For starters, think of this as a solar-electric panel.
Tesla's invention is very different, but the closest thing to it in conventional
technology is in photo-voltaics. One radical difference is that conventional
solar-electric panels consist of a substrate coated with crystalline silicon;
the latest use amorphous silicon. Conventional solar panels are expensive, and,
whatever the coating, they are manufactured by esoteric processes.
But Tesla's "solar panel" is just a shiny metal plate with a transparent coating
of some insulating material which today could be a spray plastic. Stick one of
these antenna-like panels up in the air, the higher the better, and wire it to
one side of a capacitor, the other going to a good earth ground. Now the energy
from the sun is charging that capacitor.
Connect across the capacitor some sort of switching device so that it can be
discharged at rhythmic intervals, and you have an electric output. Tesla´s
patent is telling us that it is that simple to get electric energy. The bigger
the area of the insulated plate, the more energy you get. But this is more than
a 'solar panel' because it does not necessarily need sunshine to operate. It
also produces power at night.
Of course, this is impossible according to official science. For this reason,
you could not get a patent on such an invention today. Many an inventor has
learned this the hard way. Tesla had his problems with the patent examiners, but
today's free-energy inventor has it much tougher. At the time of this writing,
the U. S. Patent Office is headed by a Reagan appointee who came to the office
straight from a top executive position with Phillips Petroleum.
Tesla's free-energy receiver
was patented in 1901 as An Apparatus for the Utilization of Radiant Energy. The
patent refers to "the Sun, as well as other sources of radiant energy, like
cosmic rays." That the device works at night is explained in terms of the
night-time availability of cosmic rays. Tesla also refers to the ground as "a
vast reservoir of negative electricity."
Tesla was fascinated by radiant energy and its free-energy possibilities. He
called the Crooke's radiometer (a device which has vanes that spin in a vacuum
when exposed to radiant energy) "a beautiful invention." He believed that it
would become possible to harness energy directly by "connecting to the very
wheelwork of nature." His free-energy receiver is as close as he ever came to
such a device in his patented work.
But, on his 76th birthday, at the ritual press conference, Nikola
Tesla (who was without the financial wherewithal to patent but went on inventing
in his head) announced a "cosmic-ray motor." When asked if it was more powerful
than the Crooke's radiometer, he answered, "thousands of times more powerful."
How it works
From the electric Potential that exists between
the elevated plate (plus) and the ground (minus), energy builds in the
capacitor, and, after "a suitable time interval," the accumulated energy will
"manifest itself in a powerful discharge" which can do work. The capacitor, says
Tesla, should be "of considerable electrostatic capacity," and its dielectric
made of "the best quality mica,' for it has to withstand potentials that could
rupture a weaker dielectric.
Tesla gives various options for the switching device. One is a rotary switch
that resembles a Tesla circuit controller. Another is an electrostatic device
consisting of two very light, membranous conductors suspended in a vacuum. These
sense the energy build-up in the capacitor, one going positive, the other
negative, and, at a certain charge level, are attracted, touch, and thus fire
the capacitor. Tesla also mentions another switching device consisting of a
minute air gap or weak dielectric film which breaks down suddenly when a certain
potential is reached.
The above is about all the technical detail you get in the patent. Although I've
seen a few cursory references to Tesla's invention in my sampling of the
literature of free-energy, I am not aware of any attempts to verify it
experimentally.