No need to charge your batteries anymore… Nikola Tesla is best known for his remarkable statements regarding the wireless transmission of electrical power. His first efforts towards this end started in 1891 and were intended to simply “disturb the electrical equilibrium in the nearby portions of the earth… to bring into operation in any way some instrument.” In other words the object of his experiments was simply to produce effects locally and detect them at a distance. By 1899 the electrical potential of his transmitter had increased to the point that more room was needed for the sake of safety. This and other considerations led him to temporarily shift his wireless experiments to a location just outside of Colorado Springs.

At this Colorado “Experimental Station” Tesla had some early success in wireless power transmission. One photograph shows that “a small incandescent lamp was lighted by means of a resonant circuit grounded on one end, all the energy being drawn through the earth [from a nearby transmitter].” In 1907 he even went as far as to make this statement: