Tesla's Magnifying Transmitter - Part 1: Introduction

Tesla’s Magnifying Transmitter covers so many interesting principles that I need to split this topic into 5 parts, as follows:

Part 1: Introduction
In this part (that you are reading now) I will show you what the TMT is and how it differs from the general consensus.

Part 2: High voltage generation
In this part I’ll cover the issues that come with generating many millions of volts and how Tesla addressed these. This part may be split into some subs as it covers many years of research.

Part 3: Power generation
In this part I will briefly go through how Tesla intended to generate electrical power with his TMT. I say briefly because I already covered most of that in my earlier posts.

Part 4: Power distribution
In this part I will explain how Tesla wanted to distribute the generated power all over the world without the use of wires.

Part 5: Communication and navigation
In this part I will briefly touch upon the communication part of the TMT. I will do that briefly because I did not research that in great depth, but I can outline the basic principles. In fact, judging from the Long Island Notes, I believe that Tesla himself had not yet worked out all details.

The general consensus is that a TMT is a Tesla coil with a third, so called “extra coil”. This is what you will find explained in Wiki, but there is absolutely no basis in Tesla’s work for this assumption. The best “explanation” for this misconception is that Tesla’s patent 1,119,732 contains an image that vaguely resembles his Wardenclyffe tower, and we know that at Wardenclyffe he intended to build a TMT. The image of this patent is shown in the Wikipedia entry, and to avoid confusion I will not copy it here.
I wanted to correct Wiki on this, but in Wiki’s rules you will find that Wiki represents the general consensus even if it can be proven wrong. So that ruined my appetite.

Leland Anderson, a great researcher of Tesla’s legacy provided us with a number of different schematics of the TMT which are much more likely to be true.

These were published in the “Electric Spacecraft” of Apr/May/Jun 1997. As you can see this also shows a tower but here in the accompanying text you will find that this is closely related to the Wardenclyffe project.

Browsing through Tesla’s Colorado Springs Notes we find numerous diagrams to support Leland Anderson’s finds.

These are only a few examples.

Tesla describes the TMT in the following articles:
1904 March 5th, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires”.
1905 January 7th, “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires as a Means for Furthering Peace”.
both published in the “Electrical World and Engineer”.
1916, the pre-hearing interview.
1919, his autobiography.
What you’ll read in these articles completely rules out that the general consensus would be correct.
The best description by far, you will find in his coded masterpiece of June 1900 “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy”. That is of course, once you understand the code.

You can also find mentions in these articles but without much explanation:
1907 May 3rd, “Tesla's Tidal Wave to Make War impossible”, English Mechanic and World of Science.
1907 June 23rd, “Can Bridge the Gap to Mars”, New York Times.
1927 October 16th, “World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy”, Telegraph and Telegraph Age.

In many famous pictures of Tesla you will see very large high voltage discharges. Some people say that although Tesla was fascinated by this display, it was not his ultimate goal to produce these discharges. I think there is some nuance to be added here as can be seen in the above diagrams which all include a spark gap.

Having shown the true diagrams of the TMT and mentioned some of the things that it can accomplish this concludes the introduction. In the next posts we will get into the details.
If you have any questions, or want me to elaborate on some point, please do not hesitate to ask.