In the year 1894, in New York City, the privileged and powerful were granted access to one of the most exclusive nightspots in town. On a busy street, on the first floor of a very large building, famous inventors, actors, kings and queens, and even humorist Mark Twain would meet to witness the fantastic wonder that was Nikola Tesla’s lab. Inside the lab were all sorts of high-tech gizmos and electric wonders, the likes of which could be seen nowhere else in the world. Extremely powerful AC generators were left running at all times, surrounding the entire room in a rich magnetic field which allowed for all manner of stunning and magnificent feats to be preformed. A favorite of visitors was to hold a large ring with an incandescent lamp suspended from a string in the gap of the ring. When an electric signal was fired, the electricity traveled through the person’s body and completed the circuit, thus illuminating the lamp. But the fantastic sights did not end there. One of Tesla’s personal favorites was to fence an invisible opponent with his “light saber”, a long tube-like sword that would illuminate within the magnetic field. Twain was so smitten with the inventor they could not help but become instant friends. Tesla’s little parties were becoming quite the talk of the town and his important and powerful patrons attracted investors for the distinguished inventor. The sky seemed like the limit for Nikola Tesla, until disaster struck.

    At 2:30 A.M. on March 13, 1895, the modern world suffered a massive loss. A raging fire broke out at a building on South Fifth Avenue, the same building that contained Tesla’s miraculous lab. Tesla’s wonderful inventions, and much of his life’s, work were reduced to little more than rubble. One cannot help but wonder what ingenious devices were lost to the flame. Tesla was devastated. He wandered the streets of the city, talking to no one and lost in a daze. When he finally returned to his hotel, he did not leave again for three days. Although he had lost his most precious works, his mind was by far the most valuable possession he owned, and an opportunity to use his marvelous gifts was just around the corner.

    Just before 1890, the distraught inventor was approached by a man who had very large plans for Tesla and his genius. Edward Dean Adams was the president of the Cataract Construction Company of Niagara Falls, at the time, and he offered Tesla a challenge that was right up his alley. Adams propositioned Tesla to design, build, and put into effect a system that would harness the very power of the falls themselves and convert it into electricity. Tesla was intrigued. No one, at the time, could have possibly imagined a system like the one proposed, but Tesla was happy to try to exceed the limits of people’s imaginations. Working closely with his former investor George Westinghouse, Tesla’s AC generators were constructed on a larger scale than ever before.

    It took years to plan and execute the entire process. So long, in fact, that many investors began to worry they had backed the wrong horse. After all, these were merely theories and though it was agreed the process of harnessing the mighty falls was indeed possible, it was only on paper. To calm the backers, many investors were invited to the Westinghouse factory floor where the first of many giant AC motors was completed, ahead of schedule. Tesla was ever diligent:

“There is no obstacle in the way of the successful transmission of power from the big power house you have here. The problem has been solved. Power can be transmitted to Buffalo as soon as the Power Company is ready to do it.”

    Some skeptics remained, but their doubts were squashed when at 12:00 AM on November 16, 1896, a switch was thrown and the city of Buffalo, New York received power for the first time. Tesla’s enormous contribution was commemorated with a handsome statue of the inventor to mark his significance, which resides near Niagara Falls, even today.

    The harnessing of the raw power of the falls was a dream of Tesla’s from an early age. Now fulfilled, he began to look towards new and greater prospects when an unexpected turn of events befell him. His good friend and financial supporter, George Westinghouse, approached the inventor in a state of panic. It seemed business tycoon J.P. Morgan had his eyes fixed on owning Tesla’s patents, which Westinghouse controlled, and through stock market manipulation, Morgan had Westinghouse lined up for the kill and was ready to make his move. Due to the financial strain this battle was causing Westinghouse, he sadly informed Tesla that he would not be able to pay him the handsome royalties he was contracted, and so rightly deserved, if he was to keep his company from the hands of Morgan. In an unprecedented gesture of gratitude, Tesla ripped up the contract before his friends very eyes, saving the company of the man who first believed in him.

    If I was to walk into any classroom in America and ask the teacher, “Who invented the radio?” the answer would undoubtedly be Marchese Marconi. After all, this is what we are all taught because this is how the history books read. The sad truth is that the history books are mistaken. The truth is that the incredible mind that brought us alternating current, the Tesla coil, and the harnessing of the power of Niagara Falls for man’s electrical needs, also gave us the technology we now know as radio. The radio that Tesla invented, however, is not the same one we use today. A radio is described as “two tuned circuits each at the transmitter and receiver, all four tuned to the same frequency,” and Tesla had indeed invented a device, before the turn of the century that met this description. He had also filed a patent for it, which was awarded to him in 1897.

    When, in the year 1900, Italian inventor Marconi applied at the American Patent Office for patents on his devices, which could send a wireless signal from a transmitter to a receiver over short distances, his applications were rejected on the grounds that they too closely resembled the devices Tesla already had patented. They went on to say that, Marconi’s devices wrongfully utilized Tesla’s previous inventions while making no effort to give credit to their inventor. Marconi was beaten but not defeated. With very powerful investors behind him, (such as Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan) Marconi soon had successful radio companies in both Europe and the U.S. With his stock climbing steadily by the day, the inventor was able to further his research and experiments and soon had a working system, which sent the first wireless radio signal across the Atlantic Ocean. His accomplishment was considered one of the most important breakthroughs of the time. When Tesla was made aware of Marconi’s success, he was at first humble. The lanky inventor stated that Marconi was a “good fellow” and that he need not be threatened for Marconi’s triumph would not be possible if it were not for the seventeen of Tesla’s patents that Marconi had utilized. No one could have anticipated what would happen next.

    In a bizarre and uncalled for turn of events, the U.S. patent office suddenly reversed their previous decision, and awarded the patent for the invention of the radio to Marconi. While no reason has ever been given, it is suspected that it was the substantial dollar amount that Marconi and his company represented that won him the favor. The repercussions of this decision in the annals of history have, even today, not been mended. More curious, however, is how this error on the books continued in popular history despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to return the patent to its rightful owner, Nikola Tesla, in 1943. Tesla never knew of his eventual victory though, as the decision was made mere months after his death. Despite never having known of the reversed decision, Tesla was confident in his accomplishments; he was once asked in an interview, at the age of seventy-one, how he felt about the “War of the Radio”. This was his reply:

“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his own work and accomplishments. The present is theirs, the future for which I really worked, is mine.”

    Tesla became more and more the eccentric as his peculiarities began to get the best of him. His increasingly reclusive nature made him difficult to understand and he was beginning to fade away in the public’s eye. He continued his research, usually alone or with his one trusted assistant, and soon relocated to the high altitudes of Colorado Springs to conduct his strange experiments utilizing the unique weather patterns of the area. (Those who remember Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige will take note of this part of his life as is portrayed in the film.) It was here that Tesla was witness to strange phenomena, some of which are still unexplained today. Pushing his work with high voltage currents further than ever before, Tesla accidently created what is known as “ball lightning” a mysterious electrical phenomenon in which spherical balls of light will dart around a charged area for a short while. These balls will explode with considerable force if something stops their path, yet they have also been observed passing through solid matter, such as glass.

    Another shocking phenomenon was reported in Tesla’s personal diary when a series of tuned measuring instruments began to pick up very low frequency electric waves, which seemed to form a rhythmic pattern, much like the sound of a code. Tesla was shocked and theorized that he may very well be picking up some frequency code sent from another planet. While it is highly unlikely that there was alien work at hand, modern physicists theorize that with the types of instruments Tesla was using it is not unlikely that he was picking up the rhythmic, low frequency waves given off by the planets of our solar system. We now hear these frequencies on radio telescopes every day, and if that was indeed what Tesla mistakenly picked up, it would make him the first human being to ever “hear” a planet speak.

    Tesla traveled to Colorado with high ambitions of wireless energy transmission and there has been continued controversy over his success. Some documents maintain that he was able to send extremely high voltages, through the earth, lighting lamps placed in the ground miles from the source of power, much like the scene depicted in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Although there are records that indicate this experiment succeeded, no one can figure out how this was achieved, nor has anyone been able to recreate the experiment since. Truly, Tesla held an understanding and mastery of electricity the likes of which we’ve rarely seen since.

    At first, thrilled that such a distinguished gentleman was in their presence, the people of the Colorado town Tesla chose were soon regretting opening him with such welcome arms. Tesla, convinced there was more to his, now famous, Tesla coil than even he realized, attempted to create artificial lightning with a bizarre combination of very large Tesla coils. The inventor came dressed for the occasion in full tuxedo and derby hat. His shoes were specially made with four-inch soles of cork, to avoid the risk of electrocution. The switch was flipped and Tesla became the first man to truly master lightning. Huge arcs of electrical discharges shot out from his lab, some over a hundred feet in length. Tesla was happy with his results until suddenly the power in his lab was lost. He had succeeded in overpowering the generators that supplied the town’s power, which resulted in a black out that lasted more than a week.

    Despite the magical events of his Colorado trip, no official data exists to support that his time spent there was a success. He returned to New York with nothing but the knowledge he gained from his experiments, which died with him. Thus, it would continue for Nikola Tesla for the remainder of his life.

    By 1900 Tesla had gathered his strange findings and was ready to prove to the world, once again, that he alone held the secrets of electricity of which all men would prosper from. His financier, this time, came as quite a surprise, even to him. Industrial tycoon, J.P. Morgan showed interest in Tesla’s theories regarding wireless communication. Through various interviews and publications, Tesla theorized that with the proper funding he would be able to create a central hub that would serve as command center for a host of wireless communication possibilities. The list of services to be offered included: secure channels for military use, foreign stock exchange updates, all manner of business and personal messages, and even a service to promote the exchange of music for commercial and personal use. With so much to offer, Morgan was helpless but to jump at the chance. A little piece of land in Long Island was purchased and, with the help from a few friends, construction of Tesla’s miraculous Wardenclyffe tower was under way.

    By far the most peculiar project Tesla had embarked upon, Wardenclyffe was a mystery to everyone except Tesla himself. Little was revealed as to what precisely his plan was, a mystery that eludes scientists even today. What was known was that near its completion, Wardenclyffe was a massive 187-foot wooden tower with a strange sphere-like protrusion and its peak. Inside the tower, an enormous rod ran 120 feet into the earth, with another 300 feet of pipe reaching down further. Near the tower was a rectangular building, which served as the powerhouse for the tower. Day after day, Tesla would send for things to be brought, by train, from his lab in New York to the worksite. The project was extremely time consuming and Tesla was known to go more than three days without sleep. To make matters worse, the cost of building the tower was substantial, with no clear end in sight.

    After Marconi’s successful radio transmission across the Atlantic, Morgan saw little need for a bulky and expensive tower. He pulled the plug on a project he helped begin and Tesla was left high and dry. Convinced his precious tower could outperform most any machine in the modern world, Tesla sought the aid of many distinguished investors and friends, but to no avail. With a substantial hotel bill ranging in the hundreds of thousands, (Tesla lived nearly his whole American life in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel) Tesla had little choice but to hand over the only thing of value he owned to pay off his debt: the deed to the land on which Wardenclyffe stood.

    Much like burning of his lab, another potential wonder of the world was lost when the owner of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel demolished the Wardenclyffe tower to utilize the land for other buildings. Tesla’s great vision was destroyed by the bickering of shortsighted men, driven by profit. With the non-completion of his much-publicized Wardenclyffe, rumors spread that Tesla had already given humanity all he had to offer.

    Nikola Tesla continued to live out his life in New York City, always on the verge of financial ruin. He was never married, and as he grew old he was known to be found in parks feeding pigeons, some of which he took back to his hotel to care for. His name was not front-page news anymore, but he continued to make the press here and there, with all manner of stunning and marvelous concepts of devices, which would bring about the end of war, or free energy for all, and other such claims. He continued to file patents for the occasional device, some of which were granted, such as the new, very compact motor he had invented which could reach revolutions unheard of for a motor that size. But gone were the days of fabulous parties with famous actors, inventors, and kings and queens. His achievements were acknowledged periodically over the course of his life and he was awarded with many medals, certificates, and honors, none of which he held in higher regard than that of his American citizenship.

    On the night of January 7, 1943, in the Hotel New Yorker, the Master of Lightning, Nikola Tesla died. He was eighty-six years old. A man, who in his lifetime accomplished more than most of us care to dream, passed from this world with little more to his name than can fit in a hotel room. Among Tesla’s meager belongings was a safe, which contained a treasure of notes, blueprints, drawings, and scribbles, outlining the plans and ideas for fabulous and groundbreaking inventions that could change the way we all live. These treasures were lost to us, however, as before Tesla’s body was discovered, someone was able to break into the safe and steal most all of his work. Suspicious looking men were seen in the area in the days preceding his death, and it has been suggested that the FBI was involved due to the possibility that his notes may have contained some strange secret, which could be used against the US government. The FBI has declassified a number of pages of Tesla’s notes since, which seems to suggest it was indeed the government who raided his safe.

    It is an absolute atrocity that a man, so monumentally important to the history of this country, so incredibly gifted and insightful, remains relatively unheard of in popular discussion and teaching. A man twice as intelligent and crafty as Thomas Edison, three times more inventive and important than Marconi, and one who was richer in thought than the richest and most powerful men of even today, needs to be remembered by us all. Tesla could not have been more right when he said that the future, for which he worked for, belongs to him. The world as we know it today would not exist if not for the trials and tribulations of one of the greatest minds our species has ever known. His goal was never money. He sought not to be famous, but rather to aid his fellow man with all manner of electric devices to ease and comfort our lives. The name Tesla is not synonymous with the radio, alternating current electricity, remote controlled devices, or most all of the other miracles of science that came from Tesla’s mind. But since Tesla was a man so ahead of his time we struggle to catch up to his genius, even today, my hope is that in due time the future for which we all work will belong to him, and that the test of time will prove that he was indeed the Master of Lightning.