Nikola Tesla's Predictions Today

The session opened with staff from the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, the site of Nikola Tesla's laboratory on Long Island. The organization explained its goal of encouraging people to question assumptions and treat inquiry as a habit. Fundraising was reviewed, with roughly eleven million dollars raised toward a twenty million dollar capital campaign. A recorded message from the executive director described the past year, including strategic planning, delayed permits, expanded tours, and youth coding and STEM programming.

The middle of the talk moved to Tesla's forecasts. Speakers discussed his predictions about pocket communication devices, wireless information networks, and wireless power, and compared them with what has and has not happened. A remote-controlled boat he demonstrated in 1898 was presented as an early ancestor of radio control and drones, and the panel argued his radio work was underrecognized. They also addressed his mistakes, including his support for eugenics and forecasts that never materialized. Current projects, such as a Tesla valve applied in a robotic heart research project and a large portable Tesla coil used to study lightning, showed that some of his ideas are still being tested.

The session closed with audience questions about which researchers continue this work. The panel pointed attendees to the organization's booth and community programs. The main point was that Tesla's unfinished ideas remain open problems for hobbyists and researchers to test, rebuild, and question.