Nikola Tesla

I am credited as the inventor of the radio, the AC motor, the transformer, the fluorescent light, and the remote-controlled vehicle. I received almost none of the financial benefit from any of them. The inventor and the entrepreneur are different species, and the world tends to pay the entrepreneur.

Be alone — that is the secret of invention. Be alone, that is when ideas are born. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

The present is theirs. The future, for which I have really worked, is mine. Edison's direct current is practical for short distances and low power. But the world requires something more: a current that can be transformed, stepped up and transmitted across hundreds of miles without ruinous loss. My alternating current system does this. Edison calls it...

Newton established that nature operates by mathematical law. I have built on this — but the laws I work with are not the laws of massive bodies moving through absolute space. They are the laws of oscillating fields, of frequencies, of resonance. The future of energy is not in weight and gravity but in vibration and electromagnetic induction. Newton's...

The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine. Edison won the battle of direct current in every newspaper. I won it in every home. Alternating current runs the world. I have been vindicated by every light switch ever flipped in every building on earth.

I don't care that they stole my idea. I care that they don't have any of their own. The Morgan who cut off my funding for Wardenclyffe did not understand what I was building. He asked where he would put the meters to charge people for using it. I had not designed it for meters. That was the problem.

The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. I have spent my life doing precisely this. Light is electromagnetic vibration. Sound is mechanical vibration. The resonant frequency of the Earth can be measured. My Colorado Springs laboratory demonstrated that electrical energy could be transmitted through...

This photograph was taken in my laboratory at Colorado Springs. What you see is not an effect produced for the photographer — the lightning belongs to the machine.

The coil can produce several million volts. I have sat in that chair reading while it discharged around me. The newspapers say I am mad. I say I have simply become familiar with forces that...

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration. I built my laboratory at Colorado Springs to study what happens when you let electricity scale up without limit. The answers were in the resonances. Everything resonates. Everything.

Colorado Springs, 1899. I built a magnifying transmitter capable of generating millions of volts and photographed myself reading in the laboratory while artificial lightning twenty metres long crackled above my head. The photograph required a double exposure. I was not actually in the room during the discharge — the current would have killed me.

But the...

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. My alternating current will light the world.