Nikola Tesla: Scientist. Engineer. Visionary Part VII-Tesla and the World System: A Vision of a Wirelessly Connected Planet

The patents and experiments previously described laid the groundwork for one of Nikola Tesla’s most ambitious concepts – the World System.
As Tesla himself explained, the World System was a combination of his original discoveries developed over many years of research and experimentation.

This system would allow almost instantaneous and precise transmission of any signal, message, or sign to every corner of the globe, connecting existing telegraph, telephone, and signal stations — without the need for modifying their current equipment.

Already at the beginning of the 20th century, in the early 1900s, Tesla envisioned that a small receiver, no larger than a wristwatch, would enable the user to listen to speech and music from any place on Earth, whether on land or at sea.
It is almost impossible to read these words, written more than a century ago, without visualizing today’s smartphones and smartwatches.

Key Tesla inventions forming the basis of the World System:

• Tesla transformers – capable of generating high-frequency oscillations through low-frequency excitation.
• High-voltage transmitter – a special transformer designed to resonantly excite the Earth (demonstrated during Tesla’s experiments at Colorado Springs).
• Tesla wireless system – wireless transmission of energy with minimal losses, developed during the Colorado Springs experiments.
• Art of individualization – secure, exclusive transmission of messages without interference or eavesdropping (conceptually similar to today’s encrypted communications).
• Discovery of terrestrial stationary waves – the realization that the Earth could be excited at specific frequencies, much like a tuning fork responds to certain sound waves.

According to Tesla, one World System station would deliver:

1. Interconnection of all telegraph and telephone stations worldwide.
2. Establishment of secret state telegraphic services immune to interference.
3. Global distribution of news.
4. Delivery of private messages and notifications.
5. Networking of stock exchanges around the world.
6. Global music distribution.
7. Universal time registration via affordable clocks.
8. Global navigation aid for ships.
9. Worldwide transmission of signs, numbers, and codes.
10. A world system for printing information on land and sea.
11. Global reproduction of photographs, drawings, and all types of records.

It is truly astonishing how accurately Tesla anticipated the digital world we live in today:
internet and web technologies, VOIP telephony, email and SMS messaging, wireless communication (from 1G to 5G), online business, secure communications — the very foundations of our modern life.

Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century, it was a technical challenge too great for the time.
To launch the World System, Tesla built a facility on Long Island, known as the Wardenclyffe Tower, featuring a 187-foot tower crowned with a 68-foot diameter dome.

We will explore the story of Wardenclyffe — its construction and its fate — in the next chapter of this great Nikola Tesla series on MilovanInnovation!