Tesla Coil Essay

Topic 21: How do you build a Tesla coil, and how does it operate? To build a Tesla coil, we must first understand the history and inner workings behind the device. The Tesla coil was created by inventor, Nikola Tesla in the late 1800’s as a means of transporting electricity wirelessly. The idea came to him after experimenting with high frequency machines in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania and upon returning back to his lab in New York, he began various prototypes of his own. In 1856, Sir William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) made certain points about potential future uses for oscillations in an electrical discharge such as, information transfer but no real applications had been made at the time. Tesla took inspiration from Kelvin and by 1891, he had created small,

The problem Tesla found in his earliest models, was the efficiency of the “spark gap” (Figure 1). This gap would create a loss in energy because it was the largest distance from the coils and the weakest in terms of current. Tesla fixed this by slightly tweaking the resonant frequency so that the efficiency rate maintained a steady 85%. What he found curious was despite what medium he used (Hydrogen, mercury vapor, oil, etc.), this efficiency rate would remain the same. Towards the end of his life, Tesla had built many different coils ranging from the small prototypes he first made, to the massive building- sized coil right outside his lab. Today, the Tesla coil is defined as a resonant transformer used to produce high-voltage at a low-current with high frequency alternating-currents. Its applications include electrical lighting, phosphorescence, X-ray generation, electrotherapy (the insertion of electric currents through the body to stimulate nerves and muscles used to treat various forms of paralysis), and wireless transmission of energy. They were used commercially in spark gap radio transmitters for wireless telegraphy until the 1920s. Their main