from "The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla - Biography of a Genius"

by Marc J.Seifer
from NikolaTesla Website
recovered through WayBackMachine Website

1. Please explain Tesla's "Death Ray" machine he spoke

about in the 1930's. Was it a laser or a particle beam
accelerator?
Tesla's work on particle beam weapons can be traced all the way back to 1893
with his invention of a button lamp, and again to 1896 when he replicated the work
of William Roentgen, discoverer of X-rays. At that time, Tesla was "shooting" Xrays over considerable distances, creating photographs of skeletons sometimes
as far away as 40 feet from the source of the gun. Tesla was also involved in
experiments with shooting cathode rays at targets. This and similar work from one
of Tesla's British colleagues, J.J. Thompson, led to the discovery, by Thompson,
of the electron. During that period in the mid-1890's, Tesla conversed often with
Thompson, particularly in the electrical journals.
At about the year 1918, Tesla apparently had a laser-like apparatus that he shot
at the moon. From studying his great 1893 work THE INVENTIONS,
RESEARCHES AND WRITINGS OF NIKOLA TESLA, it is apparent that the
button lamp discussed above had all of the components necessary to create a
laser beam.
This lamp was so constructed so as to place a piece of matter such as carbon, or
a diamond or a ruby, in the center, and bombard this "button" with electrical
energy that would bounce off the button onto the inside of the globe and bounce
back onto the button. If this were a ruby, and Tesla specifically worked with
rubies, then is exactly how a ruby laser is created. Tesla refers in INVENTIONS to
a "pencil-thin" line of light that was created with this device. It is my belief that
Tesla not only invented the ruby laser in 1893, but he also demonstrated it and
published it's results. The problem with the device was that it was set up so as to
"vaporize," or destroy, the button, so that the laser effects were probably shortlived.
However, if we jump ahead to the 1918 story, which was told to me by Coleman
Czito's grandson's wife, it is very possible that Tesla used the same or similar kind
of apparatus to send laser pulses to the moon.
Now, to get to the particle beam weapon, this is an entirely separate invention and
evolved from, all things, a pop gun that he used as a boy. The pop gun works by
pumping air into the barrel and causing the cork to come barreling out. This gun
could be used to shoot targets and small animals, and Tesla discusses this gun in
his autobiography.
What Tesla realized was that a "ray" would not have the energy requirement to be
destructive. Also, even if he had a laser, or laser-like ray, it would still disperse
somewhat, over long distances. So Tesla came to the conclusion that instead of

shooting a ray of light, he would shoot microscopic pellets. The stream could not
disperse because, theoretically, it would be one pellet thick.
After studying the Van de Graaff electrostatic generator, which used a cardboard
belt to generate the high voltages, Tesla came to utilize the same essential set-up
to generate tremendous charges, but he replaced the belt with an ionized stream
of air and then used this electrified stream to "repel" the small pellets which were
made out of tungsten. These pellets were shot out of an open-ended vacuum tube
which was shaped in the form of a cannon.
It is my belief that this device, which
was presented to the International
Tesla Society by the late Dr. Andrija
Puharich at the 1984 Tesla Centennial
Symposium (and published in that
proceedings as, essentially, Tesla's
1937 top secret patent application),
was designed to be as large as the
tower at Wardenclyffe. The shaft,
which could have been as tall as 100
feet, would contain the "belt" of
ionized stream of air.
The round bulbous part of the tower
would continue to circulate the ionized
stream and hold the charge, and out
the top of the tower there would be the
long barrel of the gun. Such a machine, which Tesla tried to sell during World War
II to the United States, England, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, would be able
to shoot down incoming planes at distances of about 300 miles.
Proof that this device was given to the Soviets has been established by such
individuals as Colonel Tom Bearden, who points out that the May 2, 1977 issue of
AVIATION WEEK, displays a picture of a Soviet particle beam weapon, (along
with the accompanying 7000 word article) that is almost a carbon copy of the
picture in Tesla's 1937 patent application, which, as stated above has been
published in the ITS 1984 proceedings.
A question remains as to whether or not Tesla actually constructed a particle
beam weapon. I believe that when looks at this question from a historical
standpoint, we see that he had been working on this and similar devices for over
30 years. Thus, it is my opinion that Tesla did, indeed, construct a working model.
At the age of 81, at a luncheon in his honor, concerning the Death Ray, Tesla
stated,
"But it is not an experiment.... I have built, demonstrated and
used it. Only a little time will pass before I can give it to the
world."

2. Was Tesla actually killed, or did he die of natural causes?

How can we know either way for sure?
Tesla was always a very thin man, and even as far back as the 1890's, he drove

himself to exhaustion on many occasions. In 1893, speaking at the Chicago

World's Fair, the dignitaries attending were so concerned about him that he said
the following:
"A number of scientific men asked a group of electricians to
deliver a lecture. A great many promised that they would come
[but] when the program was sifted down, I was the only healthy
man left, and so I have managed to take some of my apparatus
and give you a brief outline of some of my work."
Katharine Johnson also, on many occasions, worried about Tesla's health and
refusal to eat a substantial meal.
Through the years, Tesla began to give up meat, and eventually some time in the
1930's, he just about gave up solid foods altogether. He drank bowls of warm milk
and a combination potion made from the hearts of numerous vegetables such as
artichokes and celery. He also ate honey.
By the time he was in his 80's he was cadaverously thin. The last published photo
of him when he was 86 is clear that he was close to death. It is such a scary
picture that I have refused to display it at any of the lectures. He is much thinner in
this picture than the famous one taken just a few months before when he met with
his nephew, Sava Kosanovic, ambassador from Yugoslavia, and the exiled King
Peter, of Serbia. It is my belief that Tesla simply died of old age. He was 86. But I
also think that he hastened his death through his anorexic eating style.

3. Did Nikola Tesla cause the explosion in Tunguska,

Siberia in 1908?
According to Tesla's recollection in the Leland Anderson edition of Tesla's
testimony to his lawyer in 1916 (Nikola Tesla and His Work in Alternating
Currents), the tower was used in some fashion until 1907.
However, its larger functions actually became disoperational in 1903 when the
Westinghouse company came in to remove vital equipment. Therefore Tesla did
not have the equipment to create such an explosion five years later. Further,
according to Dr. James Corum, in a recent phone interview, (June 5, 1997), the
tower had the capability of producing only about 300 kilowatts (six times what
many radio stations produce) and delivering 10 kilowatts of power to the opposite
side of the earth.
This would be approximately enough energy to light a light bulb.
A tremendous feat in its own right,
however, nowhere near the amount of
power required to create
the Tunguska explosion. Corum
stated that the problem in transmitting
the kind of tremendous power
required is that the air around the
transmitter breaks down thereby
rendering the machine inoperable.

Recent estimates in the book The Day The Sky Split Apart by Roy Gallant, (1995,
Simon & Schuster), state that the Tunguska explosion created devastation in an
area which approximated the size of Rhode Island, and released energy 2,000
times greater than the atom bomb that was dropped at Hiroshima. (watch video
about Tunguskas Explosion, "click" HERE).
According to Corum, it would be essentially impossible to transmit energy to
achieve this result.
However, Corum went on, if Tesla had the capability to release merely 1% of the
earth's magnetic charge, that could create the amount of energy to achieve a
Tunguska-like explosion. He did not think that Tesla did this, however.
Photos taken from the site of the Siberian explosion reveal numerous
trees flattened, much like the trees looked after the volcanic eruption
of Mt. St. Helens, which occurred recently in Washington. I do not
believe that Tesla had the technology or the inclination to use
Wardenclyffe to deliver the kind of energy necessary to create such a
disaster.
Tesla certainly discussed the idea of using a Wardenclyffe like tower
to shoot down incoming aircraft, via a particle beam weapon, and as a
completely separate concept, he also discussed the idea of creating
earthquakes, which could be engendered in a variety of ways, e.g., by
bringing buildings down by placing oscillators on their main support beams, or by
setting off gigantic dynamite charges timed to a resonant earth frequency.
So where did the idea that Tesla caused the explosion in Tunguska originate?
(His name is not mentioned in the highly credible Gallant book.)
The answer is probably threefold:
1. through Tesla's own writings whereby he says on May 3,
1907, in the New York World, just one year before the
Tunguska explosion, that his "magnifying transmitter" has
already produced 25 million horse power, and that "a
similar and much improved machine now under
construction, will make it possible to attain maximum
explosive rates of over 800 million horse power." Tesla
also states in this article and in an article the following
year in Wireless Telegraphy & Telephone, 1908, pp. 6771, that he will be able to direct electrical energy "with
great precision" to any point of the globe
2. through Col. Tom Bearden's writings and through the
speculations of Bearden's associate
3. through the statements of the late Dr. Andrija Puharich. It
is Bearden's contention that a so called "Tesla wave"
disturbs the very fabric of space-time. Therefore, it could,
potentially, create an instantaneous disaster at some
distant point. Bearden has also suggested that the
Russians during the cold war, experimented along these
lines. Realistically, I would think that it would still be
highly unlikely for such a weapon to presently exist.

Rather, a large Wardenclyffe type tower might be able to

disrupt the electrical grid at some prescribed target
causing a blackout, or some similar phenomena. And
even that technology is probably still decades or
generations away
Bearden, however, is not alone in these kind of speculations. A September 14,
1973 article in Nature by A.A. Jackson and M.P. Ryan speculates that the
Tunguska event might have been due the earth's interaction with a mini black
hole.
Influenced by Bearden's writings and similar theories, and also influenced by
Tesla's own assertion that a Wardenclyffe like tower could be used as a death ray,
apparently Puharich was the first to suggest that Tesla caused the Tunguska
explosion. At least, that is the contention of Tad Wise, author of the recent
novelized Tesla biography.
Wise told me last year, that he was greatly intrigued by Puharich's suggestion and
therefore placed it in his Tesla book. As Wise's book is part fiction, this was
completely acceptable. However, it was taken as fact, particularly when Wise had
the same story aired on FOX TV on a show on Tesla. See also, Oliver Nichelson
quoted in The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla by D.H. Childress, pp. 255257.
It is my belief that the explosion at Tunguska was probably caused by a meteor or
small comet. This view takes into account the eye-witness reports by local
tribesmen of a fiery object with a long tail hitting or passing by the area in June of
1908. In 1986, Louis Frank from the University of Iowa, theorized that the oceans
that make up the planet were caused by comets that bombard the earth over tens
of millions of years. Comets are mostly ice, and they would melt when entering
the earth's atmosphere. Although the theory was initially laughed at, according to
the June 9, 1997 issue of US News & World Report, NASA has been able to
photograph "between five and 30 comets [some as large as a house] hitting the
upper atmosphere every minute." They then break up and eventually reach the
earth as rain.
Nickolai Vasiliev, in his introduction to the Gallant book, hypothesizes that the
Tunguska comet, actually skipped along the atmosphere like a rock on a lake,
which created an explosion two or three miles above ground, and that the object
never actually hit the earth. He notes that in 1989, an asteroid traveling at 40,000
mph, missed the earth by a mere four hundred thousand miles.
The moon is 240,000 miles from the earth. As no meteor or comet fragment has
been found at the Tunguska site, Vasiliev's theory holds merit, although it may
have been an asteroid instead of a comet.

4. I have heard that Tesla was working on the Philadelphia

Experiment. To what extent did he participate?
As you probably know, there is a lot of controversy about the Philadelphia
Experiment, and what really occurred. There is one theory that an entire ship was
made to disappear and then reappear someplace else.

One explanation is that this was done by dematerializing and then rematerializing
the ship. A more likely scenario is that the ship disappeared on the radar screen
and then reappeared later. This can be done in a variety of ways, by either
creating a special electrical field that is hard to detect, or by making the skin of the
ship out of some material, such as Kevlar, which is a polyurethane fiber that
absorbs the electromagnetic energy thereby preventing the radar beams from
bouncing off the hull, and thus giving the position of the ship away. The stealth
bomber has a skin made up of a compound that absorbs radar beams.
Tesla's link to the Philadelphia Experiment is often tied to his supposed
association with Albert Einstein. I have completed an exhaustive study of Tesla's
relationship to Albert Einstein and found out that there is no correspondence
between them other than the famous letter Einstein sent to Tesla on Tesla's 75th
birthday. There are no letters in either the Tesla Museum in Belgrade or the
Einstein archives which are in Israel at the University of Jerusalem.
Tesla has been linked to Einstein because of a famous photo which was taken on
April 23, 1921 in New Brunswick, New Jersey in celebration of a new RCA
transatlantic broadcasting station that was being put in operation. Present at the
event were scientists and corporate heads from RCA, GE and AT&T including
Charles Steinmetz, Irving Langmuir, David Sarnoff and Albert Einstein. Standing
in between Steinmetz and Einstein was a man who resembled Nikola Tesla. I,
myself, thought it was Tesla, and wrote an article which included this assumption
for the 1986 ITS Symposium. Margaret Cheney and also R.G. Williams in their
respective biographies also did the same thing.
After conferring with Leland Anderson and searching back to original sources
which included the an article in the New York Herald, and the original caption for
the photo, it has been determined that the man standing between Einsten and
Steinmetz was one John Carson, who was an engineer for AT&T. This photo has
also been doctored to air-brush out all individuals except for Einstein and
Steinmetz by the GE people who use it to imply a special relationship between
Steinmetz and Einstein.
The real reason why Einstein wrote Tesla was because of Kenneth Swezey, who
was helping care for Tesla in the 1920's, 30's and early 40's, and who was writing
a series of articles on the great inventor. Swezey had befriended Einsten in the
early 1920's after writing a treatise on relativity, and Einsten essentially wrote the
letter as a favor to Swezey. Please also see my recent article Taking on Einstein
in the Jan/Feb/March issue of Extraordinary Science.
So Tesla never really had a personal relationship with Einstein, nor is it likely that
he worked on the Philadelphia Experiment. Tesla, however, did work on radar
inventions about 1903 and later around the time of WWI, which were outcroppings
from his work at Wardenclyffe.

5. Did Tesla ever marry or have a serious relationship which

may have precluded marriage?
In the mid 1920's, Tesla told Dragislav Petkovich, a Serbian reporter for Politika
(Beograd, April 27, 1927), that he had never touched a woman, but that he had
also fallen in love once in his life while he was student. The girl's name was
apparently Anna, and Tesla probably met her in Gospic on one of his trips back to

his home town. Tesla kept in touch with Anna, and she eventually had a son who
Tesla looked after when he came to New York City at the turn of the century.
Unfortunately, this boy was interested in boxing, and died in his first boxing match.
Later, of course, Tesla was captivated by a number of women such as playwright
and musical composer Marguerite Merrington (who never married) and also
Robert Johnson's wife Katharine. Tesla essentially took a vow of celibacy
because he had devoted himself to science and felt that he would not have the
time to pursue his interests if he had a wife and family to care for. Tesla was also
friendly with many other women, many of whom were married to wealthy
financiers. These included Anne Morgan (who never married), daughter of J.
Pierpont Morgan, Ava Astor, wife of John Jacob Astor, and Mrs. Corine Robinson,
who was Teddy Roosevelt's sister.
Tesla's sexuality, however, has always remained a mystery. Margaret Cheney
suggests in her biography that Tesla may have been a homosexual, and this is
repeated in Paul Baker's book on Stanford White. I have discovered no evidence
to support this theory. I believe, essentially, that Tesla was more interested in
inventing than in complicated heterosexual liaisons. Later in life he showered his
affection on the city pigeons, and clearly transferred some of his romantic
inclinations onto one particular white pigeon with brown tipped wings, which he
told John O'Neill that he loved like a man would love a women.
Tesla was also influenced by such Buddhists as Swami Vivekananda, and thus
believed that if he could transform his sexual energy through celibacy, he would
raise his brain output to a higher level. A strong proponent of self-denial, and,
essentially a spiritual man, it is likely that much of his passion was simply
redirected into his work.

6. How did Tesla handle adverse situations like losing his

financing for the Wardenclyffe project.
As discussed in my article on Wardenclyffe in the last issue of Extraordinary
Science, (April/May/June 1996), Tesla lost his financing for Wardenclyffe because
he ran out of money, in part, because he decided to build a larger tower than was
contracted for with J.Pierpont Morgan. Tesla's first major falling out with Morgan
occurred in August of 1901, shortly after Morgan's return from Europe, and this
was during the Wall Street Panic of 1901.
A few months later, Marconi sent the first ever recorded transatlantic message,
and was thereby perceived as the new king of wireless. Tesla tried to interest
such financiers as Thomas Fortune Ryan (corporate head), Jacob Schiff (stock
broker), Henry Clay Frick (Andrew Carnegie's former partner) or Col. Oliver Payne
(John D. Rockefeller's partner), in helping put in the additional funding, but
Morgan blocked all efforts.
Essentially, Morgan feared that a new wireless system of power distribution might
threaten such companies that he had control over as General Electric or AT & T.
After the last possible deal was squashed by
Morgan in 1906, I have hypothesized that
Tesla suffered an emotional collapse. For

about 6 months, Tesla was incapacitated, but in 1907-08 he began to form a new
plan to resurrect the ailing world telegraphy enterprise.
He would invent a highly efficient steam turbine to replace the gasoline engine in
the automobile. Profits, if realized, would have been in the neighborhood of a
hundred million dollars. Thus began Tesla's work on the bladeless turbine and
also the reverse of this invention which was a bladeless pump.
As with any new invention, it takes many years of hard work to perfect it. For
instance, Tesla invented his AC polyphase system in 1883, but it was not
successfully demonstrated on any large scale until 1891 when C.E.L. Brown and
Michael Dobrolowsky used it to transmit energy over 100 miles from Lauffen to
Frankfurt Germany. Two years later it was displayed at the Chicago World's Fair,
and two years after that it was put in at Niagara Falls.
So it took at least 10 years to get it to the point where it could truly be ready for
market. (A modern example of a long delay would be the Concorde plane which
flies at Mach II. This plane was designed in the mid-1950's but did not get off the
ground for nearly a quarter of a century.)
Tesla worked on various forms of his bladeless turbine from about 1910-1913 with
John Hayes Hammond Jr. at Thomas Edison's Warterside station in New York.
As World War I began, Tesla was sidetracked from this endeavor in part because of legal disputes
with Marconi over the invention of the wireless, and in part because he was helping Telefunken, the
German concern, perfect their wireless transmitters which were put in at Tuckertown New Jersey
and Sayville, Long Island, New York. In 1917, after Wardenclyffe was destroyed, Tesla moved to
Chicago to work for Pyle National to again work on the turbine, and then on to Milwaukee from
1919-1922 for Allis Chalmers, and finally to Philadelphia, from 1925-1926 where he worked for
Budd National.
Thus, it is clear that Tesla put in 18 years of intense effort to perfect the bladeless turbine as he
negotiated with Japan and Germany before WWI to place the turbines in torpedoes and tanks, and
then later with ship building and airplane companies and also Ford and General Motors. The
turbine, however, never reached the state of perfection that was required for them to scrap their
existing engines and replace them with his. Thus, he never received large amounts of
compensation for the engine, although he did recoup in the neighborhood of $50,000 from Pyle
National, Allis Chalmers and Budd National for work completed.
Tesla's goal was initially to resurrect Wardenclyffe by paying off his debts, and then to build a new,
and more efficient Wardenclyffe in the 1920's or 1930's, but he never received the great funds