Around the turn of the century Tesla concluded that it would be possible to transmit electrical power without wires; to optimise results, he chose to experiment at high altitude, where the air was thinner and therefore more conductive.

As a result he ended up building a research laboratory in Colorado Springs where he conducted some of his most extraordinary experiments; tests that even to this day are shrouded in mystery. Tesla theorised that unlimited amounts of power could be transmitted anywhere on earth, without wires and with virtually no loss of energy. It is not clear exactly how he intended to do this but right up until the end of his life he maintained that it was quite possible and that he only needed sufficient funds to make it a reality.

The funds however were not forthcoming, and Tesla was eventually forced to abandon his Colorado experiments in what was to become a recurrent feature in his life; no money or insufficient finance to pursue an idea . . . but a constant stream of new ideas.

At the beginning of World War I, Tesla described a means for detecting ships at sea. His idea was to transmit high-frequency radio waves that would reflect off the hulls of vessels and appear on a fluorescent screen. The idea was way ahead of its day, and at the time few quite understood it, but it was a forerunner of what we now call radar. Tesla was also the first to see a time when flying vehicles could be remotely controlled to land with an explosive charge on an unsuspecting enemy. In effect he was describing what we know today as a cruise missile.

By 1922 Tesla was working as a consulting engineer; he was making just enough money to live on, but often the plans he drew up were rejected as impractical.

Interestingly, around this time Tesla spoke out against the new theories of Albert Einstein; in contrast to the Nobel Laureate Tesla maintained that energy is not contained in matter, but in the space between the particles of an atom.

Toward the end of his life Tesla became even more eccentric and reclusive; he began visiting parks to rescue pigeons that he then took home to nurse. In his final years, at the Hotel New Yorker, he had the chef prepare a special mix of seeds for the birds. He also became obsessive about cleanliness, eating only boiled foods.

Nonetheless the ideas continued to flow and in the years prior to World War 2 he announced that he had discovered a new energy source, and a technology that could end war entirely.

The New York Times of 11 July 1934 announced that: "TESLA, AT 78, BARES NEW DEATH BEAM."

The Death Beam, the Times continued, "will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy warplanes at a distance of 250 miles…"

The weapon, said Tesla, would make war impossible by surrounding every country with an "invisible Chinese Wall." It was, in effect, what we know today as a charged particle beam accelerator.

Once again Tesla though was unable to unable to summon sufficient finance to back his proposal and as the prospect of war became more likely so Tesla became ever more desperate. In despair he finally sent detailed plans for his 'peace weapon' to the governments of the U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. But to Tesla's dismay none of the western governments took his proposal seriously, not at the time anyway.

However in the aftermath of Tesla's death in 1943 it became apparent that some of these governments had grown more than a little interested.

Tesla's nephew, Sava Kosanovic went to his uncle's rooms on the morning of his death. On arrival, according to Kosanovic, the rooms looked as if they had been searched; notebooks and crucial technical papers were missing and two days later the Office of Alien Property seized all of Tesla's remaining belongings.

One result of this is H.A.A.R.P. (1). Situated in Alaska, exactly where Tesla first proposed it should be sited, H.A.A.R.P. is said by some observers to a working example of a device first proposed by the scientist in 1915.

"It is perfectly practicable to transmit electrical energy without wires and produce destructive effects at a distance." He said in an interview with the New York Times December 8 1915. I have already constructed a wireless transmitter which makes this possible, and have described it in my technical publications . . .With a transmitter of this kind we are enabled to project electrical energy IN ANY AMOUNT TO ANY DISTANCE (HAARP's output is a full gigawatt,) and apply it for innumerable purposes, both in war and peace."

(1) Weapons of the New World Order: HAARP. The Seeker N0 9
Sources include: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/, UFO MAGAZINE (American edition) Vol. 15, N0 7, devoted to Tesla and his work.

Pictured below is an example of what a Tesla coil can do: