Nikola Tesla is one of the most photographed inventors of his era, partly because he understood the power of a dramatic image. The ten pictures below show him in his New York laboratories and at his experimental station in Colorado Springs, holding glowing lamps, sitting beneath artificial lightning and working at his desk late in life. Several were staged with the help of professional photographers, and at least one famous image is a deliberate double exposure.
Tesla's real achievements are impressive enough without exaggeration. Born on 10 July 1856 in Smiljan, then part of the Austrian Empire and now in Croatia, he moved to New York in 1884 and briefly worked for Thomas Edison's company. In 1888 he patented the alternating-current induction motor, which George Westinghouse licensed that same year. His polyphase AC system became the basis of the electricity grid that powers most of the world, and his resonant transformer, the Tesla coil, patented in 1891, is still used in teaching and entertainment. In 1960 the international unit of magnetic flux density was named the tesla in his honour.
Many popular articles about Tesla, however, add claims that do not stand up. After the photos you will find a short guide separating the record from the legend.
Colorado Springs, 1899: chasing wireless power
In May 1899 Tesla set up an experimental station on the edge of Colorado Springs, where the thin, dry mountain air suited his high-voltage work. Over the following months he built a giant resonant transformer he called a magnifying transmitter, produced artificial lightning many metres long and studied how electrical energy might be sent through the earth and atmosphere without wires. He left in January 1900.
At the laboratory door
Tesla peers out from the doorway of his wooden Colorado Springs laboratory in 1899. A hand-painted sign reading "Great Danger, Keep Out" hangs by the entrance, a fair warning given the voltages inside. The tall mast above the roof carried the large copper ball used in his experiments.
Reading beneath the lightning
This is the most famous Tesla photograph ever taken, and it is not quite what it seems. It shows Tesla calmly seated while huge discharges arc from the magnifying transmitter around him. The picture was made for The Century Magazine as a multiple exposure: the sparks were recorded in darkness and Tesla was photographed separately in the same spot, since sitting that close to the live discharge would have been extremely dangerous. Tesla signed copies and gave them to friends.
Experimenting with high-frequency currents
Tesla stands beside a large flat spiral coil, holding a wire loop while a bright discharge streaks across the frame. Images like this, dated to his late-1890s experiments with high-voltage, high-frequency currents, were designed to show that such currents could pass around or even through the body without the harm caused by ordinary low-frequency electricity. They should not be imitated; high-voltage equipment can kill.
The transmitter in action
Streamers of electricity burst from the top of the magnifying transmitter in Colorado Springs. The glow around the discharge comes from ionised air; nitrogen, which makes up most of the atmosphere, gives electrical discharges their characteristic violet light. Some versions of this photo show a seated figure at the base, again thanks to multiple exposure.
The New York laboratory years
Before Colorado, Tesla worked in a series of Manhattan laboratories. A fire destroyed his South Fifth Avenue lab in March 1895, and he moved to East Houston Street, where many of the best-known studio photos were made.
A glowing gas-filled bulb
Tesla holds a gas-filled, phosphor-coated lamp that glows without any wire attached, lit by the high-frequency field of a nearby coil. He experimented with such lamps in the 1890s, decades before fluorescent tubes came into wide use in the late 1930s. The signature in the corner is that of the Sarony studio, a leading New York portrait photographer of the day.
A quiet moment by the coil
Tesla sits reading in front of the spiral coil of one of his high-voltage transformers, usually dated to around 1896 at the Houston Street lab. It is one of the few images that shows him relaxed rather than performing. He was known to work very long hours and claimed to need little sleep.
Lighting a lamp at a distance
In this test, dated to 1898, Tesla walks away from his generator holding a lamp that keeps shining. It demonstrates wireless lighting over short distances through electrical resonance, the effect he hoped to scale up into a world-wide system. The short-range version worked well; the global version never did.
Demonstrating "wireless" transmission
Tesla stands before a large spiral coil in his Houston Street laboratory during a wireless power demonstration, dated to early 1899 in the caption that accompanies it. The round stamp at the bottom is from the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which holds most of his surviving papers and many original photographs.
Later years
After Colorado, Tesla persuaded financier J. P. Morgan to fund a giant transmission tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island in 1901. Funding dried up and work stopped in 1905, leaving the project unfinished. Tesla continued to patent inventions and give interviews, but his finances declined.
At work with an invention, 1916
Tesla stands at a bench of apparatus in 1916, with framed drawings of his machines on the wall behind him. By this time he was in his sixties and had become a well-known public figure, regularly quoted in newspapers about the future of technology.
At his office desk
Tesla at his desk around 1916, reportedly in his office at 8 West 40th Street, opposite Bryant Park in Manhattan. He lived in a series of hotels in his later years and spent his last decade at the Hotel New Yorker. He died alone in his room there on 7 January 1943, aged 86.
Tesla myths and what the record shows
Because Tesla was overshadowed in his lifetime and died poor, a whole mythology has grown around him. Here is how some popular claims compare with the evidence:
- "Tesla invented radio, not Marconi." Tesla made important early contributions to tuned circuits. In 1943 the US Supreme Court ruled much of Marconi's 1904 tuning patent invalid, partly because Tesla, Oliver Lodge and John Stone Stone had anticipated it. The court did not rule on who invented radio and explicitly left Marconi's original 1897 patent unchallenged. Radio grew from the work of many people.
- "Free, unlimited energy was suppressed." Tesla's world wireless system aimed to transmit power without wires, not to create energy from nothing. Wardenclyffe failed for lack of money and because the physics of transmitting useful power over long distances did not work as he hoped. There is no evidence of a cover-up.
- "His patents are hidden from the public." Tesla's roughly 300 patents worldwide are public documents, freely searchable today. More than 160,000 of his original documents are kept at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which was founded in 1952 after his nephew Sava Kosanović had his belongings shipped from New York.
- "He contacted aliens." In 1899 Tesla reported strange rhythmic signals picked up by his receivers in Colorado and later suggested they might come from another planet. Historians generally think he was hearing natural radio noise or signals from other experimenters.
- "He is missing from history books." Tesla appears in standard histories of electricity and engineering, has a scientific unit named after him, and is the subject of many biographies, films and museums.
Where to see the originals
Most of these photographs survive as prints in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, which also displays his urn. Others first reached the public through The Century Magazine, which sent a photographer to Colorado to document his work. When you see them online, check the caption: dates and locations are often mixed up, and some of the most dramatic images were deliberately staged. That staging is part of the story. Tesla was a brilliant engineer and an equally talented showman, and these pictures were made to persuade investors and the public that the future he imagined was within reach.
Sources: Photo selection originally published by Ancient Code via The Mind Unleashed. Background: Wikipedia: Nikola Tesla; Mercurians: Misreading the Supreme Court, on the 1943 Marconi case.
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