Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical and mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen.

Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.

On January 7 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the Hotel New Yorker, in the neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. His body was found by maid Alice Monaghan when she entered Tesla’s room, ignoring the “do not disturb” sign that Tesla had placed on his door two days earlier. Assistant medical examiner H.W. Wembley examined the body and ruled that the cause of death had been coronary thrombosis (a type of heart attack).

Two days later the Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered the property custodian to seize Tesla’s belongings. John G. Trump, a professor at M.I.T. and a well-known electrical engineer serving as a technical aide to the National Defense Research Committee, was called in to analyze the Tesla items. After a three-day investigation, Trump’s report concluded that there was nothing which would constitute a hazard in unfriendly hands, stating: «His thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results».

This is the official version, which has been disseminated to the mass media and public opinion. A version that many have never believed.

Tesla’s work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the International System of Units (SI) measurement of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.

Beyond these brief biographical information, we can say that Nikola Tesla was an extraordinary scientific genius, a precursor, a modern Leonardo Da Vinci. Many argue that a large part of his inventions have been classified by the US government for understandable economic and military reasons.

The name of Nikola Tesla has now entered into legend and has become synonymous with “scientific revolution”, “free energy” and “future”.

Nikola Tesla, in his studies and research, has also dealt with the extraterrestrial issue and life on other planets. On February 19, 1901 he published the short essay Talking with Planets in Collier’s Weekly magazine, an essay that today we re-propose to modern readers.