Leonard E. Curtis, a patent lawyer and friend of Teslas’ offered to find land and provide power from the El Paso Power Company of Colorado Springs for his research. Also coming on board with monetary backing was Colonel John Jacob Astor with a $30,000 investment. Tesla immediately packed for Colorado and began construction on his new lab near Pikes Peak. Several of his assistants traveled with him but were not fully informed of Tesla’s intentions. In May of 1899 Tesla inspected the area and told reporters that he planned on sending a radio signal from Pikes Peak to Paris, without any other information given to the public, Tesla went to work.
Tesla’s readings found the Earth alive with electrical vibrations, he summerized that lightning strikes sent powerful waves from one side of the Earth to the other. If Tesla’s calculations were correct and the Earth was a powerful conductor of electricity, he would be able to send large amounts of power anywhere with virtually no loss. However, to do this he would have to create man-made lightning. The experiments would be done in the nearly finished laboratory that was taking on an unusual appearance. With a rollback roof to prevent fire, a wooden tower that rose eight stories, and atop that a fourteen story metal mass that supported a large copper ball. His assistants were assembling a enormous Tesla coil that was constructed to send electrical impulses into the Earth.
On the evening of his first experiment all systems were checked and rechecked. Tesla instructed his mechanic to open the switch but only for a second, the coil began to spark and crack while a eerie blue orb formed abound it. Bolts of man-made lightning more than one hundred feet long shot across the station. Tesla’s experiment only lasted a few seconds but that was enough to burn out the dynamo at the El Paso Electric Company and kill power to the entire city. The power station manager was furious and demanded Tesla pay for the repairs. For nine months his experiments continued, Tesla kept a daily journal but his results are unclear, did he transmit power wirelessly at Pikes Peak? There are reports that he transmitted power several miles and illuminated vacuum tubes planted in the ground. However, Tesla’s opponents credited the experiment to the conductive nature of the ground in Colorado.
Tesla also had ideas about using extra low frequency signals between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere, he calculated that the Earth’s frequency was 8-hertz. It wasn’t until the 1950′s that the idea was taken seriously and proven that the Earth’s frequency is in fact 8-hertz. One night in his lab he continued to pick up the same signal, which he determined to be from outer space. He was severely ridiculed for his announcement, but in fact was by all accounts, the first man to detect radio waves coming from beyond Earth. A great deal of mystery still surrounds the work Tesla did while in Colorado, it’s unclear what the results of his experiments were. One thing was for sure, he returned to New York convinced that wireless transmission of power was possible, and he would do it.
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