Tesla's Great Loss

On the 13th of March 1895, a fire broke out at Nikolia Tesla's 5th avenue apartment destroying everything he had stored inside, consisting of almost all of his instruments, experiments, research and personal notes at that time in his life. One of the more notable bits of information lost was his unified field theory, something that hasn't been completely explained to this day (Tesla figured it out by 1894).

A fire broke out in the basement of 33-35 South 5th Ave. (now West Broadway) and swept through the entire structure, including Tesla's laboratory, which occupied the entire fourth floor of the six-story building. All of his hundreds of invention models, plans, notes, laboratory data, tools, photographs, valued at $50,000, were destroyed

To me 50K seems like a small number to put on something most scientist would consider priceless.

The newspaper headline from the day.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/819fc437a003.jpg[/atsimg]

When a reporter asked Tesla about the fire, he responded with:

" I am in too much grief to talk. What can I say? The work of half my lifetime, very nearly; all my mechanical instruments and scientific apparatus, that it has taken years to perfect, swept away in a fire that lasted only an hour or two. How can I estimate the loss in mere dollars and cents? Everything is gone. I must begin over again."

From what i could find, the fire remains unexplained, but this is a conspiracy site, so let the speculation begin.

Was it Edison trying to keep the genius Tesla from over shadowing him?

Was it the Energy tycoons trying to keep there grasp on the market?

Was it the government which feared the economic changes his works could bring?

Or what it just a freak accident robbing mankind of these great works?

Your guess is probably as good as mine, one thing that keeps me wondering tho, is how far ahead we might be technologically today if this fire hadn't set the great Tesla back by half a lifetime. Well maybe not far at all since most his work was seized upon his death and locked away by the U.S. government.

Sources:
Tesla Universe
New York Times Achieves


[edit on 5/20/2010 by Alaskan Man]

reply to post by Alaskan Man


I have heard the whole edison thing before but i do not think they would burn down his lab when they could have just as easily killed him or just broken into his lab to steal his stuff. With a fire everyone losses. But keep in mind that we are talking about hi-voltage experiments carried out in 1895, the idea of a fire happening does not sound odd to me.

What cost $50000 in 1895 would cost $1,272,339.70 in 2009

That's from this calculator:

www.westegg.com...

Nikolia Tesla's great loss is he never had children.