From another interesting site:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=158
It’s almost a cliché. Working alone, an inventive genius pioneers new devices that ultimately change the world but his genius is barely recognised and he goes on to die in relative poverty; and whilst he dies, virtually alone and unrecognised, his inventions eventually transform life across the planet.
Unfortunately it’s pretty much the story of Nikola Tesla, the scientific visionary whose inventions shaped much of the 20th century, whilst the man himself has been all but forgotten. And it is no exaggeration to call Tesla a visionary. In contrast to many scientific pioneers, who have spent years developing their projects, Tesla’s ideas were often conceived and perfected in his mind’s eye in an instant. “Birth, growth and development are phases normal and natural,†said Tesla, but: “It was different with my invention(s). In the very moment I became conscious of it, I ‘saw’ it fully developed and perfected…â€
In fact these extraordinary powers of memory and visualisation were to characterise much of his life and work. One day while walking with a friend in Budapest, Tesla was reciting lines from Goethe’s ‘Faust’ when the idea of a rotating magnetic field suddenly appeared before him, literally. In an instant Tesla knew how to produce the alternating current.
And the kind of stuff I'm looking for:
The weapon, said Tesla, would make war impossible by surrounding every country with an “invisible Chinese Wall.†It was, in effect, what we know today as a charged particle beam accelerator.
Once again though, Tesla was unable to unable to summon sufficient finance to back his proposal and as the prospect of war became more likely so Tesla became ever more desperate. In despair he finally sent detailed plans for his ‘peace weapon’ to the governments of the U.S., Britain, France, Canada, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. But to Tesla’s dismay, none of the western governments took his proposal seriously, not at the time anyway. However in the aftermath of Tesla’s death in 1943, it became apparent that some of these governments had grown more than a little interested.
Tesla’s nephew, Sava Kosanovic went to his uncle’s rooms on the morning of his death. On arrival, according to Kosanovic, the rooms looked as if they had been searched; notebooks and crucial technical papers were missing, and two days later the Office of Alien Property seized all of Tesla’s remaining belongings.
Ah hah!!