April 10th, 2012 
Hojo Motor I’m impressed with the demonstration – it’s an awesome fireworks show. But as I recall, the problem Tesla had was that he couldn’t harness the energy – it was too random.
Anyhow, it’s amazing that someone could actually build even this.
Chosen Answer:
by:
on: 1st January 70
Posted in 
Tags: 
Hi Lawrence D, Impressive indeed. The thing I don’t understand is how it can be turned on and off! Surely if it is drawing “free energy” from the air, the free energy is there all the time?
Well that is a big Tesla coil, a whopper, but it certainly isn’t drawing any free energy from the air. It is powered from the electrical supply. It says it uses 55KW, and in the earlier part of the video the “switch-board” is seen. Tesla experimented with wireless energy transmission, with some moderate success, but his wireless broadcasting scheme was never finalised. He used electric fields in successful demonstrations showing discharge tubes lit by large capacitor like plates energised by high voltage radio frequency waves. I don’t think there was ever any effort to get “free energy from the air”, more about “receive the broadcast energy from transmitter stations”..
It is possible to receive transmitted radio waves in the near field reasonably efficiently, using either the electric or magnetic component of the field. It is also possible in the far field, and the efficiency is high if the receiving antenna intercepts the entire beam. It seems Tesla may have had a ducting phenomena due to valleys that mislead him in some way.
It is impressive, but the power source is probably there somewhere, probably a motorized belt drawing up charge from the ground.
It’s not a Tesla coil, probably, but a Van De Graff generator. My Science Museum has one about that size.
.