was long before World War I that certain researchers, notably Turpain (1894), MacFarland-Moore (1898), and Ulivi (1914) had each reported phenomena closely shadowing those effects reported by Tesla. This pattern of close Teslian approximations continued to flood the scientific journals between the World Wars; a legacy of vision, a natural phenomenon of the most significant order. Such inventors were very quickly contacted by specific mihtary agencies for classified funding, research, and development of their however meritorious systems.

The proliferation of this visionary trend continued throughout the period between and after the Second World War, one which we will closely examine in the next few chapters. Here was evidence of an unsuspected visionary resource in the civilian population, one long championed by Nikola Tesla. Dreams and their technologies were truly unstoppable. The conduction raybeam devices of H. Grindell-Matthews (1917),J. Hettinger (1919), F. McCullough (1922), and C. Reno (1924), became mere shadows of weaponry developed and demonstrated by Tesla. These were systems tested and classified during World

War n, systems which will shortly be described. The trend had not ceased by the mid-1940’s, new beamray systems having been developed and reported by Riley, Gosztonyi, Pribil, Mohr, Salisbury, Chapman, Claudel, May, Longoria, and hosts of others. The list has never any end of names. It continues to this very day.

Throughout the time when Tesla openly offered his beamray systems to the United States, military remained aloof. Were they truly ignorant of his successes? Were they prevented from knowing of his achievements? Were they commanded never to deal with him? Was their aloofriess a sign of ignorance or of unwillingness to move on his behalf? What superior command held the military so enthralled that they were incapable of appropriating the wonders which came from the fertile mind of Tesla while he was available? What, if any, alternative technology kept them so disinterested in Tesla that they failed so miserably and completely at the supreme opportunity of a lifetime? Either these persoimel have no insight whatsoever, a highly unlikely possibility, or they have been constrained by private agencies of superior command. Made all the more clear through their very sudden Cold War interest in Teslian technology, one wonders whether they “just woke up”. Tragically, typically, military experts appeared suddenly and completely enraptured by Teslian aether technology after his death in 1943. But what could have so reversed their decision to alternately ignore, and then adore the work of Nikola Tesla? What has so completely overcome reason aunong military leadership, that complete and absolute rejection has now become adoration? To whom is the military held completely captive?