Geometric One-Way Structures Before Tesla: The Technological Context of the Valvular Conduit

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Publication Details

Journal
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
Published
2026-09-20
DOI
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22850547
Primary Topic
History of Computing Technologies
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Geometric One-Way Structures Before Tesla: The Technological Context of the Valvular Conduit

Péter Seprűs
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
History of Computing Technologies
article

Geometric One-Way Structures Before Tesla: The Technological Context of the Valvular Conduit

Péter Seprűs
article en

Abstract

The prosecution file of Nikola Tesla's Valvular Conduit patent (US 1,329,559, filed 21 February 1916, granted 3 February 1920) records that on 25 November 1916 the US Patent Office rejected all claims on Swiss patent CH 18298 (Frederick Edwards, London, filed 22 November 1898, "Pumpe"), a pump exploiting direction-dependent resistance produced by fixed geometry. The same file records Tesla's responsive amendment of 23 November 1917, which introduced into his specification the acknowledgment that "asymmetrical conduits have been constructed and their use proposed in connection with engines." This prior-art history is thus a matter of record, though it is seldom noted in modern accounts of the valve. Taking it as an anchor, this note formulates a broader, explicitly unproven hypothesis about the atmosphere in which the valve may have been conceived: that geometric one-way structures were already present in several mutually independent traditions before 1916 — engineered pumps and conduits on one side, and traditional European fish-trapping structures, whose leading walls, funnel entrances, and chambered labyrinths present the same funneled, return-hindering geometry, on the other — and that these together formed the conceptual environment of Tesla's design. The proposed mechanism is one Tesla himself documented: his writings habitually credit concrete stimuli for his inventions (a sparking Gramme dynamo, Crookes's book on radiant matter, a boyhood avalanche) and generalize that "every thought I conceived was suggested by an external impression." His published recollections nowhere discuss the origin of the valve itself; the hypothesis therefore rests on context, not testimony. The evidence for each claim is graded, confirmation and falsification criteria are stated, and a concrete research program is proposed, centered on reconstructing the antecedents and patent family of CH 18298.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
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History of Computing Technologies
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