The Night Tesla Heard Mars

Name: The Night Tesla Heard Mars
Genre: Documentary

On a Colorado hillside, three taps convince Nikola Tesla that another world may be trying to speak.

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Transcript

On a Colorado hillside, three taps struck Nikola Tesla's receiver.
Serbian-American engineer-physicist Nikola Tesla was tied to power and radio.
In 1899, he ran electrical experiments at a Colorado Springs station.
A Richmond Times account said Tesla sat by his instrument on a Colorado hillside.
The sender stayed unknown, leaving Tesla’s observation unresolved.
A question hovered in the dark, suspended between wonder and doubt.
By 1901, Tesla claimed to receive radio communications from Mars.
Signals from Mars were already a widespread idea at the century's turn.
Tesla’s Mars claim was broadly reported in the press.
January 13th, 1901, one headline promised communication with Mars.
“A Signal From Mars, March and Two Step” presented music Martians might play.
Tesla's alleged communications drew little serious interest from scientists.
For Tesla, possibility wasn't proof, but a door worth opening.
In 1915, Tesla said his patent circuits resisted static and other interference.
“Lightning nearby” was one detail in Tesla’s 1915 account.
In the silence, possibility and doubt seemed to coexist.
Radio was used for observing the heavens in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the 1960s, Frank Drake and Carl Sagan joined intelligent-signal searches.
The Library of Congress account says scientists found no signal from another world.

But before anyone could judge whether the three taps came from Mars, Tesla's trail led back to the electrical empire of Thomas Edison.

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