TELEVISION

Because these streams could carry such detailed information, Tesla began to imagine a means for transmitting visual information. The additional characteristic by which aether streams maintained their strict rectilinear paths in transit, stimulated Tesla to hypothesize that broad aether streams could carry pictorial imagery. Projected from broad plates, and forming densely “parallel” streams, such a system could carry images to any distance.

Potent and penetrating, aetheric rays provided a new kind of light for an equally new kind of communications system. Tesla stated that whole images could be projected through such invisible radiant matter rays. Such a visual exchange system would be as simple as a slide projector, though obviously more potent. In this, Tesla early conceived of a television system which, yet today, remains revolutionary.

Striking in its analogue to the “magick lanterns” of the Victorian Epoch, Tesla produced a design lacking the complex scanning mechanisms which plagued all later picture trmsmission systems. Invisibly travelling through walls, aetheric streams could be captured and resolved by using special sensitive plates, on which live images could be focussed. Image loaded aetheric streams would be projected from central broadcast stations at impulse rates which would simply pass through all material obstacles. Invisible in their transit through intervening spaces, such whole image transmissions could be received and translated back into visibility through the imposition of special phosphor-coated plates. Images would travel through space as a whole block. These images could be beamed directly from source to receiver. Signals would be strong.

Requiring no amplification or additional energy supply. Signals would be noise free, the dense aetheric continuum being completely different that the harsh electromagnetic continuum. Dark light projection through walls!

Tesla described a means by which several such signals could be superimposed without mutual interference. A simple tuning mechanism in the receiver would select the images desired. Tesla related that such superimposition could accommodate thousands of simultaneous signals, thousands of chaimels. Whole

Image transmission of extreme definition, without a scanning mechanism, was made possible by the aetheric stream. It would be years later, in 1917, that Tesla described a modification of this system of whole image television. In a subsequent interview, Tesla described a system by which distant objects could be whole-imaged. His design incorporated all of the components planned for his commercial television system. His modified system was a remote-locating device. Again lacking the complexity of scanning systems and other heavy support components, any ship equipped with his fluorescent screens could “image” a distant ship or submarine by projecting a ray beam through air, fog, rain, or even water. The rays were unstoppable, being reflected whenever they intercepted a metallic hood or hull.

Tesla’s shipbome beamray projector would pulse aetheric streams, of very specific intervals, out across a horizontal plane. Tesla stated that this “electric ray”, when encountering any obstacle, would be reflected back to the source point. Here, the otherwise invisible beam would be visually resolved by the same special phosphor-coated plates as planned for the commercial television system. In this announcement, Tesla leaked a secret concerning the essential nature of his aether beamrays. Apparently, through the apphcation of very specific impulses at the source, aether streams could actually be reflected fi-om matter. The Tesla range-locator, a system designed to spot submarines or battleships adike, was simple, potent, failproof, and effective. Here again, Tesla made use of the extreme definition provided through the beamed projection of ultrainfinitesimal “Radiant Energy”. Here again was evidence that neutral Radiant Energy could be made to interact with matter simply by varying the pulsed projection interval. The military was not interested at the time.