It is quite possible that over the course of your life you have encountered a Tesla Coil and not actually realized that you had.. Perhaps the most familiar example of a Tesla Coil is the common lightning or plasma ball one might find in a planetarium or curiosity shop. On the otherhand you may have seen a larger (and much louder) Tesla Coil in a physics course. In either case you probably concluded that they have realtively little practical value. However   Nikola Tesla did not invent the Tesla Coil for mere amusement. No, Tesla had a greater purpose in mind. His dream was of wireless power, radio transmission, and later more eccentric applications.

NOTE: This is a webpage I put together for a writing class in the fall of 2000. There are typos and dead links that I do not intend to fix. However, the information contained on this page is accurate to my knowledge.