The Tesla Record
What the documents say about Nikola Tesla, and where the popular account departs from them.
https://teslainfo.org/
2026-10-05T12:00:00Z
The Tesla Recordhttps://teslainfo.org/
© 2026 The Tesla Record
The Tesla Record
What Tesla announced in 1934 was a gun
https://teslainfo.org/tesla-death-ray-1934/
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He described charged metal dust fired from an open-ended tube, said in print that a ray was impossible — and the word that stuck came from a wire-service headline.
Did Tesla invent alternating current?
https://teslainfo.org/did-tesla-invent-alternating-current/
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He did not, and the thing he did invent is more interesting than the thing he is credited with.
The Supreme Court did not rule that Tesla invented radio
https://teslainfo.org/marconi-v-united-states-1943/
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It held the broad claims of Marconi's tuning patent invalid, and the prior art that killed them was mostly somebody else's.
Quotes Nikola Tesla never said
https://teslainfo.org/quotes-nikola-tesla-never-said/
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The most repeated line attributed to him is in none of his writings — and the two passages that sound most like forgeries are real, with an issue and a page.
The boat that obeyed him
https://teslainfo.org/teslas-remote-control-boat-1898/
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US 613,809, filed 1 July 1898 and granted 8 November 1898, describes a boat steered without wires, and the mechanism that made one impulse mean six different things.
The war of the currents was an argument about copper
https://teslainfo.org/the-war-of-the-currents/
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Edison was not fighting Tesla. He was fighting a rival company, over the price of transmission and how far a central station could reach.
What the tower at Shoreham was for
https://teslainfo.org/wardenclyffe-what-the-tower-was-for/
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The contract J. P. Morgan signed in March 1901 bought transatlantic wireless telegraphy, and the plant that ran the tower burned coal.
What a Tesla coil actually does
https://teslainfo.org/what-a-tesla-coil-does/
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Two tuned circuits, energy passing between them, and a voltage that climbs because the circuits agree on a frequency. It was never a way to distribute power.
Wireless power, and why “free energy” is not what he was selling
https://teslainfo.org/what-tesla-actually-proposed-wireless-power/
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He proposed a way to move energy, never a way to make it — and the way he proposed does not work.