Even though we didn't hear much about him in school, Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest inventors of all time. Some conspiracy theories see his death as the result of premeditated murder, aimed at keeping a lid on his idea of free energy, which would have benefited all of humanity.
Nikola Tesla was a physicist and electromagnetic engineer with substantial achievements in the field of alternating current and power supply. Some of his inventions, which we still use today, include the remote control and other devices that make use of X-rays, radio waves and the induction motor.
But despite his achievements, Tesla's name has been omitted from many history and physics textbooks. And that's not all. One of the greatest minds to have ever lived died in complete misery in a hotel room.
The theory goes that this was due to one of his ideas - wireless and free electricity. Tesla was ahead of the time he was living in and envisioned a world where electrical energy could be used freely.
In 1898, Tesla began construction on the Wardenclyffe Tower, its initial objective being to send messages between the US and Great Britain. The project was funded by J.P. Morgan.
Three years later, however, Tesla was beaten in the race by his competitor Guglielmo Marconi, who was successful in sending the first radio signal across the Atlantic.
At that time, Tesla was forced to share one of his other ideas with J.P. Morgan. He revealed that once the tower was completed, he would be able to transmit electricity wirelessly, thereby making electrical power free to all of humanity.
The energy was supposed to be extracted from Earth's ionosphere and transmitted wirelessly, providing easy and most of all, free, access to electricity to every human on the planet.
However, J.P. Morgan was unsupportive of the idea and Tesla faced difficult times ahead. Many of the patents for his ideas expired and he was forced to sell Wardenclyffe for scrap, as he fell further into debt.
According to many conspiracy theorists, the inventor was murdered to prevent him from realizing his idea, should he ever try again. His notes on his experiments were seized by the US government, years later said to have been lost, which in itself speaks of the significance of his discoveries.
Free energy, obtained from an inexhaustible source, is a problematic idea for many. It would mean the big power companies going out of business, which was deemed unacceptable then, as it is now.
