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Show SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE. me Past and Prospective Experiments of the Electrician Nikola Tesla. Mr. T. C. Martin, editor of The Electrical Elec-trical Engineer, writyig on the work of the Servian-American electrician, Nikola Nik-ola Tesla, says: Mr. Tesla has advanced the opinion and sustained it by brilliant experiments experi-ments of startling beauty and grandeur that light and heat are produced by electrostatic forces acting between charged molecules or atoms. Perfecting Perfect-ing a generator that would give him currents of several thousand alternations alterna-tions per second and inventing his disruptive dis-ruptive discharge coil, he has created electrostatic conditions that have already al-ready modified not a few of the accepted notions about electricity. It has been supposed that ordinary currents of 1,000 or 2,000 volts potential poten-tial would surely kill, but Mr. Tesla has been seen receiving through his hands currents at a potential of more than 200,000 volts, vibrating a million times per second and manifesting themselves them-selves in dazzling streams of light. This is not a mere tour de force, but illustrates illus-trates the principle that while currents of lower frequency destroy life these are harmless. After such a striking test, which, by the way, no one has displayed a hurried inclination to repeat, re-peat, Mr. Tesla 's body and clothing have continued for some time to emit fine glimmers, or halos, of splintered light. In fact, an actual flame is produced pro-duced by this agitation of electrostatically electrostat-ically charged molecules, and the curious curi-ous spectacle can be seen of puissant, white, ethereal flames that do not consume con-sume anything, bursting from the ends of an induction coil as though it were the bush on holy ground. With such vibrations as can be maintained main-tained by a potential of 3,000,000 volts Mr. Tesla expects some day to envelop himself in a complete 6heet of lambent fire that will leave him quite uninjured. uninjur-ed. Such currents as he now uses would, he says, keep a naked man warm at the north pole, and their use in therapeutics is but one of the practical possibilities that has been taken up. Century. |