power to homes and businesses without alternating current. Without alternating current, there would be electrical generators every few miles since direct current’s transmission is not as easily far-reaching. The true tragedy was the Tesla was not immune to falling into what some would call insanity. During his experiments in Colorado Springs, he claimed that his radio transceivers had received signals from Mars, to which critics obviously responded less than kindly. These claims were complemented by his assertion that he had the power to split the Earth in half, as well as his plans to construct an instrument capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes 250 miles away. To further complicate Tesla’s apparent downward spiral into insanity, his financial backers retreated and left Tesla with little means of even a chance at realizing those assertions. Nikola Tesla died in 1943, alone in the New Yorker Hotel. Despite having sold his alternating current patents, his last days were in poverty, and in debt. And despite the fact he was an American citizen since 1891, the FBI in conjunction with the Alien Property Custodian seized all of Tesla’s belongings for analysis. When it was determined the equipment, notes and diaries posed no threat Tesla was given a state funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City. Though there may have been someone else or a group of great minds that achieved Tesla’s feats in due time, the genius and innovation he exhibited is matched by few, if any. Had it not been for his discrediting due largely by his eccentricities, he may have been the one that ended up being taught in classrooms.