OPECsux said:
Here we go, after Tesla discovered AC power which provided electricity to the masses as opposed to Edison's shitty DC electricity. All of a sudden the demand for kerosene drops as it no longer needed for lighting. This starts to hurt Standard Oil's bottom line (Nelson Rockefeller). Rockefeller comes up with a plan with Henry Ford to make the gasoline powered car affordable to the masses and therefore Rockefeller can make up the difference on the lost sales on kerosene with gasoline. Meanwhile Tesla comes up with a way to wirelessly transmit electricity which could be used to power everything from cars to airplanes. However Tesla's financial backer JP Morgan pulls out backing of his plan when he finds out because now he can't make money off his idea because anyone can use a special antenna to receive power. If your wondering why his invention hasn't been copied, the FBI quickly came in after Tesla's death and to all his papers and research in the name of "national security". Also Tesla realized this could be used as a weapon, imagine raining down lightning on people at will. I heard somewhere that the true and complete plans to wirelessly transmit energy was divided up in parts to the superpowers of the time, hence the only way it could be used is if all these nations came together to build it. Now that is pretty far out cause I'm sure in the last 70 years they would have gotten together to build this for the good of humanity, however I'm that again greed trumps all.
First off, Tesla indeed gave us a lot of great inventions, but you are way off base. DC electricity is not "shitty", and your LEAF, your smartphone, and almost all modern inventions simply cannot work without DC. AC was (and still is) very useful for power distribution, but now technology has advanced to where HV DC transmission can provide less loss over long distances, and span multiple grids. Back in Tesla's and Edison's day this wasn't possible.
Tesla never had any "free" energy systems! Wireless transmission is not "free", as the power still has to come from somewhere. It also has numerous problems, and could never scale to be useful in any magnitude close to the power levels we require. The closest thing we have that we likely owe to Telsa that involves long-distance transmission of energy is what we call "Radio". (And Marconi ended up with all the credit!)
I think we all owe Nikola Tesla a lot of thanks, and it's sad that he ended his life broke and largely forgotten, but he never had any possibility of giving us "free" energy. As time has progressed there are many people in this world, such as myself, that appreciate and respect him and his contributions.
-Phil