The "wireless transmission of energy" is in common use today as a communications method. No impressive sparks when it is working properly, but certainly lots of data. So Tesla had the theory right, just goofed on the application and the scale.

And still, the part that is not so clear to me is how the very non-symetrical coil arrangement of the Tesla coil works. Logic says that the primary coil should be around the middle of the secondary coil, NOT down at the bottom end.

Tesla had the theory completely wrong because he didn't understand or believe in modern electrodynamics. This idea that Tesla had any chance of making this work is a fraud on good science created by the cult of free energy and movie watching. There is so much bogus BS history that's been created about Tesla. It's shameful how it's destroyed the reality of his real accomplishments in early electrical engineering of practical devices and systems for polyphase power.

The physics of wireless energy hasn't changed. What we have today are near field induction devices similar in design to old school electric shavers and toothbrushes. Far field wireless energy transmission, that's also efficient, is still a dream.

The Tesla coil seen in the pictures was driven by AC generators (that needed lots of external prime mover energy to spin) with an output frequency in the upper audio range. SO when you hear the words high frequency with the original Tesla inventions, think audio range AC input power to excite higher frequency tank circuits for spark generation.

He developed some electromagnetic technology, but he made no contributions to electromagnetic theory.
https://edisontechcenter.org/AC-PowerHistory.html
AC Power History and Timeline
Alternating current power drives our world today. AC power was the next logical step after DC power was established. The founders, developers, and visionaries of AC power are depicted below.

 

Tesla had the theory completely wrong because he didn't understand or believe in modern electrodynamics. This idea that Tesla had any chance of making this work is a fraud on good science created by the cult of free energy and movie watching. There is so much bogus BS history that's been created about Tesla. It's shameful how it's destroyed the reality of his real accomplishments in early electrical engineering of practical devices and systems for polyphase power.

The physics of wireless energy hasn't changed. What we have today are near field induction devices similar in design to old school electric shavers and toothbrushes. Far field wireless energy transmission, that's also efficient, is still a dream.

The Tesla coil seen in the pictures was driven by AC generators (that needed lots of external prime mover energy to spin) with an output frequency in the upper audio range. SO when you hear the words high frequency with the original Tesla inventions, think audio range AC input power to excite higher frequency tank circuits for spark generation.

He developed some electromagnetic technology, but he made no contributions to electromagnetic theory.
https://edisontechcenter.org/AC-PowerHistory.html
AC Power History and Timeline
Alternating current power drives our world today. AC power was the next logical step after DC power was established. The founders, developers, and visionaries of AC power are depicted below.

View attachment 346929

I think this is largely true, he's been misrepresented over the years and although some of what he believed is now regarded as "crank" we must bear in mind this was a long time ago, Maxwell believed in the "aether" for example and nobody would call him a crank for that.

 

I think this is largely true, he's been misrepresented over the years and although some of what he believed is now regarded as "crank" we must bear in mind this was a long time ago, Maxwell believed in the "aether" for example and nobody would call him a crank for that.

Yes, Maxwell researched using the science of the period that include "aether" theories (Maxwell didn't propose the idea of aether. It was already there) for the mechanism (he discovered that a physical Longitudinal wave "aether" mechanism was likely impossible due math and physical reality) for EM energy. His theories were not dependent on a specific mechanism on the transmission media, they were dependent on the properties of the transmission media. Maxwell believed that the Electromagnetic Field was the Aether, using Aether as a concept, not a physical thing.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Encyclopædia_Britannica,_Ninth_Edition/Ether_(2.)

Ether (2.) by James Clerk Maxwell

ETHER, or Æther (αἰθήρ, probably from αἴθω, I burn, though Plato in his Cratylus (410, b) derives the name from its perpetual motion — ὅτι ἀεὶ θει περὶ τὸν ἀέρα ῥέων, ἀειθεῂρ δικαίως ἂν καλοιτο), a material substance of a more subtle kind than visible bodies, supposed to exist in those parts of space which are apparently empty.

The hypothesis of an aether has been maintained by different speculators for very different reasons. To those who maintained the existence of a plenum as a philosophical principle, nature's abhorrence of a vacuum was a sufficient reason for imagining an all-surrounding aether, even though every other argument should be against it. To Descartes, who made extension the sole essential property of matter, and matter a necessary condition of extension, the bare existence of bodies apparently at a distance was a proof of the existence of a continuous medium between them.

But besides these high metaphysical necessities for a medium, there were more mundane uses to be fulfilled by aethers. Aethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our bodies to another, and so on, till all space had been filled three or four times over with aethers. It is only when we remember the extensive and mischievous influence on science which hypotheses about aethers used formerly to exercise, that we can appreciate the horror of aethers which sober-minded men had during the 18th century, and which, probably as a sort of hereditary prejudice, descended even to the late Mr John Stuart Mill.
...
Having so far determined the geometrical character of the process, we must now turn our attention to the medium in which it takes place. We may use the term aether to denote this medium, whatever it may be.

In the first place, it is capable of transmitting energy. The radiations which it transmits are able not only to act on our senses, which of itself is evidence of work done, but to heat bodies which absorb them ; and by measuring the heat communicated to such bodies, the energy of the radiation may be calculated.

In the next place this energy is not transmitted instantaneously from the radiating body to the absorbing body, but exists for a certain time in the medium.
...
Faraday conjectured that, the same medium which is concerned in the propagation of light might also be the agent in electromagnetic phenomena. "For my own part," he says, "considering the relation of a vacuum to the magnetic force, and the general character of magnetic phenomena external to the magnet, I am much more inclined to the notion that in the transmission of the force there is such an action, external to the magnet, than that the effects are merely attraction and repulsion at a distance. Such an action may be a function of the aether; for it is not unlikely that, if there be an aether, it should have other uses than simply the conveyance of radiation[5]." This conjecture has only been strengthened by subsequent investigations.
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No theory of the constitution of the aether has yet been invented which will account for such a system of molecular vortices being maintained for an indefinite time without their energy being gradually dissipated into that irregular agitation of the medium which, in ordinary media, is called heat.