"Tesla, they say, is dead."

Last year the radio program Studio 360 twice ran a show devoted to famed inventor Nikola Tesla and the spirit of invention. Tesla created many things in his life, the most important and well known being alternating current, over which he battled his nemesis inventor Thomas Edison.

An introduction to Tesla with Samantha Hunt:


Three pieces about Tesla's life, written and performed by Mike Daisey:




The (very good) film The Prestige featured Tesla as a character played by David Bowie, and even had a scene featuring Tesla's rumored attempts at the wireless transmission of power. The man was as much a potent myth-maker as an inventor. At the end of the program (you can hear it at the 9 minute mark in this segment) there is a small eulogy for Tesla written by Louis Adamič and read over the radio in 1943 by the mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia:

Now, this extraordinary man is dead. Or so they say. The papers on Friday published obituaries and editorials summarizing his life and work, and they told of his personal habits and eccentricities. Tesla, they say, is dead. But Tesla is not really dead! The real, the important part of Tesla lives in his achievement, which is great, almost beyond calculation, an integral part of our civilization, of our daily lives, of our current war effort. Why mourn Tesla? His life is a triumph! A triumph of all the people of the world!