power - Can you harvest electrical energy from the air?

I found a website recently about harvesting energy from the air, and I am wondering if someone could tell me why the following wouldn't work?

Their "generator" is supposed to make electricity from the ionosphere (not UV, X-Ray, etc). Some claim it can knock out your electric bill totally (a bigger version, not this example). From what I understand, this is possible (it was discovered by Nikola Tesla), however this diagram doesn't look like it would work. Any help would be appreciated.

An example from the website:

You need:

• (4) 1N34 germanium diodes


• (2) 100 µF 50 V electrolytic capacitors



• 0.2 µF 50 V ceramic capacitors

Here is the electrical diagram they provide:

And they claimed to power a cell phone with it. I am not sure what kind of antenna to use.

While this seems like a sham, I just found this website recently and am looking for more info on the physics behind it.

Perhaps Teslo's patent explains things better, so here it is: Patent 685958.pdf

Found something: Here is a page that explains it. Nikola Tesla free energy: unraveling Greatest Secret

Answer

To address the original question of "Is Nikola Tesla's free energy discovery...", Tesla never created a "free energy device". One of his noted ideas, however, was a system to intentionally transmit power wirelessly. Power companies don't intentionally radiate energy (as it's a pure loss for them).

As an aside, Nikola Tesla was one of the first true electrical engineers, taking arcane, hard-to-understand forces and turning them into marketable solutions. While there is no doubt he was brilliant, this revolutionary engineer would quickly tell you that if you wanted to harvest naturally occurring electrical fields (not those he intentionally radiated) it would take an antenna (or an array of them) on a truly grand scale.

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Regarding the document you linked:

Chapter 4 - Tesla's Radiant Energy Device

This chapter discusses a patent by Tesla which discusses using either the photoelectric effect via "ultra-violet light [...] and Roentgen rays [X-rays]" to generate a positive charge by ejecting electrons, or cathodic rays to capture electrons and generate a negative charge.

While you might be able to use the photoelectric effect from solar UV on metals, with great care, you are going to derive an extraordinary small current, certainly far less than you would get with a photovoltaic (solar) cell. PV cells use the photoelectric effect, but within a semiconductor.

Chapter 5 - The Tesla Coil

Tesla coils are essentially antennas that can radiate and receive a great deal of power. In order to actually capture an appreciable amount, much, much more must be broadcast on the particular wavelength that the coil is tuned to. Because they are tuned, they cannot capture broadband noise