Nikola Tesla

Although a great deal has been written about the Serbian genius Nikola Tesla, a lot of it has been rather questionable. Accuracy of even that which was written during his lifetime has frequently been sacrificed for hype. It is my plan to produce a more accurate picture of an incredible man over the next months, or even years. One of the problems facing the historian is that Tesla committed very little to paper, and so we have to work from what are described as secondary sources a great deal. Most of the papers that do exist are held at the Tesla Museum in Belgrade. Some information, but very little, may be found in the files held by the FBI.

One of the biggest problems for the Tesla enthusiast was the publication, by John J. O'Neill's Prodigal Genius: the Life of Nikola Tesla. Unfortunately a great deal that has been published since has been uncritically repeated from this work. O'Neill's book is not without merit, but historical accuracy was subjugated to hype. For example, despite having been informed to the contrary by the FBI, O'Neill claimed that the FBI had seized Tesla's papers following his death. The papers, both those left in the safe in his hotel room, and those deposited with other materials in a storage facility in Manhattan, were in fact impounded by the Custodian of Alien Property Office of the Department of Justice. Some of these papers were later handed over to the Yugoslav government after WWII. It has also been suggested that some papers, or copies of them, were passed to a special research facility at Wright Patterson AFB. For a discussion on this and other details of FBI involvement take a look at the FBI files.