Nikola Tesla's Missing Research Revealed | The Tesla Files (S1, E1) | Full Episode

you're good you're good come here august 2017. this is good right here on a private ranch located 40 miles west of colorado springs astrophysicist and aerospace engineer dr travis taylor is about to replicate an incredible scientific experiment let's get a volt meter and let's connect it up to the tap of the secondary one that was first performed by a mysterious scientific genius more than 100 years ago hold those two black wires and we'll pull these wires tight assisting him is investigative journalist jason stapleton along with members of a local research team we're good to go well let's make something glow man i'm ready travis and jason are investigating the mysterious disappearance of literally thousands of secret files that belong to scientific visionary nikola tesla we're going to use these two light bulbs if their experiment is successful they will have proved tesla's theory that electric power can be transported wirelessly by using the soil in the ground as a conductor they will also be one step closer to proving that not only were tesla's theories decades ahead of their time sorry guys bring it up but that the mysterious disappearance of his files was part of a plot to discredit him arming the system now and keep his discoveries hidden from the public three two one [Music] to see the light bulbs come on to understand that we are helping to validate a science that's been lost is powerful that is awesome albert einstein said that tesla was the smartest man on the planet and we actually reproduced one of his experiments today you can bring it down guys what else was in those missing files and all those trunks he had how many inventions and ideas and concepts might have been in there that we really need to look at and figure out just what doors they might open shortly before he died the loan in a new york hotel room scientist and inventor nikola tesla claimed to have 80 trunks filled with his life's work everything from detailed plans for wireless electricity to weapons so powerful they could destroy entire cities but after he died only a few of tesla's 80 trunks were reportedly found for decades people have wondered what happened to the files contained in tesla's missing trunks could they have contained secrets secrets that could forever change the world [Music] [Music] on july 7 2017 dr travis taylor and jason stapleton traveled to washington dc they had come to meet with author mark cipher whose decades of research into the life and works of nikola tesla have made him one of the world's leading experts on the subject grab a seat when i first encountered tesla i read a book which said that tesla was the inventor of the induction motor hydroelectric power system fluorescent neon lights remote control robots particle beam weapons he had cell phone technology in 1901 i couldn't believe it born in 1856 in the small village of smilian croatia nikola tesla went on to have a career that spanned two centuries he developed everything from alternating current and wireless communication to remote weapon systems today tesla is credited with developing everything from energy efficient automobiles and remote controlled vehicles to fluorescent lighting x-rays and even cell phones but in his own time tesla and his theories were often dismissed as outlandish ridiculous or just plain crackpot better known inventors like thomas edison actively worked to discredit him but why could it be that tesla's incredible theories were considered a serious threat to the status quo [Music] so what i did was i used the freedom of information act and i wrote to the fbi wrote to the cia wrote to the national archives and i started to get a lot of information for instance in 1984 i wrote to the cia and it says we searched our files for information or records concerning tesla were unable to identify any records so they're telling me they don't have anything now the reason why i called you in is because the cia has just declassified documents and it mentions tesla in the second paragraph on january 17 2017 during the last days of the obama administration the cia announced the release of over 12 million declassified documents onto its electronic reading room for government conspiracy theorists the document dump represented a treasure trove of previously hidden information covering everything from ufo sightings to former national security issues if it says in a recent conference dedicated to nikola tesla and his work the papers presented claim some of tesla's concepts and then the rest is blacked out it's redacted so here it is that they clearly have a file on tesla i see that as a lie they didn't want anybody to know for whatever reason in 1980s but here in 2001 it's clear the cia had a classified interest in tesla as a leading expert in the fields of optical science and aerospace systems engineering travis taylor has worked on numerous top-secret programs for both nasa and the department of defense tesla invented almost everything that brought forward our modern society with electrical power and he has almost no credit for that it's like he's been erased from history in the textbooks trash do you know what these security clearance markers are on this document yeah uh so here at the top they tell you it's confidential no form right off the bat that tells me this is old because we don't really use confidential anymore what is no form no form means no foreigners no foreigners are supposed to be given the information that was in it there are classifications where it could be secret but we could show it to our allies this means we're not showing it even to our allies you know mark it wouldn't surprise me at all just knowing what i know about government that they're suppressing information and hiding documents and refusing to be forthcoming like travis taylor jason stapleton has first-hand experience when it comes to matters of u. s security and secrecy before becoming an investigative journalist he was a member of the elite marine force reconnaissance no government doesn't throw me off they can be abrasive they can act really scary but when you've been on the inside and you kind of understand how it operates it becomes much less of a of a scary environment and something that really you just need to learn how to navigate mark is this it is this all we have to look at i'm looking at discrepancies in the fbi files and other files that i have for instance in one file it says the tesla has 80 trunks but for some odd reason when tesla died it says in the fbi files that he had 30 trunks so there's trunks that are missing so i want to find out about that on january 8 1943 at the height of world war ii a frail and reportedly penniless nikola tesla was found dead at the age of 86 in the bedroom of his suite on the 33rd floor of the new yorker hotel in new york city but although the death was determined to be caused by a blood clot to the heart there was evidence that someone had taken important materials from tesla's safe and his rooms shortly before his body was discovered by a hotel maid they wait three days before they go into somebody's room so he could have been dead for three days if the fbi or the oss was monitoring him they could have snuck in they could have gone through his stuff removed what they thought of as important documents that has a whole different spin to this entire story but if as the fbi files stipulate there were 80 trunks filled with the sum total of tesla's discoveries how was it that only 30 trunks were reportedly found after his death i have to tell you this one document you showed me alone is enough to intrigue me so i'd like to dig in see what we find great where do you want to start i want to get to belgrade because all of tesla's stuff is in belgrade right now i've got a hundred thousand documents really a hundred thousand in serbia in serbia [Music] one week after their fateful first meeting in washington dc author mark cipher investigative journalist jason stapleton and astrophysicist dr travis taylor along with tesla science foundation board member tim eaton have traveled some 250 miles east of tesla's birthplace of smilian croatia to belgrade serbia they have arranged to visit the nikola tesla museum in search of what they believe to be a large number of missing trunks that was stolen at the time of tesla's death here we are guys wow there's your man hello mark brown here glad to see you good to see you welcome we are very proud to to have this institution here for me this is a sacred place this is an incredible moment we have so many things to discuss to talk you know okay this way sounds great nice okay thank you very much it's gonna be exciting thanks in addition to a large number of tesla's papers and personal effects the museum houses artifacts and exhibits which demonstrate his trail blazing inventions including a tesla coil a remote control boat and what is widely regarded as his most significant scientific invention the alternating current induction motor an innovation that still serves as the basis for how virtually all of the world's electrical energy is distributed but of all of tesla's personal items on display perhaps the one of greatest interest to investigative journalist jason stapleton is the inventor's personal safe look at that okay this is safe wow this is exciting i like to see this incredible so now where was this at originally it was in in testa's room in uh hotel new yorker in the new yorker okay because much of tesla's research had national security implications especially during world war ii upon the scientist's death in 1943 all of his property was handed over to a u.

s government agency known as the office of alien property custodian the move was a curious one even though tesla was born in croatia he was a fully naturalized american citizen and as such was not an alien at the time of his death nevertheless after an allegedly careful review of his files and other belongings everything known to be in tesla's possession was packed up and sent to the manhattan storage and warehouse company where it remained until the scientists nephew sava kosanovic arranged for all the items to be sent to the tesla museum in belgrade so when he died did they open the safe up uh so far as they know yes have a casanova is with two persons centered you know they itemize the things that were in there i believe yes because there is a story that something was missing from the safe medicine medal i think something else we know that there were two things missing for sure there was the edison medal and there was a set of keys and we think that perhaps other papers were missing because this safe was held by the fbi the war department for nine years uh well uh you know as a historian of science i i would like to know all the facts possible before i claim something you know so in my opinion full research of this problem was not done so far we possess more than 200 000 documents and the story about missing of a few documents is not so important that's interesting as we went through the records we found some discrepancies on how many trunks he had and how many that were given to the fbi versus how many were supposedly came here because this safe came with a bunch of other trunks of his documents do you notice off the top of your head like how many trunks you guys have how many trunks you receive yes uh there is a list of 60 trunks uh yes 60 trunks but the government's own agent reported that only 30 trunks were collected from tesla's hotel and tesla himself claimed to have 80 trunks filled with scientific files could these disparities be further proof of a cover-up the 60 trunks that you guys have are they on site here do you have them here uh yes we came with the trucks can we look at them uh not not now because they're on the process of conservation conservation yes [Music] okay there's some big gaps in his research and for a guy who kept like little scratch pieces of paper as notes does it seem probable that there are some some things missing because of the cave no you're not historian of science no no i'm not please your claims are based on what you say they're big gaps who said that i am not sure enough let me go just one level deeper on that we were told in some of the writings that we read about tests that there were 80 trunks some documents did he not where in the fbi files they mentioned 80 trunks and you guys had 60. and who who mentioned this do you understand you must go back into 1943 there was a second world war there was a mess can you rely upon this no i mean we don't know and yeah that's that's really why we're here is that we don't know in order to find out the truth we must have a full research when we have this we can rely upon information in order to make whole construction or reconstruction this is the procedure when you are doing some historical yeah research and i think you make a good point because that's my i'm i'm not a conspiracy theorist i'm a fax guy we meet the director of the museum brennamere and immediately i get a very cold ward vibe from him like he he is elusive and he came right over the top of me really aggressive and it was odd because you wouldn't think that a guy who just had a genuine interest in tesla would be frustrated by the fact that maybe there's a discrepancy about all the information that we've got it was something i was not expecting i think there are a couple of facts for sure tesla says in the 1930s to the to the war department in london i built a particle beam weapon able to send out particle beams whatever happened to this weapon okay mark where he says this he said to the war department in london who winston churchill's people i would like to see this in 1934 tesla announced that he had perfected and built a particle beam energy weapon called teleforce which the scientists claimed could use concentrated bursts of energy to shoot down as many as ten 000 enemy planes from a distance of 250 miles away although nicknamed the death ray by the press tesla insisted that his was a device that could put an end to all war but if the so-called death ray actually existed as tesla himself claimed then why is the director of the tesla museum in serbia insisting it didn't that's why we're here right as we want to see the things that everybody hasn't seen and the question is are there documents that have more of these details in them maybe we can go down there in the basement to see the things you want to yeah let's do it let's do it let's go [Music] we are now entering our depot space this is the heart of the museum place where we are keeping that old tesla's personal documentation it's the most precious space actually we have here because all test originals are protected separately armed with newly released information from declassified fbi files nikola tesla biographer mark cipher along with astrophysicists travis taylor and investigative journalist jason stapleton and researcher tim eaton are investigating a serious discrepancy involving a number of the inventors mysteriously missing trunks and the literally thousands of scientific documents which would have been contained within them documents that might contain designs for everything from the global transmission of wireless energy to weapons so destructive that they would rival the atomic bomb are we allowed in there as you can see it's very narrow space but we can we will organize ourselves let's go old tesla's documents about 200 000 documents are here in this room we we preserve this as original artifacts personal items i suggest maybe first to see this list of uh uh maybe some of the photos of the trunks that that came when all this was transferred in 1951 these are the pictures of the trunks you know that you can see the safe and the trunks these were taken at the when they arrived yes it looks like these were originally upstairs this is the uh the exhibition space yes yeah okay that was we were just there okay yeah all right this is the list of the documents that are itemized that's the manifest right can you open it so we can see kind of oh so it's a list of all the items yes they made a rough list you understand they opened the trunks and said uh this package has this and so so but later on they they have two years cut along the the all the no paper so they made it they made a quick list first that's right and then they have a very detailed list that went in behind okay so we got to look at a few pages of the manifest we got to look at some pictures of the trunk and that's a nice start it was nice to have that but we've got to go a whole lot deeper than that if we really want to paint a clear picture so what document is this now that we're looking at the agreement between the nikola test lender armed trading corporation 1935 yes and can you show first page please so this is arm talk trading company uh which was an arm of the soviet union at the time after unsuccessfully offering teleforce to both the u. s and great britain in 1934 nikola tesla began negotiations with the soviet union who reportedly paid him 25 000 for it in 1935.

the party of the first part agrees to prepay deliver within a period not to exceed four months okay so it was 25 000 in 1935 right that that's a significant amount of money in that time frame during the depression and so this was clearly going to be a big project for the the soviet union but if tesla was successful in selling teleforce for such a considerable amount of money especially at the height of the great depression then why was he still living in relative poverty at the time of his death in 1943 um yeah are there signatures on this documentary can we see the signatures no no no no so far we agreed that you to see this first page oh we can't see the last no no why can't mark travis and jason see tesla's signature does tesla museum director branamir jovanovic have something to hide i'm staring right there at page one and i wanna see i'm also a handwriting expert i want to see the signature page i want to see tesla's signature [Music] generally it can be seen it can be researched you know but you must go to a special procedure we cannot give you the whole document uh uh because if you are shooting the whole doc that means that you are researching is tesla's signature on the last page yes oh okay and i certainly was let down here i am i've traveled all the way to serbia and i want to see the signature page of a contract and i'm not able to see it it's more than frustrating to travel halfway around the world to some place like serbia for them to know that we were coming for them to know that we were making this expense to come here to see these documents and for them to be unwilling to show us what they knew we wanted to see it says a lot it tells me something could it be that tesla's signature is a forgery or that someone other than the famed scientist actually made the sale and collected the money or did forces within the united states government intervene and keep tesla from actually going through with the sale even though the museum claims to have signed evidence to the contrary there are those who believe the plans for teleforce were just one of many scientific secrets that the u. s government was eager to retrieve from tesla's hotel room in the days both before and after the scientist's death they must have believed there was something significant to tesla's death ray concept the question is if he was actually successful in creating a death ray that could do all the things that tesla claimed they could do you would think well then why aren't they in the trunks in the vault somewhere in a library maybe they're not there for a reason i would think that our governments would have taken them and would have classified them and it would become a secret weapon although the team's visit to the tesla museum was well worth the long trip they are now left with more questions than answers nikola tesla emigrated to the united states in june 1884 a time when the country was eager to find new ways of generating and using electricity in order to power what would become known as the second industrial revolution after a brief stint working in new york for thomas edison's company he began developing and patenting his own ideas and inventions most notably his 1887 designed for an induction motor which ran on alternating current instead of the more common but less efficient direct current system which was prevalent at the time but despite tesla's acknowledged genius in the field of electricity he was plagued by a quarrelsome and suspicious nature over the years he made a number of rich and influential enemies including rival scientist and inventor thomas edison and powerful financier j. p morgan but recently released fbi files suggest that not everyone dismissed tesla's theories as far-fetched there were in fact forces within the u.

s government who took tesla's work very seriously although they publicly claimed otherwise [Music] these papers are extraordinary i mean if i sound too excited it's because i am excited this is the trump report and it's signed by john g trump and you're not going to believe this this is president trump's uncle no kid yeah it is crazy john g trump the uncle of donald trump the 45th president of the united states at the time of tesla's death in 1943 during the height of world war ii trump a highly respected electrical engineer and physicist had been working for the national defense research committee an organization dedicated to scientific research for matters of warfare it was for this reason that the us office of alien property custodian assigned john g trump to gather up all of the deceased scientists belongings but despite retrieving what tesla claimed were 80 trunks filled with scientific papers trump claimed only 30 trunks were found at tesla's hotel and these according to his report contained nothing of strategic importance or scientific value but how was this possible did john g trump lie about just how many trunks were actually recovered and the value of their contents or was the discrepancy part of a larger strategy to keep the value of tesla's missing files a secret so what else you got i got another paper from the fbi which talks about a safe in tesla's room which we know about had valuables in it including important electrical formula designs in wireless transmission of electrical power had been completed and perfected completed and perfected where colorado springs is where tesla did his experiments in wireless transmission of power that's where he really perfected it he claimed he sent impulses around the world and i'd like you to try and replicate his experiments see if you can light light bulbs if we could do remote control sure i believe that trump's evaluation of tesla's documents that there's nothing of scientific value is wrong and the only way i can think of to prove that is to go and conduct some experiments just like tesla did out in colorado springs it just makes sense that if he was doing research out there and he was conducting experiments that there's stuff out there in 1895 nikola tesla was living in new york city and not for the last time in his life was short on money he believed he was being spied upon by jealous competitors so much so that when a fire broke out in his new york city laboratory the serbian-born scientist suspected arson tesla became obsessed with the notion of moving his laboratory far away from the cramped and crowded environments of an eastern metropolis to a place that would offer him room to build bigger and more powerful equipment a place far away from what he believed to be prying and ignorant minds he found that place in colorado springs i'm real excited about being here yeah this was the starting point yeah travis taylor and jason stapleton have traveled some sixteen hundred miles to colorado springs joining them is travis's friend and research assistant kyle davis so travis what are we trying to achieve well the scientific community has put tesla and his work into a fringe category right yeah but we don't really know what he was doing because there are these missing files it was here in colorado that nikola tesla claimed that he had successfully harnessed and amplified the electrical energy contained in nature and was able to transmit it wirelessly to any point of his choosing unfortunately because of tesla's penchant for secrecy there were virtually no witnesses to verify his findings very few people have actually done detailed rigorous scientific evaluations of his ideas okay so we've gathered everything we can from interviews and documents whatever and we're going to do our best to reproduce his experiments got it travis has arranged to meet with electrical energy experts justin hayes and drew evie from applied tesla tech incorporated hey fellas hey guys how are you they are preparing to recreate one of nicola tesla's most audacious and groundbreaking experiments let's start talking about what we got to do to get this experiment rolling well we're pretty far along so far yeah looks cool tell us about what you've got it's a couple of really big tesla coils how big oh about 25 kilowatts big they will attempt to remotely power a small electric boat by using a pair of tesla coils located on the shore a tesla coil is an electrical resonant transformer that depending on its size can significantly amplify electrical energy so this is our boat we're currently working with here we took out the batteries from the inside see where's the motor that drives the prop that's this right here right yes and then this thing back here i'm guessing is the rudder this is how we're gonna steer it yep all right so we're gonna do that wirelessly but not through the tesla coil like tesla did right yeah right ideally i wanted to put a tesla coil receiver on the boat and in place of the battery but all we could find was this little remote control boat that the tesla coil would have sunk in a heartbeat so we set the receiver on the bank and ran a wire from the tesla coil to the boat battery input we're going to deliver power completely by transmitting power from one tesla coil to the other and what kind of amperage does the motor pull when it's running at top speed whatever it says this thing will do substantial currents about 30 amps wow okay so it's going to require a lot of juice it is we need to make sure this isn't putting out too much power right because that's right we only have one boat and i don't want to fry it so yeah we'll blow this thing up let's get a volt meter and let's connect it up to the receiving coil and uh let's go ahead and start firing things up good idea yeah let's do that for this experiment the tesla coils will be set up a distance of 30 feet apart the transmitting coil will send energy through the air to the top of the receiver coil and then through the ground back to the transmitting coil creating a complete circuit if successful the energy being emitted from the tesla coils and through the ground will in turn power the miniature boat we ready to do this we're ready let's do it all right now's the time to just take your watch off i'm gonna take my jewelry off and i'd recommend any of you guys do that too anything that you don't want fried this is dangerous all right we're gonna arm the coil are you good i'm good all right you're good now yep all right [Music] what's it say 42 43 44 44. 4 dude that'll blow the boat just that'll blow it up at least twice it's original yeah yeah because the meter is indicating an electric potential of more than 44 volts travis is concerned that this amount of voltage won't just power the boat it will blast it right out of the water yeah yeah so we're going to figure out a way to back that off we're either going to have to bring the power down here or spread the transmitter and receiver apart as travis and jason try to figure out how to reduce the energy being sent to the boat their friend and colleague tesla biographer mark cipher has arranged to meet with tesla's oldest living relative his grand nephew william turbo mark is looking to find out if tesla hat as he claimed perfected a particle beam energy weapon that was capable of shooting down as many as ten thousand enemy planes from a distance of 250 miles away you know there's a question about his particle beam weapon whether or not he built that i know that he built prototypes and i believe strongly that he did indeed build a particle beam weapon and i would like to know whatever happened to it the two men have arranged to meet at one of nikola tesla's favorite new york destinations the famed players club located in lower manhattan i wanted to tell you about this document signed by franklin roosevelt it's in the white house january 2nd which is clearly before tesla passed away please call nicholas murray president of columbia university and ask him to give you the lowdown on nikola tesla why do you think franklin roosevelt would be interested in tesla at this moment in time tesla had many many inventions that in a wartime situation any possibility was worth looking into so so thinking about that uh we know that generals looked into tesla's particle beam weapon do you think that it's a reasonable assumption that someone along the lines some of these military higher-ups wanted to get uh tesla a meeting in the white house of course i think the the military people recognize weapons when they see them the particle beam weapon i think that there might very well be some government intervention there when the memorabilia went to former yugoslavia quite often political people acquired details from it and then just neglected to bring it back if franklin roosevelt believed that nikola tesla's so-called death ray had been perfected as tesla himself claimed then why wasn't there any evidence of it at the tesla museum in serbia did someone steal it from tesla's hotel room after he died or could it have been stolen before and if so where is it now oh my gosh you really have confirmed some of the things i've been thinking about thank you so much what's the numbers 40 42 43 44. 44.