WIRELESS TO MARS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 382, 25 February 1908, Page 4

WIRELESS TO MARS.

Tesla’s Aim.

New York December 15,

Mr Nikola Tesla, the American inventor, is about to attempt a feat which Sir Hiram Maxim has declared will be the next great achievement of science—namely, to bring the earth into communication with the planet Mars, Mr Tesla is now preparing, with the co-operation of Niagara power companies, to. project an 800,000,000 horse-power message over the 100,000,000-mile gulf between the earth and Mars.

For several years Mr Tesla has been quietly working on a wireless plant capable of transmitting 10,000 horse-power to any part of the world or to any neighbouring planet. Wireless power, he says, can be sent a million or more miles as easily as one mile. He considers that the Niagara power plants are now capable of producing electrical vibrations of such intensity that the rate at which their energy is delivered could readily be advanced to a billion horse-power.

Having estimated that the rate of a few hundred million horsepower would be sufficient to establish wireless communication with Mars, Mr Tesla placed his theories before the Niagara companies, and they agreed to assist him in his attempt to reach the planet by wireless. Response Expected.

Already Mr Tesla has equipped a wireless plant for the sending of long-distance electric waves, which will enable him to attain a rate of 800,000,000 horse-power—-much more than is necessary to bridge the gulf of Mars.

He believes that the Martians will be able to respond to his signals with even greater ease than he can send them owing to the lesser density of their planet. He is convinced that Mars is inhabited, and that its inhabitants are highly developed intelligent beings. A number of distinguished American astronomers are of the same opinion, and of late years a good deal of new evidence to that effect has been accumulated by scientists.

Professor G. C. Slipper, of the Flagstaff Observatory, Arizona, says :

‘‘ A preliminary inspection of the results of my recent observations of Mars, taken in the Andes, entirely corroborates Professor Lowell’s theory that there is intelligent ' life on that planet. Several new canals in addition to those already known have been discovered, and a great many double canals have been observed, indicating the employment of great intelligence and care in their construction.”

“Once the feat of transmission has been accomplished,” says Mr Tesla, “ and Mars, which is considerably older and supposedly more advanced in science than us, has acknowledged the receipt of our signal and sent back flash for flash, it will remain to devise an interplanetary code through the medium of which the scientists of this world and of Mars will be able to understand what each is say ing to the other. ”