This History Channel documentary details the incredible inventions of Nikola Tesla, who was one of the most important scientists in history.  His inventions are responsible for much of the technology of the 20th century.

Following are points the documentary talks about:

— Tesla developed the concept of wirelessly transmitted electricity, but it is not commonly used today.  [Note: Wireless transmission of power usually isn’t used, but sometimes it is such as with recent wireless chargers.  I wonder how safe it would have been for power to be transmitted that way as Tesla had envisioned.]

— Most of Tesla’s inventions were financed by the businessman George Westinghouse and the financier J.P. Morgan.

— Teslas conceived of the AC motor when he was a child in Serbia.

— Tesla was initially hired and exploited by Thomas Edison.  Tesla advocated for the use of AC power that is much more efficient than DC power which Edison was trying to market.  (A description of why alternating current is preferable is also explained.)

— George Westinghouse invested in Tesla’s ideas and he implemented AC power plants throughout the country, resulting in a “war” breaking out between Edison and Westinghouse for the type of electrical systems that were implemented, with Westinghouse winning.

— Tesla with Westinghouse harnessed the power of Niagara Falls as the world’s first hydroelectric station.

— Telsa tore up his royalties as a favor to Westinghouse whose company was faltering at the time due to the war with Edison.

— Tesla cared for pigeons, he was germ-phobic, and he was obsessed with the number 3.

— Tesla developed radio remote control in 1898, implementing it with a remote controlled boat.

— In 1917, Tesla proposed radio waves bouncing off of objects to determine potion and speed, 17 years before the invention of radar.

— Tesla envisioned using resonate frequencies to cause the destruction of enormous objects, and he claimed to have invented a device that was the size of an alarm clock that was capable of destroying a large building or even the Brooklyn Bridge using that method.  [Note: Tesla’s “resonate frequency” concept is currently being implemented in HAARP-type ionosphere altering installations.  See the article A Summary of Potential Abuses by ”HAARP” Type Ionosphere Altering Installations.]

— In 1934, Tesla conceived a “death ray” that could beam concentrated electricity through the air as a weapon.

— Tesla lived the last 10 years of his life in a room at the New Yorker hotel.  When Tesla died in 1943, the U.S. government took control of his scientific papers, which they then released in 1952 and sent them to Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where they now remain at the Nicola Tesla Museum.

— In 1887, Tesla experimented with X-ray radiation eight years before Wilhelm Roentgen documented his own X-ray discovery that won him the Nobel Prize in physics.

— Tesla saw using fossil fuels as being “barbarous and wasteful,” and in 1901 he patented an apparatus for “the utilization of radiant energy” that harvested radiant energy from the sun as well as cosmic rays, and he championed the concept of geothermal power in a 1931 New York Times article.

— The modern Tesla car company is mentioned, which uses a version of Tesla’s AC induction motor.

— At the 1893 Chicago Word’s Fair, Tesla displayed a fluorescent light bulb that burned much cooler and lasted longer than Edison’s incandescent bulbs (and the documentary shows the actual bulb.)