What this patent is commonly claimed to be about but is not about

• perpetual motion
• zero point energy
• harvesting atmospheric electricty

What this patent actually describes

• harvesting ionising radiation and cosmic galactic radiation for power
• demonstrating how the effect can be amplified by using different excitation sources

How does Tesla's approach differ from typical atmopheric electricity harvesting attempts

• Firstly it's harvesting radiant energy, not static charge
• Tesla actually powers his unit with ionising radiation in lab conditions
• Atmospheric electricity attemps harvest positive charge. Tesla's set up can collect positive or negative charge by supplying a reference voltage on the "ground" side of the capacitor. But if you gather positive charge, you will also gather atmospheric electricity just because it's there.
• Tesla knew how to build high voltage capacitors, he said that his set-up will charge a capactor to failure unless the power is periodically drained

Short-N-Sweet theory of opperation If you expose a conductor to ionising radiation and you attach it to one terminal of a capacitor and provide a reference voltage that can supply or recieve electrons, like earth ground or atmospheric electricity, charge will continuously gather on the surface of the plate and in the capacitor until the charge is removed or an arc-discharge circuit failure occurs.

If you do it outside, you will collect cosmic galactic radiation, if that's you're goal, the higher the altitude, the greater the energy density.

How can you build one at home for dirt cheap

• First roll your own capactor by layering plastic wrap and alternately stagered layers of aluminum foil such that a little aluminum sticks off opposite sides of the plastic wrap. The longer the layer the better. The more layers the better. The tigher you roll it up, the better. Tesla didn't have the luxury of foil and thin film plastic, lucky us.
• Get high voltage hookup wire, not house wire, not extension wire, something that can handle kilovolts
• get a smoot metal thing of some desciption to act at the collector and polish it, the more surface area the better
• get a non-conductive pole to mount everything on, the longer the better
• get a ground rod, or something to act like one.

1. Mount the collector at the end of the pole
2. Mount the capacitor near the bottom of the pole
3. Pound in the pole and ground rod in and connect the collector to one side of the capacitor and the ground rod to the other side
4. Use some more wire and nuts to make a spark gap 1/3rd of a cm to act as a safety and allow the circuit to peridically disharge if no other drain is provided.