A Tesla coil was a power source that pulled electricity from a planet’s magnetic field. Rarely used on core worlds, many colonies still in agrarian phases used them to power mining operations. Even then, populations preferred to use solar, wind, fusion, or combustibles for smaller scale energy production.
The coils derived their design from principles discovered by Nikola Tesla, a pre-World War and early World War Era physicist and inventor who built similar devices for other purposes. The advent of internal combustion engines and long-term storage batteries rendered Tesla coil research moribund for almost a century after Tesla’s death in the 1930s AD. However, just prior to the Interstellar Era, research outposts above Jupiter and Saturn offered opportunities to test the technology for power generation, given the gas giants’ powerful magnetic fields.
On Amargosa, Tesla coils were used to power the smaller mines surrounding the Founders' Mine north of the Townships.
Appearances: The Children of Amargosa