Born during a particularly violent electrical storm in 1856, Tesla became a fierce genius touched by a deeply poetic sensibility. At his zenith, he counted among his many friends and supporters Mark Twain, John Jacob Astor, JP Morgan, and George Westinghouse. Yet when he died in 1943, he was destitute and in the company of only his pet pigeons.

Tesla foresaw the power of the new electric medium in the coming century better than anyone of his era. By the early 1900s, Tesla had received patents on over one hundred of his inventions and developed countless more after it became financially impossible for him to continue the patenting process. His inventions include the induction motor, AC power, vacuum tubes, radar, Tesla Coil, the loudspeaker, x-rays, radio (swiped by Marconi after Tesla publicly demonstrated his new invention), the rotary engine, radio wave propagation, wireless communication, remote control, and robotics. In short, Tesla invented the technological backbone of the Twentieth century.

Being a megalomaniac and a lousy businessman did little to endear Tesla to his benefactors, and some of his grandest plans went unrealized when financing was withdrawn. Unfortunately for the world, this would be the case through much of his later career - exceptional innovation denied due to corporate interests.

In 1900, Tesla discovered a method of harnessing energy from anywhere on the planet using Earth's natural electromagnetic waves - a breakthrough that went unexploited when financier JP Morgan realized there was no profit to be made from unlimited free energy.

Despite his enormous contribution to our civilization, Tesla remains a virtual non-person in corporate and academic America-having been passed over historically in favor of his rivals Edison and Marconi. How did this happen?

It is well documented that after his death in 1943, the FBI was actively involved in suppressing many of Tesla's documents, including plans for a 'death-ray' weapon capable of destroying aircraft, and electromagnetic earthquake-inducing machine. The latter machine had proved so powerful, that during its testing phase Tesla destroyed it with a sledgehammer to keep it's vibrations from destroying his entire neighborhood.

Besides the US government, Tesla's weapons research has attracted the attention of numerous other governments, new-age groups, and, a bit more ominously, cult groups such as Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth; now known simply as Aleph) - whose high-ranking members traveled to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade in 1992 to conduct research on his weapons experiments, including the electromagnetic oscillator.