NARRATOR: Colorado
Springs, July 1899. While testing a
magnifying transmitter built to track
storms, Nikola Tesla claims he received some
sort of transmission from an unknown source. MARC SEIFER: One
night he was tracking thunderstorms 600 miles
away, but all of a sudden he heard these beeps. And it was three
beats in sequence. And so it was mathematical. And it didn't make
any sense to him. And the more he
thought about it, he thought that they
came from outer space, perhaps from the Martians. JOHN BRANDENBURG:
Mars-- its orbit brings it close to the
Earth periodically, about once every 1.8 years. And at one of those
close encounters, he believed he was picking
up signals from Mars. NARRATOR: Tesla reported this
otherworldly communication and proclaimed his belief in
extraterrestrials in February of 1901 in an article for
"Collier's Weekly" titled "Talking with the Planets." Tesla became
obsessed with trying to receive further
radio communications from other planets. Based on these transmissions
that Tesla was receiving, he developed the theory that
this extraterrestrial presence had been on Earth
for a millennium, that these extraterrestrials
had been controlling mankind from the very beginning. DAVID WILCOCK: How far did
these communications go? Did it lead to the point
where he was actually able to receive useful
information that was helping him build his inventions? Many believe that
this is what happened, and that Tesla
had direct contact through the things
he'd invented with extraterrestrial intelligence. NARRATOR: But the
shocking revelation was shunned by Tesla's
scientific peers and led many to deem
him a mad scientist. So you have Nikola Tesla
electrifying the world, literally. Then-- about the time that
he had a falling out with JP Morgan, a very powerful man. He'd also had a
legendary falling out with Edison, another
legendary, powerful man. Then it came out that
he was trying to perhaps signal the planet Mars. And his enemies
exploited this, I think, to try and discredit him. NARRATOR: In the
early 1900s, it was rumored that Tesla
was being considered to receive the Nobel Prize. But mysteriously, he never did. MARC SEIFER: Even
today, scientists don't take him into account
the way they should. Tesla talked about atoms
working like solar systems and that light could work
as a wave and a particle. Einstein got a Nobel
Prize for saying light worked like a particle. So why is he removed from the
history of quantum physics when he really belongs
at the heart of it? NARRATOR: Belgrade,
Serbia, housing more than 160,000 documents-- the Nikola Tesla Museum
offers rare insight into some of Tesla's
future plans, including what some believe
to be drawings of spaceships. According to historians,
Tesla began work on his flying machine in 1910, focusing on
the use of field propulsion, or anti-gravity. It is believed
Tesla had discovered that high amounts of
electricity could actually create lift in an object. Throughout the 1920s and '30s,
Tesla continually talked about anti-gravity ships that
could derive power from his Wardenclyffe
Towers that were going to be broadcasting power. He claimed these ships did
not have wings or fuel. They were completely electric. NARRATOR: But were Tesla's
designs truly the first of their kind, or is it
possible, as ancient astronaut theorists suggest, that similar
vehicles had already visited the planet in the remote past? In the ancient Indian
epics, The Vedas, we find references of vimanas,
those flying chariots that were used by the gods in
order to travel from point A to point B. Some
of these vimanas were able to alter direction
at the drop of a hat without any effort. So, now, reading this from
a modern-day perspective would suggest that some type of
anti-gravity device was used. You could link this
from the ancient to the modern world with
the modern UFO phenomenon. And so the idea that
Tesla might have worked on an anti-gravity
device is very plausible to me. NARRATOR: Are the depictions
of flying machines in ancient Hindu texts
like "The Mahabharata" really proof that
Tesla had received otherworldly knowledge
in order to design anti-gravity spaceships? And if the so-called
mad scientist actually did make contact with
extraterrestrials, is it possible he
continued to carry out their wishes in secret?
