04/08/2025
Thirteen Moments Tesla Electrified the World
Nikola Tesla is remembered for revolutionizing the electrical world—but he also knew how to put on a show. In 1894, when he arrived in America, few took his ideas seriously. So in 1887, to win over skeptical investors, he unveiled a strange contraption: a spinning brass egg balanced upright by a rotating magnetic field. This “Egg of Columbus” made the invisible visible—and it worked. His backers, Peck and Brown, were sold.
From then on, Tesla understood that attention had to be earned with spectacle—not just to secure funding, but to sway public opinion and to demonstrate his deep understanding of electricity—an art he had mastered in his life. Whether lighting wireless lamps, sending high-voltage currents around his body, or controlling machines from afar, Tesla turned science into theater.
That was Tesla’s personal power—he made the impossible look easy. So much so, that he was labeled a "wizard," and even today his work is misunderstood.
I have broken these moments down in past posts, so for now, here’s a list of the times when Tesla’s showmanship left the world in awe:
1. Circa 1887 – “Egg of Columbus” demonstration of the rotating magnetic field to secure investor funding
2. 1891 – AIEE lecture: wireless lighting, body currents, and Tesla’s ether-based electrical theory
3. 1892 – London lecture: wireless lighting, high-frequency body currents, and mechanical analogies of the ether
4. 1893 – Personal exhibit and wireless lighting demonstrations at the World’s Columbian Exposition
5. 1893 – Franklin Institute lecture: single-wire transmission, displacement current, and non-radiative wireless power
6. 1894 – Wireless lighting demonstration with Mark Twain and Tesla coil photograph
7. 1896 – Remote X-ray photography at distances of forty feet, published in Electrical Review
8. 1897 – Electro-therapeutic demonstration of body-conducted currents and wireless lamps
9. 1898 – Remote-controlled boat demonstration at Madison Square Garden
10. 1899 – Artificial lightning and standing wave experiments in Colorado Springs
11. 1900 – Publishes “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy,” outlining his global wireless energy and Wardenclyffe vision
12. 1901 – Claims to detect potential intelligent signals from space via wireless apparatus (likely natural phenomena)
13. 1931–1941 – Annual birthday interviews: teleforce beam, earthquake machine, cosmic ray motor, wireless power towers, denial of Einstein theories, faster than light experiments, and interplanetary communication.
