Nikola Tesla is probably the most underrated genius that ever lived. He is so far ahead of his time (and our time!), that many consider him as a lunatic. The fact is, his personality is just too eccentric, which is a handicap if you're in the scientific community.

One thing is for sure though, he is not crazy. No crazy man could have invented what he had invented. He was credited for the invention of the radio (recognized by the US Supreme Court), Alternating Current (AC) electricity, solar electric cell, robotics, the tesla coil (used in radios, televisions etc.), flourescent lighting, radio control, x-rays, radar, computers etc.

Then why is the man, considered by some as the greatest genius that ever lived, is regarded by many as a lunatic? I could come up with 3 reasons (if you feel you know of more, feel free to contact me):

1. He is probably the victim of a disinformation campaign which is aimed at discrediting his image and some of his radical inventions. Who could be behind this campaign? It really doesn't matter who's behind it, but the motive is quite clear: Some of his inventions could have devastating military applications, and if such technologies were being pursuit by irresponsible and radical groups, it could have direct implications on the national security of many countries and the whole world in general.

By diminishing his credibility, one could hope that his theories would just be considered as products of an insane mind. This would thus discourage and obscure any mainstream scientist from continuing his works, at least out of fear of ridicule. Again, this is just a theory.

But the fact is, after his death the FBI ordered the Office of Alien Property (Tesla is a Serbian immigrant) to seize all of his papers, lab notes and possessions. This confiscation was illegal, because Tesla had been an American citizen since 1891. Why would the FBI be so concerned about his papers and possessions if he's just a lunatic man? After all doing to an American citizen so is illegal.

2. Tesla is eccentric in personality. He often boasted fantastic things he had never even tried. But however eccentric he was, it shouldn't be enough to justify the claim that he wasn't a genius. His inventions speaks for itself, and today we can see how many of these are being used in our everyday life. His legacy lives on to our time and will remain so to the future. Indeed, we are now only starting to understand the theories and concepts behind his inventions.

3. Tesla was a bad businessman. Since one's successfulness was more or less an approximate measure of one's intellectuality, it is no surprise that some considered him as a failure. This brought more bad image to him.

Tesla died a poor man. But Tesla is a patent holder of 700 inventions, and indeed he could have died a very rich man. But as I said, Tesla was a bad businessman.

Consider the following story as an example of how bad he was in business. He had signed a contract with Westinghouse for the use of his AC technology. This could have made him extremely rich, but when the owner (George Westinghouse) told Tesla that the arrangement would put the company's future uncertain, Tesla spontaneously ripped the contract as a gesture of friendship.

These 3 possible factors working in consolidation could have been the basis behind his obscurity, even tough he should have been considered the greatest genius of all time.

Below are some of his radical theories and inventions:
 
 

The Death Ray

The basic mechanism behind Tesla's death ray is largely unknown, but it was probably a kind of a particle accelerator. Noone is sure whether Tesla had actually used or even build the death ray, but there was a certain known event that seemed to have confirmed its existence.

As his friend was making a second attempt to reach the North pole, Tesla indicated that he would somehow try to signal him from his Wardenclyffe tower in New York. When Tesla switched on the beam (of the tower), it was hardly seen working. But when a bird passed through the trajectory of the beam, it immediately disintegrated. Tesla then switched off the beam from the tower, thinking that the device had not worked.

But the next day there were headline news that a massive explosion equivalent to 15 megatons of TNT occured in the now famous Tunguska region in Siberia, former USSR. Scientists didn't reach on a consensus for what had happened. Some speculated the blast was caused by a meteorite or parts of a comet, but there was obviously no crash site.

Tesla believe that he had overshot the target and caused the explosion in Tunguska. He then immediately dismantled his death ray tower at once, citing it as too dangerous.

Whether or not you beileve in this is totally up to you. Up to now no scientist could come up for an explanation on the Tunguska explosion.

Perhaps Tesla was right, his device caused the explosion. How could this be? Maybe we still don't know much about the earth and its magnetic grid properties and how vulnerable they are to certain electrical pulses. We have yet to discover what gravity is. We know how it behave, but do we know what it is exactly?

At one time Tesla said that he could cut the earth in two like an apple. It may seem a little of an exaggeration, but could it at least be partially true?

Here's an excerpt from other sites about his experiment on electricity:

"Late one night in the fall of 1899, Tesla fired up his machine at full blast, in hopes of producing a phenomenon he called resonant rise. His tower pumped ten million volts into the earth's surface. The current raced through the earth at the speed of light, powerful enough to keep from dying out over the course of its journey. When it reached the opposite side of the planet, it bounced back, like ripples of water returning to their origin. Upon returning, the current was greatly weakened; but Tesla was sending out a series of pulses which reinforced one another, resulting in a tremendous cumulative effect.

At ground zero, where Tesla and his assistant stood bedazzled, the resonant rise manifested itself in an unearthly display of lightning that still stands as the most powerful man-made electrical surge in history. The returning current formed an arc of lightning that stretched skyward from Tesla's tower and progressively grew to an incredible 130 feet long. Apocalyptic crashes of thunder were heard twenty-two miles away. Tesla had been concerned that there might be an upper limit to generating resonant surges, but now he believed the potential was limitless. The demonstration did come to an unexpected halt, but that was because the power surge caused the overloaded Colorado Springs power generator to burst into flames."
 
 
 

Wireless Transmission of Energy

Using his famous Tesla coil, Tesla was able to transmit electricity without wires. He would be able to make vacuum tubes glow at a distance from the coil, even when there were no filament within the tube.

The secret to this lies in the electrical resonance. By tuning to certain frequency, Tesla was able to turn on and off a series of different lights from several meters away without any wiring at all!
 
 
 

The Earthquake Machine

During his early experiments with resonance technology, Tesla inadvertently created strong vibrations in Manhattan. At his New York laboratory Tesla fired up a small oscillator, which caused a minor amount of vibrations. Suddenly, an alarmed squad of police officers stormed into the lab, demanding that Tesla stop at once. There was tremor in Manhattan for several miles around. Apparently, Tesla had not taken into account how resonance waves grow stronger the further they travel from their source.

A device capable of shaking a city would certainly have direct military applications. No wonder the government took hold of his possessions right after his death before declaring them as "no threat to national security". Perhaps they have already singled out the "dangerous papers", or maybe as rumours say, Russian agents got to the documents first. Who knows?
 
 

The Electro Therapy

Tesla also cretaed a sort of therapeutic device which could promote healing and cure aches by flooding the body with electrical currents and strong vibrations. Tesla was not only the inventor of the device, he was also a client to it.

He then wnet on to create the Tesla Electrotherapeutic Company to sell the product and was marginally successful. Today we can see similar products which exercices the muscles through electromagnetic impulses. Indeed, this might just be the descendant of Tesla's technology.
 

There are so many other of Tesla's ideas. Some are based on solid mainstream science and some are still too far ahead of our known science. Tesla was fascinated with the idea of light as both a particle and a wave - the fundamental proposition of what would become quantum physics. This field of inquiry led to the development of his death ray. Tesla also had the idea of creating a "wall of light" by manipulating electromagnetic waves in a certain pattern. This mysterious wall of light would enable time, space, gravity and matter to be altered at will, and engendered an array of Tesla proposals that seem to leap straight out of science fiction, including anti-gravity airships, teleportation and time travel. Whatever the future would turn out to be, we know that there was once a man named Nikola Tesla who had shaped our present world, and perhaps our future technologies.

We may not witness in our lifetime whether his ideas would become a reality. Even if it turned to be so, the public may not even know because the government might prevent the public from knowing. And they would have their own reason for that, and we should understand it. Maybe the government have already possess the capability now, or even since a long time ago. Who knows?