Sci-Fi Friday Part III

Nov. 1895 - London Exhibition hall

A hushed crowd stands around what looks like several phonograph speaker horns, mounted on top of a large wooden box.

New York, NY

On the other side of the Atlantic, Nikola Tesla stands before a large voice transducer (microphone). A small crowd of people watch the clock on the wall. At the appointed time, 11:00AM, Tesla throws a large switch, and starts to read a short statement "This is Nikola Tesla, I am speaking to you from my laboratory in New York City, this is a demonstration of wireless communication based on my tuned circuit radio patents".

In London the crowd is silent as the first few words are spoken, then a roar of applause drowns out the rest of Tesla's broadcast. The first transatlantic broadcast has been an overwhelming success.

Now history would credit Tesla with the invention of Radio and JP Morgan would recognized that Tesla holds some of the most valuable patents of all time, and would, if left to his devices, produce even more. Tesla had also convinced his long time friend Mark Twain to invest in his company instead of what seemed to be a money pit that had something to do with an automatic printing press.

And so the third Tesla Company was established, with Nikola as the head of Research and Devleopment, it would be one of the first think tanks. With the right management in place, Tesla was indead "left to his devices" while others in the company helped him patent his many ideas. Tesla would now be credited with the discovery of X-ray, the electron microscope, fluorescent tubes and the most important: radio.

1896

Marconi, tries to get funding for his "version" of the Radio, but the publicity that had been generated by Tesla, now overshadows Marconi's efforts.

Nikola sits back in his chair in the restaurant of his hotel glancing down at his plate. In years passed, he used to fret about germs and spend his time calculating the cubic volume of each bite of food. But with his recent success, these things seemed not to creep into his mind as they used to, and what a waste of time and mental energy. He was also attracted to a beautiful socialite, who would be joining him for Dinner tonight.

To be continued...

Sci-Fi Friday II

For Part 1 see this posting to my blog .
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This single event will now set in motion more than a breeze of change in the course of history, for Tesla, it will be a virtual hurricane.

Summer 1895 (almost two years ahead of the previous timeline)

Nikola Tesla was as confident in his ability as he was in his equipment, he knew that if this demonstration was successful, he would be rich enough to pursue anything that interested him. Tesla took the podium of the outside stage in Madison Square Garden and announced, "The device that you see before you is being remotely controlled from this stage". With that he activated the switches in sequence to move, submerge and control the small boat in the water several yards in front of the stage.

This demonstration was only the beginning of several to occur in the next few months, which effectively showcased the priority of Telsa's radio patents. In his second demonstration he had transmitted signals (or intelligence, as he preferred to call it) for a distance of over 50 miles. The strength of the received signal was such, that Tesla was confident it would have been received at more than 5 times that distance. With this success, his financiers wanted the next demonstration to be a trans-Atlantic broadcast.

To be continued...

Sci-Fi Friday

"The Outer Limits" is one of my earliest memorys of the Sci-Fi genre and I've dabbled now and then with a story idea or two. Here's a lead in to a short story that I'll publish in segments here in my blog each Friday.

Information Age 1.0
by Doug Curtis

Ask anyone about "www" and they can probably tell you that it has become a household term over the last 10 years. Small personal wireless devices have recently come into use during this time to provide all sorts of information to mankind all over the world, the year is 1912. To see what brought about this change in history, we must look back a bit further.


March 13th 1895 New York, NY

Nikola Tesla is tired, but sleep has alway been something he could do without when he needed to and tonight had been such an occassion. Tesla senses a slight breeze coming in through the fourth floor window of his laboratory. The last of his guests, Mark Twain, has just left to retire for the evening and Tesla was ready to do the same. As he closes the window he notices a hissing sound coming from one of his apparatus that is being used to derive liquid oxygen. Tesla summons one of his assistants and they repair the leak before leaving.
"This could have been a disaster" Tesla thought to himself.
On the eve of one of his most important demonstrations, the radio transmitter, a fire would have destroyed a lifetime of work.

To be continued