Nikola Tesla

A Lighting Machine on Novel Principles

A LIGHTING MACHINE ON NOVEL PRINCIPLES
- by Nikola Tesla *

A machine built on novel and original lines is about to be placed on the market. It consists of a turbine and electric generator, both employing basically new principles in construction as well as operation, and intimately associated to constitute a unit. The former has been pronounced revolutionary in its design and performance. It is simplicity itself, being devoid of buckets, deflecting blades, guide passages, vanes and the like, and presents many other decisive advantages over the ordinary prime mover.

In the first place there is no windage, which is the cause of a most serious loss of power in bucket turbines, often amounting to a large percentage of the integral mechanical effort. What is still more important, the new turbine is capable of taking up the whole velocity of the motive fluid in one continuous process, thus saving the expense and avoiding the complication incident to "staging". Furthermore, it has the precious quality of transforming into useful work frictional energy irretrievably spent in other heat motors.

The corrosion and erosion of buckets and vanes in the present turbines is the cause of another great and irremediable waste of energy, the water rate frequently increasing 30% to 40% after but a few months of use. No such hurtful actions exist in the new turbine, and if they did, they would not impair the performance to any appreciable degree. Again, the former are subject to considerable loss owing to unpreventable wear and deterioration of the nozzles. It is essential that the high velocity streams of fluid issuing from them be directed upon the curved blades with great precision, as a failure of this is fatal to good results. To such an extent is this the case that even a slight roughening of the polished surfaces will reduce the useful energy as much as 25%. The new turbine is entirely free from this defect. However the nozzle may be used up, the fluid is made to flow through the wheel smoothly and evenly in natural stream lines, transmitting power to the same with undiminished efficiency. Another feature of superiority is found in its adaptability to high temperatures far beyond those practicable in bucket turbines. For every hundred degrees of increase in temperature, the steam consumption is reduced from 10% to 12%. Great economies are thus made possible by the use of the new prime mover.

In every turbine the device regulating the speed of rotation and controlling the admission of the working fluid to the nozzles is of vital importance. With scarcely an exception it is of the centrifugal type driven from the shaft in some or other way and constituting an assemblage of gears, flying weights, links, levers, sleeves, thrust bearings and other parts. It is an apparatus complex and delicate, expensive to construct and easily deranged, often with disastrous consequences. All this has been done away in the new turbine which is controlled in a novel and striking manner. The regulator is elementary in its construction, positive and unfailing in its action, and yet so sensitive as to respond to variations of load amounting to less than 1% of the normal. This simple device is rendered still more valuable by the fact that it adjusts itself instantaneously to pressure changes so that the effects of these on the lamps are inappreciable. To illustrate, the steam gauge on the boiler may indicate fluctuations from 100 to 200 pounds or more and following each other however rapidly without the slightest observable change in the intensity of the light. This remarkable action of the device is independent of its function as regulator of speed.

Another advantage deserving the most careful consideration of the user is the perfect safety of the new turbine. There is an ever present danger in a machine of the old type, that the wheel might burst and destroy life and property. Such a deplorable accident is absolutely impossible with the new turbine rotor, composed of thin discs which expand slightly and come to rest, invariably without damage, as has been shown in exhaustive experiments.

The one feature, however, which has most amazed experts, is the extraordinary power of this form of prime mover. Owing to the great effectiveness of the underlying principle and peculiar construction, ten times more power can be produced than with any other machine known. For example, a rotor of 9" in diameter, weighing less than 20 pounds, can readily develop 200 brake horsepower, and this is by no means the limit of performance.

But the merits of this lighting outfit do not rest on the turbine alone. The dynamo associated with the same is perhaps equally noteworthy by its simplicity of construction, high efficiency and rare and valuable properties it possesses. It consists of a smooth cylindrical body mounted on the turbine shaft and arranged to rotate within a magnetic field of novel forma There is no brush or sliding contact whatever, the current being taken from stationary terminals to which the ends of the generating coils are connected. By employing the best materials and workmanship and resorting to artifices of design, a most economical electrical generator is produced, the efficiency being over 90% even in machines of very small size having rotors of not more than 2 1/2" in diameter. This generator possesses extraordinary qualities, especially desirable in electric lighting. It is capable of furnishing a current constant within a minute fraction of 1% through a very wide range of speed variation, and as such is ideally suited for running arc lamps or kindred electrical devices in series. More surprising still and also of greater commercial import is its capability of maintaining a constant potential. Such results as are obtainable with it are wholly impossible with other types of electrical generators. It has been found in practice that all lamps but one can be turned off suddenly without the slightest perceptible flicker and even without any observable effect on the needle of a delicate instrument indicating the voltage.

That an apparatus of such simplicity and presenting so many salient advantages should find an extensive use in electric lighting might be naturally expected, but its overwhelming superiority will be better appreciated when it is stated that it occupies hardly more than one-tenth of the space of apparatus of the usual forms and weighs less in proportion. A machine capable of developing 1-kilowatt, for instance, goes into a space of 8 x 8 x 10" and weighs but 40 pounds. It takes not more than one-third of the steam consumed in other turbo-generators of that size.

The guiding idea in the development of this new machine was to evolve a mechanism approximating a static transformer of energy in simplicity, efficiency and reliability of operation. Every detail has been worked out with this object in view. There is no exciter, no commutator, brush or sliding contact whatever, no centrifugal regulator, voltage controller or any such complicated and hazardous device. The machine consists of but a stationary solid frame and two smooth cylindrical steel bodies mounted on a strong shaft arranged to rotate in bearings virtually frictionless. No oiling is required, although a small quantity of lubricant is provided rather as a precaution than necessity. A perfect dynamic balance is secured in a novel manner and insures a steady and quiet running without tremor and vibration. The whole apparatus can be boxed up and depended upon to operate uninterruptedly through long periods of time. The outfit can be constructed in various sizes up to 100-kilowatt or more, and should meet more satisfactorily than any yet devised the varied requirements of electric lighting on railroads, boats, in public buildings, factories and mines, and may also be advantageously utilized in connection with existing plants for replacing belt driven dynamos and storage batteries, and relieving larger engines through the night and hours of small load.

OCR by: Varsányi Péter (Pepe) www.tesla.hu. Verzió: 1.00 (2003-10-29)

* This material previously unpublished! — Feb. 7, 1918