The real Tesla — AC power, the collapsed wireless-energy dream, and the government seizure of his papers — separated from the 'free energy suppressed' mythology.
Nikola Tesla is where documented genius meets a fog of legend, and the track's discipline earns its keep. DOCUMENTED [Historical record]: Tesla's alternating-current system (backed by Westinghouse) won the 'War of the Currents' against Edison's DC and powers the modern grid; his contributions to motors, radio, and wireless transmission are real and foundational. His grand Wardenclyffe project — a tower meant to transmit power and information wirelessly — collapsed when financier J.P. Morgan withdrew funding (Morgan reportedly saw no way to meter, and thus charge for, freely broadcast power — a documented commercial motive, not a sci-fi plot). Tesla died nearly broke in 1943, and the U.S. government's Office of Alien Property did seize and examine his papers, as FBI records confirm. CONTESTED/SPECULATIVE [Speculative]: the popular claim that Tesla had a working 'free energy' device that was deliberately suppressed to protect oil and utilities. The seizure of papers is real; evidence of a suppressed, functioning free-energy machine is not — the documents released show no such breakthrough. The honest, more interesting truth: a brilliant inventor's most radical vision failed for ordinary reasons — funding, physics, and the fact that infrastructure no one can bill for rarely gets built. That's a real lesson about how money shapes which technologies live and die.
Investigate with the AI detective