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Nikola Tesla: An Inventor Re-invents Military Technology

Afternoon Lecture/Seminar

Friday, September 9, 2022 - 12:00 p.m. to 1:15 p.m. ET
Code: 1J0196
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This online program is presented on Zoom.
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Tesla in his Houston Street lab, 1898

In the 21st century, the life and accomplishments of inventor, engineer, and futurist Nikola Tesla have risen from almost total obscurity to topics of fresh interest. Author Marc J. Seifer, one of the world’s leading Tesla experts, surveys his most significant discoveries that continue to influence today's military technology and diplomatic strategies.

Seifer offers new insight into the brilliant scientist's particle-beam weapon (a.k.a. the "Death Ray") and explores his military negotiations with pivotal historical figures, including his links to Joseph Stalin; General Andrew McNaughton, Churchill’s right-hand man; Vannevar Bush, head of  the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Seifer traces Tesla’s journey of invention that spans the 1890s to the onset of the Second World War, when he sold—or attempted to sell—particle-beam technology to the governments of the Soviet Union and England and various areas of America’s military intelligence community.

Countering the perception of the inventor in his later years as a hermit who had moved into the Hotel New Yorker and spent his days in obscurity feeding his beloved pigeons in Bryant Park, Seifer examines why Tesla was instead a major player in secret weapons negotiations at the highest echelons, made urgent by Hitler’s threat to annihilate the Allies should he first develop the atomic bomb.

Seifer’s book Tesla: Wizard at War (Pegasus Books) is available for purchase.

Book Sale Information

  • Purchase your copy of Tesla: Wizard at War by Marc J. Seifer here.
  • SPECIAL NOTE: Politics and Prose is offering a 10% discount to Smithsonian Associates ticket-holders. To claim your discount, enter the code SPECIAL10 (no space between letters and numbers) in the “Coupon discount” section on Politics and Prose's check-out page.

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