The photo was part of a publicity spread taken by photographer Dickinson Alley in December 1899 to accompany his magazine article Nikola Tesla, "The Problem of Increasing Human Energy", Century Magazine, The Century Co., New York, June 1900, fig. 8; a version without Tesla appears in the article. The note accompanying the image: "Fig. 8 - The coil, partly shown in the photograph, creates an alternative movement of electricity from the earth into a large reservoir and back at a rate of one hundred thousand alternations per second. The adjustments are such that the reservoir is filled full and bursts at each alternation just at the moment when the electrical pressure is maximum. The discharge escapes with a deafening noise striking at an unconnected coil twenty two feet away, and creating such a commotion of electricity in the earth that sparks an inch long can be drawn from a water main at a distance of three hundred feet from the laboratory.

This copy was sent to British physicist William Crookes, and is inscribed: 'To my illustrious friend Sir William Crookes of whom I always think and whose kind letters I never answer! Nikola Tesla June 17, 1901'

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