As a teenager, I read a book on Nikola Tesla and found the man and his inventions totally fascinating.  I built my own Tesla coil in High School.  Clearly Tesla's contributions have been under-played in the history books; probably because people like Edison and JP Morgan did not want to see him lauded.  I recently purchased a "Tesla > Edison" bumper sticker for my truck.

  I have read that Tesla did pioneering work in what he called "radiant energy", also called "free energy" in more recent years...  But did he actually OBSERVE this during his lifetime?    I would like to know!  and give him due credit.

 It seems that so many of Tesla's contributions have been obscured -- and I would like to see that changed.  So glad to see progress on a Tesla museum at the site of his Wardenclyffe experiments.

That's quite a "Title" or thread topic, to say the least.

Do you mean to state that "Radiant Energy" is "Free Energy"?  (Actually, I would agree with that, up to a point...)

While I can not "Prove" this, I understand that, more than once, Tesla blew out the generators while testing the Colorado tower due to feedback of power.  To me, this points very clearly to a source of energy other than the input because if the burnouts were caused by too much power returning to the generators...  (EE's, don't waste your time trying your "Conventional" excuses/reasons.  I've heard it all before.  Try reading Tesla's notes with the Power Plant managers notes.)

Many of Tesla's works should be lauded, but rarely are.  It's more than sad.  A real "Sore" point for me is that he was given credit for Radio over Marconi, when even Tesla himself stated that he was transmitting other ways.  I could go on for a long time, but suffice it to say, he was able to generate "Free Energy", in the standard, scientific definition.  To this day, a LOT of info is distorted and most EE's will tell you it's "Bunk".  (They wouldn't want to waste their education.  My 6 Years didn't help a bit.)

I feel sorry for them.  There is SO much to be re-learned.  Also, be careful.  If you expose anything useful here, the trolls WILL find you, one way or another.  I speak from experience on that point.

I have wondered whether Mr. Tesla ever encountered free energy also.  I came to the conclusion from his own writings that since he scorned perpetual motion machines, it would seem that he did not believe that he could achieve free energy other than the radiant energy patent.  But he said that the collection of that energy was very slow.  While reading his patent on the tuning of the tower that he built; he said that he pulsed the lower coil with at first low power, to tune the resonance of the pulse, to that of his series tank circuit or the tower coil and sphere shaped capacitor at the top.  He was tuning the pulse input from the electrical generators as input, so that the wave length of the pulse would peak at the capacitor at the top of the tower.  This way maximum voltage would be stored in the top capacitor at the top of the tower.  He warned that the fire ball that could occur with this device was due to the frequency mismatch of the input pulse being at a wavelength that did not occur at the capacitor top of the tower, but somewhere short or long of that destination.  The result was a buildup of electrical potential that manifested itself as a fire ball of great intensity of many thousands of horsepower, that would erupt with quite a display. 

Mr. Tesla mentioned that the tower had a natural resonance and the input pulse needed to be tuned to match that resonance in wavelength so that in essence, 1/4 wavelength would result in maximum voltage potential and that potential needs to occur at the point of the top doughnut capacitor at the top of the tower.  (Low Standing Wave Ratio or SWR).

I totally enjoyed reading and understanding his device, but I see many issues with it's practical application and use.  Weather would adversely affect his device if it became wet.  The resonance would change resulting in the enormous discharge of electrical potential somewhere other than at the capacitor top. 

The only way it might show any OU, would be if he pulsed the input and abruptly stopped the pulse, allowing the environment to react to the sudden loss of a magnetic field and would supply the sudden change in magnetic field in order to attempt to fill the void.  But I don't know if this has been proven or not.

I have many books on Tesla in my home library and, in one of them, I remember Tesla saying to someone that there was enough energy in the air to run the world.  Well, at that time, it would not take a whole lot as most of the world was without power...also, he might possibly have been speaking of the sun for all I know...but I don't think so.  Possibly, we may never know.

Bill

Thanks-- the comments are deeply appreciated.  Let me focus on two which capture most of the others:

Jouleseeker - that's a great bumper sticker  Tesla > Edison  - I'd like to know where I could get one of those           I think Tesla's often quoted statement says what he knew about free energy: "Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic — and this we know it is, for certain — then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature."    Tesla's Pierce Arrow car would be another example. I think the very idea of the Wardenclyffe tower was based on  transmitting power to multiple power receivers all being resonant and that being 'free' for anyone who could add a receiver is what drove J.P. Morgan to blackball Tesla into obscurity. At least I think the idea was that 10000 receivers if resonant would not draw any more power from the transmitter than 10 (similar to one of Don Smith's devices -  who got much if his info from Tesla).

   Then there is Tesla's patent 685,957 in 1901.  This was his 'free-energy receiver which was patented as "An Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy".   If he had any issues with perpetual motion I'll bet it was related to Bessler type devices.   ...

I would like to know more about Tesla's car which NickZ also mentioned... any good links?Also his patent 685,957 in 1901...  any good links to this also?
Very helpful.
The bumper sticker can be found here:
http://shop.theoatmeal.com/products/tesla-edison-bumper-sticker

Loner: Do you mean to state that "Radiant Energy" is "Free Energy"?  (Actually, I would agree with that, up to a point...)
 While I can not "Prove" this, I understand that, more than once, Tesla blew out the generators while testing the Colorado tower due to feedback of power.  To me, this points very clearly to a source of energy other than the input because if the burnouts were caused by too much power returning to the generators...  (EE's, don't waste your time trying your "Conventional" excuses/reasons.  I've heard it all before.  Try reading Tesla's notes with the Power Plant managers notes.)

Many of Tesla's works should be lauded, but rarely are.  It's more than sad.

"Radiant energy" is Tesla's term I understand; while "Free Energy" seems to be more recent terminology.  Actually - I'd like to see a better term than either of these.  "Free energy" evidently ignores that fact that one must input some energy to get the ball rolling... and we've seen that the US Patent Office is on the look-out to deny any patents claiming "Free energy", or "Perpetual motion" for that matter.
  "Radiant energy" has been re-defined by physicists as referring to energy associated with light (or radiation), as opposed to any "wheelwork of nature" energy (Tesla's terminology again). 
And that may be the best: 
Tesla's terminology again:  "wheelwork of nature" energy.

Thanks again.
Steve

Good thread
 I hope I will have time tomorrow to come back to it.

Regarding the Magnifying Transmitter: I've watched an interesting presentation (unfortunately German language only) here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eB_HsLke4Vo which explains quite well why the transmitted power was magnified. He also explains that when radio stations started to filter out the "noise", which in fact were scalar/longitudinal waves, the "free energy" was gone. And since then many "free energy inventions" didn't work anymore (e.g. Roy Meyers etc.)
The scalar waves seemed to gain energy by sending it through the atmosphere and thereby it provided more output than input if you collected it with an antenna.

So yeah, I don't know, but maybe Tesla found a way to get this magnified energy also without sending it through the atmosphere. I don't know, guess I must watch the video again...

I'm attaching the first page from Patrick Kelly's Free Energy book from chapter 11 (it's an older version so might not be in the same chapter now) where he discusses a device that Tesla built but never patented which was supposed to be a device to get free energy from the air.  I've seen it discussed more lately and it seems somewhat related the William Lyne's device.   A search in Patrick Kelly's book will yield all the info on this device.  His book here:   http://www.free-energy-info.co.uk/

I've seen this principle shown in another pdf once, which was writing about Ed Grey Tube, the Testatika and Tesla. It also showed a  spark gap and 2 permanent magnets coming afterwards, so that "the ionised air" was "rectified" or something like that. Tesla said that the energy gained is much more than needed to produce it.

The sketch in the PDF from free-energy-info is much better though. Now the question is who wants to try it out and can try it out. It doesn't sound that complicated, that's why I wonder no one has tried it out. I recall that in the former PDF a voltage of 20.000 Volt was used, with an amperage of about 20 milliAmpere (yes that low...), produced by an Oscillator. This would then cause a permanent lightning arc on the ball electrodes, which in turn would then cause radiant energy from air. This radiant energy must be collected with 2 metal plates, each with small round holes in it (like a "net").

I for my part have no equipment to produce the source power currently... I tried it with a Wimshurst device though, but the discharge frequency is just too low and weak. It should be a very bright and continuos lightning arc. If the arc is only thin and blue/violet colored, that this is not enough, it must be bright white.