Prince: We're looking for the missing pieces.
It's got to be here.
- We hit something. - What is that?
- Oh, wow. - Dude, we got something.
Murphy: Nikola Tesla was... and a lot of people will tell you this...
The greatest inventor in American history.
A.c. Power, electric motors, fluorescent lights, x-rays...
Tesla paved the way for all of these technologies.
Prince: Tesla was taking several of his inventions
and putting them together to become this superweapon.
He called it the death ray.
Narrator: Now a military investigator...
Murphy: But we're gonna have to go around some of these obstacles.
Narrator: An historian...
Prince: Holy [bleep]
Narrator: And an engineer of Tesla technology...
We're gonna build Tesla's death ray.
Narrator: Unlock the mysteries behind what could be the greatest
cover-up of the 20th century.
We need to go deeper.
Do you think Tesla finished the death ray?
If something fails, there's going to be an explosion.
Murphy: Tesla moved from lab to lab.
He left a paper trail all over the world...
How can we get in there?
Trunks of information.
Have these documents ever been published?
No.
Murphy: Did Tesla invent the world's first
weapon of mass destruction...
3, 2, 1.
And was he murdered for it?
♪♪
Narrator: In this hour, an in-depth look at Nikola Tesla,
the mysterious genius who invented the 20th century.
He was a visionary.
Tesla could see how things worked
in his mind before he actually made them.
Narrator: A brilliant inventor who revolutionized industry,
but whose ideas and acclaim were often stolen...
Flacco: Here was somebody basically capitalizing on a patent
Tesla had already done years before.
Narrator: A man who became more secretive
as his inventions became more incredible.
Prince: It's rumored that he kept his notes in code
to protect them if they fell in the wrong hands.
Narrator: With special sneak previews of the new investigative series,
premiering January 2.
Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com
captions paid for by discovery communications
the U.S. power grid is a modern wonder,
painstakingly built over a century
by connecting a complex network of power plants
and transformers using more than 450,000 miles
of high-voltage transmission lines.
The actually electricity comes from places like this.
This is Niagara Falls
and the location of the largest hydroelectric power plant
on the east coast.
Carey: The hum that we're hearing right now
is literally the sound of power...
115,000 volts.
Narrator: The technology that makes all this possible
wouldn't exist without the rebel genius of Nikola Tesla.
It's just amazing from a history standpoint.
Tesla helped create the foundation
of our electrical grid.
Narrator: Nikola Tesla's incredible career began in 1884,
after he boarded a ship to the United States.
Tesla arrived on the ship with four cents in his pocket
and a bundle of clothing.
Shortly after arriving here, he goes to see Thomas Edison.
Narrator: Edison, perhaps one of the most famous inventors
in the world at the time,
gave the young inventor his first job in his new home.
Tesla was 28 years old.
He walked into an america that was in a golden age
of expansion and optimism.
Narrator: Despite the industrial boom, once the sun went down,
the world was lit by candles and lanterns.
Thomas Edison had just invented the first commercially available
electric light bulb.
But there was no system for delivering electricity
to the masses.
Edison's solution was D.C. power, or direct current.
He imagined this current would be wired into every home
in america and light his electric lamps.
The idea was initially to make a power plant
every block or two and then to send power out.
Narrator: But his innovation had serious problems.
The D.C. power generators were fragile and prone to break down.
Edison took the problem to his newly hired scientist,
Nikola Tesla.
Edison immediately gives him a challenge.
"I have all these generators failing all over the city.
Nobody can fix them. So you do it.
If you do it, I'll give you a $50,000 bonus."
Narrator: It seemed like an insolvable problem.
But the rookie inventor attacked it
with the mind of a seasoned genius.
Flacco: Tesla goes out for a couple of months,
works on all those generators, gets them all fixed,
says, "I've done exactly what you asked,
and I need that $50,000."
Edison says, "I don't think you understand
the American sense of humor.
That $50,000 was just a little joke."
Welcome to the age of the robber baron.
Narrator: Betrayed by his famous boss
after only a few months on the job,
Nikola Tesla struck out on his own.
He quit because it wasn't just that he felt cheated by Edison,
he felt soiled by Edison's greed.
Narrator: Seeing the problems of D.C. power distribution
inspired Tesla to come up with a better solution of his own.
For years, he had thought that alternating current,
or a.C., was a better method.
Edison's direct current travels through a power line
in a single direction at a constant voltage.
By contrast, Tesla's alternating current
periodically changes direction and can vary voltage.
And Edison's design had one critical flaw.
Flacco: It will only go about three-quarters of a mile
to a mile before it fades out entirely.
Narrator: A.c. Has no such limitations.
It can run at higher voltages,
allowing it to be transmitted for hundreds of miles
without losing power.
There's been a lot of development since Tesla's time,
but overall, we use the same theory
of harnessing electrical power.
It's amazing to see the evolution.
Narrator: But at the time, what Tesla envisioned
was considered impossible by mainstream science.
Tesla's rebellious streak came in rebelling against
the whole of established science at the time.
It was thought that there was no way to harness
alternating current and ever make it practicable.
Narrator: After years of struggle and hard work,
Tesla's a.C. Solution finally caught the attention
of a wealthy investor.
Flacco: George westinghouse, who was already a millionaire
because he invented air brakes on trains, goes to Tesla.
And he says, "alternating current, huh?
That sounds good."
Narrator: Westinghouse's plan was simple...
Make an alliance with Nikola Tesla and his a.C. Power.
And so began what the press called "the war of the currents"
between Tesla's a.C. Power and Edison's D.C.
To the winner would go the prize of lighting the world
and a limitless fortune.
In 1893, the deciding blow in the war of the currents
was delivered by Tesla when his a.C. Power system
made its international debut.
It was Thomas Edison's worst nightmare.
Everybody assumed that Edison would get the contract
to wire it and to power the first world's fair
powered by electricity.
And to everyone's surprise, westinghouse,
using Tesla's patents, won the contract.
And I think to really appreciate how important that moment was,
you have to think back to what it was like at that time.
The only way to light your home
was with a candle or with a gas lamp.
So you come to the world's fair and... flash...
I mean, literally, 100,000 light bulbs lit up.
I mean, nothing like this had ever been seen before.
It was truly transformational.
Narrator: By the time Thomas Edison returned
from the 1893 Chicago world's fair, he was in a rage.
He counterattacked Tesla's success
by launching a brutal smear campaign,
one of the nastiest in the history of American industry.
Flacco: Edison had already lost, but he didn't accept it.
Edison published pamphlets
that warned about the dangers of a.C. Power.
His associates electrocuted dogs and horses
and even an elephant on the streets of New York
to try to convince people that a.C. Power was too dangerous
and should not be used.
Narrator: In addition to executing animals,
Edison promoted the idea of an a.C.-Powered electric chair
to provoke fear about the dangers of Tesla's a.C. Current.
But the campaign of terror could not derail
the brilliance of Tesla's work.
Undeterred and in possession of the superior technology,
westinghouse and Tesla set out to light america.
To do that, they needed a power source,
and Tesla had an audacious one in mind.
♪♪
He wanted to harness the power of Niagara Falls
and ship it south to buffalo, New York.
Flacco: What they essentially did was carve hundred-foot,
vertical shafts in the rocks
for water to fall down and spin turbine blades
and create electricity.
He started with 8 million volts there,
which at the time was considered astounding.
Narrator: The plant opened on August 25, 1895
and provided power until it was shut down in 1961
to make room for its successor,
just a few miles down the river.
But the basic solutions Tesla came up with
are still in use today.
♪♪
Carey: This is inside one of our generating units.
The whole unit is about 1,000 tons.
Water is actually flowing right underneath us right now.
It's spinning the turbine.
The turbine spins.
The shaft spins.
They're both spinning at 120 rpm.
From there, this is connected up to our rotor.
The rotor's also spinning at 120 rpm.
Overall, this massive structure is a real engineering marvel.
The technology involved is phenomenal.
I think Nikola Tesla is just brilliant.
It's because of his idea
that you can generate electricity
and transmit it long-distance.
The power grid is the greatest invention of the past century.
Rusch: We use Nikola Tesla's power grid today.
It is the way that we power our lives.
So we really have him to thank for having
the electricity to turn on the lights and plug in our computers
and charge our cellphones.
Narrator: With the ability to bathe whole cities in light,
Tesla became the most famous inventor in the world.
Tesla had beaten Edison,
but he was not satisfied,
and that ambition would push him to more brilliant inventions,
but also into war with some of the world's most dangerous men.
[ Whistling ]
[ Explosion ]
And now a sneak peak at the new investigative series
"Tesla's death ray: A murder declassified,"
premiering January 2 on discovery.
Murphy: We're looking for two things...
One, did Tesla invent the world's
first weapon of mass destruction?
And, two, was he murdered for it?
I've been going over newly declassified FBI documents
that could rewrite American history.
So, this FBI document here
says that when Tesla died, that his safe was broken into.
It was forced open by parties unknown.
Koscho: Tesla theorized this weapon of his
could take out military aircraft 250 miles away.
He thought that this could be a device
capable of delivering 1.5 gigawatts of power to a target.
It really was absurd at the time,
and frankly, it still is absurd now.
That means we're taking a bolt of lightning,
pointing it at something, and blowing it up.
Murphy: These documents prove that Tesla was working on the death ray,
and they show that the events surrounding his death
are highly suspicious.
Aron, as an engineer, do you think there's enough technology
and there's enough information out there
for you to assemble Tesla's death ray?
Yes, I think it's possible to build something
like what he was after.
But, you know, there's a lot of data missing from this.
If Tesla's weapon was real,
then we could have found a possible motive
to assassinate Nikola Tesla.
Narrator: Using recently declassified FBI files,
three experts... A military investigator...
Murphy: These documents prove that Tesla was working on the death ray.
Narrator: An historian...
Prince: Tesla was actually the most important inventor
in the modern world, but society has basically forgotten him.
Narrator: And an engineer...
Koscho: There's a reason nobody's done this before.
It's dangerous.
It's ridiculous.
I'm not sure it's gonna work.
Narrator: Are joining forces to look into one of the biggest
potential cover-ups of the 20th century.
Prince: There are mysteries about Tesla
we're still uncovering, even to this day.
♪♪
Consumers are really getting exciting about
unmanned aircraft, drones, because it's now accessible.
It used to be exclusively a tool that the military used,
but now it's in your backyard.
It's on the shelves of the store.
It brings a new way of looking at your world.
Narrator: Textron systems is one of the top innovators
in developing unmanned vehicles in military
and commercial operations.
Baity: Launch preflight is complete.
It may look like a toy, but it certainly isn't.
♪♪
Our unmanned aircrafts are being used
for applications like wildfire suppression, areas of conflict.
We've flown to the eye of a hurricane,
places that you can't fly safely.
At any given time, one of them is in the air
somewhere in the world, essentially an eye in the sky.
You know what you're walking into,
and ultimately, it saves lives.
Baby is in the net. Good catch.
Narrator: All drones rely on a familiar core technology...
Radio waves.
Radio waves are pulses of energy that can travel long distances.
They can be used for sending a variety of information,
including voice, data, and remote-control commands.
For years, Nikola Tesla had been interested in using radio waves
for his inventions.
Tesla was in a race to try to do wireless telegraph.
People were very interested in sending information
over long distances.
Narrator: The telegraph had been around for decades,
but it relied on an outdated network of thousands of miles
of interconnected wires.
Scientists at the time had been experimenting
with using radio waves to send information,
but couldn't control the signal that they broadcast.
Tesla came up with an ingenious system
that used components called spark gaps
to control and focus the signals sent
from the transmitter to a receiver.
Once you get the idea of wirelessly
making something happen at a distance,
there's an unending number of ways it can be applied.
One of them is what we now call remote control.
He gave his famous demonstration at Madison square garden.
Big tank of water.
He had a boat around this big,
which he had powered by remote control.
And he stood there with his control
and drove it around the water.
Narrator: Using his spark gap system,
Tesla controlled the boat with a transmitter
that could send radio signals carrying different commands.
He could run the motor, and then he could also flash a light,
and people could ask him questions,
and he would flash the light.
Flacco: Which immediately caused people to denounce him as a charlatan,
because they were convinced that he had a very small person
inside there, driving it around.
The idea of remote control wasn't in our minds yet.
Narrator: The concept of using radio waves to control vehicles
was decades ahead of its time,
and it foreshadowed a future of near limitless possibility.
Once you have remote control,
you have remote-control drones, you have remote-control cars.
There's no end to the applications.
Nikola Tesla thought in broad terms
of what an unmanned system could be.
What's really cool about it is that since then,
you can see the progression of technology.
Our unmanned boat is called the common unmanned surface vehicle.
Fundamentally, our boat is the same thing as Tesla's boat,
just at a larger scale.
It is designed for counter-mine defense...
Basically clear the way.
I would think that if Tesla came and saw what we're doing today,
how we're innovating, he would look at it and say,
"you solved some pretty cool problems,
but there's so much more you could do."
Narrator: And back in the late 1800s,
Tesla's pioneering ideas would lay the groundwork
for today's modern radio systems.
He filed a patent for his concept in 1897.
Flacco: At the time that Tesla came out with
what we now know today as radio, this was being examined
by a number of scientists all around the world.
He wasn't the only one working on the problem.
Narrator: Across the Atlantic, guglielmo marconi,
an Italian living in england,
was also looking for a way to use radio waves to communicate.
He was the son of an Italian noble,
and his mother was heiress to the Jameson scotch fortune.
He was connected with the people who had money.
Narrator: Like most other inventors of his time,
marconi was having trouble sending information
with radio waves,
so he began using Tesla's idea in his own work.
Prince: One of Tesla's downfalls
is he published all of his work for the radio.
He considered them good for mankind.
Marconi, on the other hand...
He was looking at this as a business.
Narrator: So when marconi managed to send the first transatlantic signal
in 1901 using a variation of Tesla's technology,
the world's praise went to the Italian engineer.
Here was somebody basically capitalizing on a patent
Tesla had already done years before.
A lot of people credit marconi with inventing the radio.
Because of that, marconi was awarded the patent.
Narrator: Marconi's influence and popularity
led to a surprising move by the U.S. patent office.
In 1904, they took the patent for radio away from Tesla
and awarded it to marconi.
I don't think Tesla himself understood the magnitude
of what was happening around him,
and he suffered because of it.
Marconi... His business became rca.
That's a huge business, even to this day.
Narrator: The loss of the patent would be one of the greatest injustices
ever suffered by the brilliant inventor.
It wasn't until six months after Tesla's death in 1943
that the supreme court reversed the patent decision.
By then, it would be too late for the rebel inventor's legacy.
When I was in school,
I was taught that marconi invented radio.
I don't know why.
So much of what we do goes back to Tesla,
and so much of it is blurred by the claims of other people.
Tesla's invention of the radio gave us television.
It gave us cellphones.
It gave us communication with spacecraft,
including the voyager, which is out of the solar system.
Tesla did it all.
Despite not getting the acclaim he was due,
the setback wouldn't stop the ingenious mind
of the rebel inventor.
He had another idea for a potentially world-changing
superweapon that was so big, so brilliant
that it seems futuristic, even today.
And now another exclusive look at the new investigative series
"Tesla's death ray: A murder declassified."
Koscho: Eventually, we're gonna build Tesla's death ray.
It's a big device that stores a ton of energy
and shoots it in a beam out toward a target
and destroys the target.
Thing is, this is dangerous.
- Ready? - Ready.
Okay.
3...
2...
1.
[ Explosion ]
- Ooh. - Oh, wow.
What the [bleep] was that?
Narrator: In 1943,
famed inventor Nikola Tesla was found dead
in his hotel room.
According to recently declassified FBI files,
his safe was cracked open, his documents stolen.
The question is, why was the FBI even interested in Tesla?
He wasn't a bank robber. He wasn't a spy.
So why did the FBI have hundreds
and hundreds of documents on an inventor?
Narrator: What did Nikola Tesla know, and was he killed for it?
♪♪
There's a top-secret government-research facility
in the hills of Tennessee
where the world's first atomic bomb was built.
[ Explosion ]
Today, they're engineering some of the most
state-of-the-art electric motors in the world.
This is the oak Ridge national laboratory.
♪♪
This is oak Ridge's power electronics
and electric machinery laboratory.
This is where we work on electric vehicles.
Narrator: This futuristic electronic technology
has roots in breakthroughs
made by Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago,
and it all started with a dream.
♪♪
He's thinking about electricity.
He's using his imagination.
And suddenly, he hallucinates,
and he sees a giant magnetic field
twirling up above his head.
And he notices that if it stops, it stops instantly,
and if it spins the other direction,
it starts up again instantly.
And that's when it occurred to him this magnetic field
can reach into our physical world and touch it.
Narrator: This vision would serve as the inspiration
for one of Tesla's most widely used inventions,
the a.C. Induction motor.
Flacco: The electric motors that we use today
are working on the same principles
that he invented over a century ago.
Narrator: Tesla took one look
at the direct-current motors of the time,
with their metal-on-metal brushes and flying sparks,
and knew he could do better.
Unlike the D.C. motors of his day,
Tesla's used a.C. Power to generate electromagnetic fields,
and he used those fields to drive the motor.
No more moving metal parts grinding together.
This efficient and longer-lasting solution
is considered one of the most successful inventions
in history.
We don't think much about electric motors,
but they are everywhere in our lives...
In your refrigerator, your food blender, computers,
in factories, machine tools, elevators, subways.
Narrator: And Tesla's electric motor has led to a revolution
in the auto industry,
inspiring one of the most cutting-edge car companies,
that also bears his name.
We think it actually is gonna make a difference to the world
if we transition to sustainable transport
sooner rather than later.
Tesla's induction-motor design was so groundbreaking
that longtime backer George westinghouse
was inspired to risk a fortune on its development.
He planned to make it the gold standard
in industry and commerce across america.
Adjusted for today's dollars,
the scale of the deal was colossal...
$1.5 million in cash, $50,000 a month,
and $65 per horsepower per motor.
It was an agreement destined to make Tesla
one of the richest inventors in history.
Flacco: The royalties would have funded all of Tesla's work
his whole life.
This began his period of tremendous
social and financial success.
He was on top of the world.
Narrator: Westinghouse's gamble paid off,
and the electric motor
quickly became widely used in homes and industry.
But auto manufacturers were not early adopters.
That's because for the last century,
gas-powered vehicles have offered longer ranges
and much shorter refill times.
But now that's changing, and engineers at oak Ridge
are building upon Tesla's original work
with new technology
designed to make electric cars the standard.
One major area of focus... Wireless charging.
Ozpineci: You just pull in your car right on the coil in your garage,
and it gets charged easily.
We started working on wireless charging to find a way
to electrify the roads.
If we have electrified roadways with wireless charging,
you're basically charging as you're driving.
Because of Nikola Tesla, we can innovate the future.
Narrator: Not long after Nikola Tesla
signed his lucrative contract with westinghouse,
his good fortune took another turn.
Economic recession was having an impact
on westinghouse's ability to do business.
In desperation, he revisited his deal with Tesla.
Flacco: Westinghouse comes to him and says,
"I can't pay your royalties.
I'm asking you not to make me go bankrupt."
And Tesla says, "we are men gifted with the future."
He pulls out the contract and tears it up at the table,
essentially tearing up what today
would be trillions of dollars in royalties.
Narrator: Tesla's selfless action may have saved
the westinghouse corporation,
but it marked the beginning of the end
for Tesla's good fortunes.
Flacco: Westinghouse never paid him another cent in royalties.
As a result, he could no longer fund Tesla's ideas.
Clark: He was not a shrewd businessman,
and he got taken advantage of because of that.
Narrator: With a single impulsive move,
Nikola Tesla blew his chance at untold riches.
But this threat to his survival would not Mark the end
of his amazing streak of brilliance.
Tesla would be back in form,
envisioning radical new inventions
that would cover smartphones, wireless power,
and even doomsday weapons.
The man who invented the 20th century
was just getting started.
And now another exclusive look at the new investigative series
"Tesla's death ray: A murder declassified."
Murphy: Tesla moved from lab to lab.
He left a paper trail all over the world...
Prince: How can we get in there?
Trunks of information.
This is a big deal.
We have to find these things.
We're walking on holy ground.
Wardenclyffe... this is Tesla's last remaining laboratory
that's still standing.
If Tesla used tunnels to hide information about his work,
then we could have buried documents
right beneath our feet.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
What do you got?
What is that?
There's something hard.
Dude, we got something.
Narrator: Nikola Tesla was one of the most
important inventors in history.
But near the end of his life, he became increasingly paranoid
and secretive, leading many to believe
that he buried his most important research.
Koscho: Cameron and I were able to triangulate
the exact location of Tesla's lab.
Shane, what's that? That's a well.
We got to get down there, Jack.
Holy [bleep]
♪♪
Man: Okay. Everybody in?
10 seconds.
Warning horn.
All right, let's do it.
[ Buzzer blares ]
[ Electricity snaps ]
Mckennon: Here at lightning technologies, we test all sorts of things...
Aircraft parts, wind turbines...
Really anything that's susceptible to lightning.
Narrator: Nts lightning technologies,
based in pittsfield, Massachusetts,
conducts experiments to help protect commercial aircraft
from the dangers of lightning.
Mckennon: About once a year, every aircraft gets struck.
We were really the first guys to get involved
in doing lightning protection and testing and research.
Narrator: Nts uses scale models to determine the areas
on a plane most likely to be struck.
Aircraft manufacturers are interested
in determining how much protection they need.
Lightning is a very real phenomenon.
You can't afford to have your aircraft blow up.
Narrator: And this critical safety system would not exist
without the brilliance of Nikola Tesla.
Mckennon: This big tower here, this is where all the magic happens.
And our circuitry here is very similar
to how Tesla constructed his initial coils.
It fires from the bottom, going all the way to the top,
connects to the wire that comes down to the test starter.
In this case, that's our test aircraft hanging here.
Output of the generator
fires at about 2.4 million volts.
The danger is very, very real.
Narrator: Just like the experts at nts lightning technologies,
Nikola Tesla was also interested in mastering
the immense power of lightning.
To do this, he created
one of the most remarkable inventions...
The Tesla coil.
A Tesla coil is a device containing two metal coils.
The coils work together to build up colossal amounts of voltage.
What's unique about a Tesla coil is that every time
electricity switches direction in the primary coil,
it pushes a little extra energy into the secondary one,
so the voltage continues to climb
until it gets high enough that it has to discharge.
Narrator: Tesla invented the coil at his lab in Colorado Springs
while looking for ways to prove that electricity
could be transmitted through the air without wires.
His dream was to create a global system
that would provide power wirelessly to consumers.
Tesla knew that this method would be cheaper
and more efficient than a network of Poles and wires...
So cheap that there would be little or no cost
for electricity.
In order to accomplish this,
Tesla needed dozens of tower-sized Tesla coils
spread out across the globe.
The towers would create enormous electromagnetic fields
that are interconnected
to deliver wireless electricity worldwide.
Prince: Tesla theorized a couple of different ways
to transmit that power,
one of which was to energize the stratosphere.
And then we could use a beam of sorts
to kind of intercept that and receive it.
Tesla had a very humanitarian spirit.
He wanted to make people's lives easier,
to provide power to people
for the sake of providing it to them,
not for the sake of making money from it.
Narrator: But first, Tesla needed to get the world
interested in his new technology.
He began conducting public demonstrations,
showing off the dazzling power of his coil.
Flacco: And there's a famous photograph of him holding a light bulb
with no wires in his hand, and it's glowing.
It just lit up on its own, and that just amazed people.
Narrator: Tesla knew his revolutionary idea
of delivering free global energy
would be extremely expensive to develop,
so he went to the man with the deepest pockets...
J.p. Morgan.
J.p. Morgan was the leading financial power of his day.
The government turned to Morgan
for funding when it was in trouble.
That's how powerful this guy was.
Narrator: The race to replace the telegraph
with radio communication was still raging on.
Tesla knew that Morgan was a robber baron,
eager to cash in on this new technology,
so he explained to j.P. Morgan how his Tesla towers
would create a new high-voltage wireless telegraph system.
He told Morgan this is going to be a radio-broadcasting system
and never said anything to him about it
being part of his world-power idea.
Narrator: In march of 1901,
Morgan gave Tesla $150,000 to get started,
and Tesla got to work by buying 200 acres of land
on an estate in long island called wardenclyffe.
This is where he built the prototype
for the first of his towers that would span the globe.
The 187-foot tower would be topped
by a 68-foot-diameter metal dome...
The electrode that would send the power on its way,
essentially an enormous Tesla coil.
12'x12' pit that went 120 feet down.
Narrator: Wardenclyffe would be his ultimate invention,
electrifying the earth with wireless power
by simulating the immense energy of lightning.
And the massive Tesla coil at the heart
of the wardenclyffe tower remains hard at work today,
helping to advance other new technologies.
Is everybody in?
Ready on. Operate on. Horn.
[ Buzzer sounds ]
[ Electricity snaps ]
Generator grounded. It's safe.
Looks like one of them went off the wing tip here.
Mckennon: This is some of the coolest and most fancy physics
you can really get into in the world.
It's lightning. It's powerful. It's scary.
And we're able to simulate that pretty well in this lab here.
And you also have two that came off the nose here.
Yeah, that's pretty dark.
And those would be the areas where you need
the most protection.
Narrator: When Tesla broke ground for wardenclyffe tower
in 1901, excitement started to build
about what the technology would bring.
As construction continued, rumors of the tower's immense
capabilities began to spread.
The story was that one night, Tesla goes out to the tower,
fires it up, throws lightning all over the countryside,
horrified the locals.
No one knew what was going on.
Of course nobody had ever seen anything like this before.
Narrator: Eager to expand his wireless-power prototype
into a working model,
Tesla approached j.P. Morgan for additional funds.
But when Italian engineer guglielmo marconi
managed to send the world's first transatlantic signal,
it spelled doom for the inventor's
most audacious project.
When marconi actually sent the first transatlantic signal
before wardenclyffe was done,
j.p. Morgan said, "eh, the game's up. It's done.
Someone else has done it."
So when j.P. Morgan found out, he pulled the plug on Tesla.
Narrator: All work officially stopped on wardenclyffe tower.
Tesla was devastated when he lost his funding.
Some accounts indicate that he had a nervous breakdown.
Narrator: And the structure began to fall apart,
the decaying symbol of a dream denied.
Nikola Tesla's life is a story of incredible genius
hamstrung by eccentricity.
He just couldn't get it through his head
that the rest of the world didn't share his inspiration
and wasn't going to go through his level of sacrifice
to see his visions realized.
Narrator: Wardenclyffe tower was finally torn down in 1917
and sold for scrap metal,
Tesla's plan to bring free wireless power
to the world ultimately lost with it.
Prince: If Tesla had gotten the funding he needed to finish this,
where would we be today?
Narrator: And now a sneak peek at the international investigation
that uncovers new facts and rewrites history,
"Tesla's death ray: A murder declassified."
Murphy: We didn't come all the way to Serbia just to spin our wheels.
There are around 38,000 scientific documents.
Have these documents ever been published?
No.
Is that the death ray?
That's definitely the death ray.
That makes the death ray real.
Nikola Tesla was a visionary.
Tesla more or less came up with the technology
we call a smartphone.
In an interview for Collier's magazine,
Tesla said people will be able to carry
a little device in their pocket
which will wirelessly give them information.
They will send voice. They'll send music.
They'll send photographs. They'll send film.
And of course he was dismissed as being crazy.
And yet it is the precursor of the device
everybody's got in their pocket right now.
Narrator: Did Nikola Tesla, the man who invented the 20th century,
also invent the world's first weapon of mass destruction,
and was he killed for it?
5...
4...
3...
2...
1.
♪♪
The idea of sending a beam of pure energy
through the atmosphere to a target, and defeat it
has always been a great fascination.
Narrator: Lockheed Martin is an American defense contractor
developing some of the most cutting-edge military hardware,
including aircraft, ships, and weapons.
Afzal: Lockheed Martin has a long history
of developing laser-weapon systems for defensive purposes.
The modern technology is enabling us
to build a high-powered beam
in a compact size for the battlefield.
Narrator: The need for cutting-edge military technology
is always at the forefront of innovation.
And decades earlier, when the world was on the edge of war,
Nikola Tesla was envisioning what some would say
was a precursor to the modern laser.
So, here we are after world war I.
Change is going on at a rapid rate all over the planet.
This is also being reflected in our governments,
which are consolidating power now.
Narrator: And as conflicts around the world escalated
and stability deteriorated,
Tesla, then in his 70s, was facing hard times.
At this point, Tesla's career was going down the tank.
Narrator: Setbacks like wardenclyffe and losing his radio patent
to marconi demoralized Tesla. In addition...
He's having trouble getting funding
from any of the usual sources... The billionaire investors.
Narrator: Tesla, having been strongly antiwar his entire life,
begins to see an opportunity for his technology
to fend off an inevitable global conflict.
In 1934, airplanes are getting bigger and more powerful
and can fly across the ocean and can bomb cities.
Everybody's worried about Hitler's plans
to basically take over Europe.
Using all of the technology they developed over the years,
Tesla proposes that we can actually shoot down
those bombers by creating a weapon.
Narrator: Tesla's new invention was quickly dubbed the death ray.
The core idea of this concept was to build massive towers
similar to the one at his wardenclyffe project
to create immense energy buildups,
which he could then concentrate and discharge
at specific targets.
Flacco: Tesla said, "I'm developing a weapon that will bring down
an entire fleet of airplanes at a distance.
It can make war unwinnable."
Narrator: Tesla's idea was revolutionary and way ahead of its time.
Generations later, experts are still exploring
how beams of directed energy can take down aircraft.
At lockheed Martin, this technology is now a reality.
We've developed a prototype laser-weapon system
which we call Athena.
And although you can't see the actual beam itself,
because its infrared, you can see the effect of the beam.
In this case, we defeated a truck from over a mile away.
And the tests that we run are showing its utility
against trucks, rockets, and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Nikola Tesla envisioned the use of electromagnetic energy
for defensive applications.
And although it's not exactly the same
as he originally envisioned,
that's essentially what we're doing today with a laser.
Narrator: On December 7, 1941,
the United States was attacked at Pearl harbor,
drawing it into a war that was already
raging around much of the planet.
♪♪
For america, world war ii had begun.
By then, Nikola Tesla had largely disappeared
from public life.
After decades of disappointment, having his ideas stolen,
and being abandoned by his financial backers,
Tesla was now penniless and desperate
and living the life of a recluse.
Even for him, he became very isolated.
He stopped almost all his social contacts.
He became much more secretive.
Narrator: On January 7, 1943,
Nikola Tesla died alone in the new yorker hotel.
Almost immediately after his body was found,
the FBI arrived at his room
and discovered thousands of pages of Tesla's work,
along with an empty safe.
The federal agents confiscated Tesla's remaining property.
But the contents of the safe and the circumstances
surrounding it remain a mystery even today.
There was a lot of concern about Tesla's weapon,
like, "wait a minute.
This guy has been working on a death ray.
What if the Germans get this?"
Carlson: The fact that the government was worried
that these papers were gonna fall into enemy hands
has prompted years of speculation
that the FBI was spearheading a conspiracy
to conceal Tesla's weapon.
Narrator: Some people even believe that Tesla was murdered
for his death-ray technology.
Prince: Maybe he was killed to keep the weapon from being published.
He had those papers in that safe,
and everybody wanted those.
Narrator: Did Tesla invent the world's first superweapon,
and was he murdered for it?
Did Tesla finish the death ray?
Did it get into the wrong hands?
Those are all the things we're asking.
Koscho: We're gonna build Tesla's death ray.
There's a reason nobody's done this before.
It's dangerous.
We're taking a bolt of lightning,
pointing it at something, and blowing it up.
That scares the [bleep] out of me.
It wasn't called a death ray for no reason.
Murphy: 3, 2, 1.