Tesla's Missing Papers

[Robin Unger]

Quote:

One of the more controversial topics involving Nikola Tesla is what became of many of his technical and scientific papers after he died in 1943. Just before his death at the height of World War II, he claimed that he had perfected his so-called "death beam." So it was natural that the FBI and other U.S. Government agencies would be interested in any scientific ideas involving weaponry. Some were concerned that Tesla's papers might fall into the hands of the Axis powers or the Soviets.

The morning after the inventor's death, his nephew Sava Kosanovic´ hurried to his uncle's room at the Hotel New Yorker. He was an up-and-coming Yugoslav official with suspected connections to the communist party in his country. By the time he arrived, Tesla's body had already been removed, and Kosanovic´ suspected that someone had already gone through his uncle's effects. Technical papers were missing as well as a black notebook he knew Tesla kept—a notebook with several hundred pages, some of which were marked "Government."

P. E. Foxworth, assistant director of the New York FBI office, was called in to investigate. According to Foxworth, the government was "vitally interested" in preserving Tesla's papers. Two days after Tesla's death, representatives of the Office of Alien Property went to his room at the New Yorker Hotel and seized all his possessions.

Tesla's suite at the hotel New Yorker following his funeral on January 12, 1943. Left to right: Bogoljub Jevtic´, a member of the last Royal Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Professor Boris Furlan, a Slovene active during the war in the United States, who went back to Yugoslavia where he was arrested and liquidated brutally; Sava Kosanovic´, Tesla's nephew and member of the Royal Government in exile

Story continued here:

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html

Edited December 6, 2007 by Robin Unger

[Robin Unger]

Thanks Peter.

I was assuming that PBS is a credible website.

Tesla for teachers.

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/tt/index.html

[Guest David Guyatt]

Perhaps of interest here was a news report earlier this year in which it was stated that US scientists had discovered how to transmit electricity wirelessly -- something Tesla appeared to have achieved almost a hundred years ago.

It may also be on interest to note that the Japanese religious sect, Aum Shinrikyo, was dabbling in Tesla technology in the Australian outback some years back (after visiting the Tesla museum in Yugoslavia). Following that the sect was, more or less, decimated for its alleged part in the Tokyo subway sarin attacks. However, a Japanese reporter, who's name now escapes me, investigated this and was of the opinion that the sarin attack was the responsibility not of Aum Shinrikyo, but another far more powerful religious sect that had conections to the government and ruling elite.

[Jack White]

Perhaps of interest here was a news report earlier this year in which it was stated that US scientists had discovered how to transmit electricity wirelessly -- something Tesla appeared to have achieved almost a hundred years ago.

It may also be on interest to note that the Japanese religious sect, Aum Shinrikyo, was dabbling in Tesla technology in the Australian outback some years back (after visiting the Tesla museum in Yugoslavia). Following that the sect was, more or less, decimated for its alleged part in the Tokyo subway sarin attacks. However, a Japanese reporter, who's name now escapes me, investigated this and was of the opinion that the sarin attack was the responsibility not of Aum Shinrikyo, but another far more powerful religious sect that had conections to the government and ruling elite.

Some, including Dr. Judy Wood, think that Tesla's technology

was used to develop the DEW (Directed Energy Weaponry)

weapons used on 911 to destroy the WTC buildings.

Google DEW 911 Tesla Wood.

Jack

[Robin Unger]

Thanks Peter.

I was assuming that PBS is a credible website.

Tesla for teachers.

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/tt/index.html

Robin, I in NO way meant to imply any suspicion of you or the source of the information. In fact, the Forum could use a lot more persons of your ethical qualities and knowledge. I'll post more on Tesla and related matters when I have more time.....

No problem Peter.

David / Jack

Thanks for the information.

Edited December 7, 2007 by Robin Unger

[Brad Glaze]

Quote:

One of the more controversial topics involving Nikola Tesla is what became of many of his technical and scientific papers after he died in 1943. Just before his death at the height of World War II, he claimed that he had perfected his so-called "death beam." So it was natural that the FBI and other U.S. Government agencies would be interested in any scientific ideas involving weaponry. Some were concerned that Tesla's papers might fall into the hands of the Axis powers or the Soviets.

The morning after the inventor's death, his nephew Sava Kosanovic´ hurried to his uncle's room at the Hotel New Yorker. He was an up-and-coming Yugoslav official with suspected connections to the communist party in his country. By the time he arrived, Tesla's body had already been removed, and Kosanovic´ suspected that someone had already gone through his uncle's effects. Technical papers were missing as well as a black notebook he knew Tesla kept—a notebook with several hundred pages, some of which were marked "Government."

P. E. Foxworth, assistant director of the New York FBI office, was called in to investigate. According to Foxworth, the government was "vitally interested" in preserving Tesla's papers. Two days after Tesla's death, representatives of the Office of Alien Property went to his room at the New Yorker Hotel and seized all his possessions.

Tesla's suite at the hotel New Yorker following his funeral on January 12, 1943. Left to right: Bogoljub Jevtic´, a member of the last Royal Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Professor Boris Furlan, a Slovene active during the war in the United States, who went back to Yugoslavia where he was arrested and liquidated brutally; Sava Kosanovic´, Tesla's nephew and member of the Royal Government in exile

Story continued here:

http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html

In the book Wizard—The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla—Biography of a Genius by Marc J. Seifer, the author states the following:

On January 8, [1943] Abraham N. Spanel, the fort-two-year-old president of the International Latex Corporation of Dover, Delaware (now Playtex), who was residing in New York City, had called FBI agents Fredrich Cornels to discuss Tesla’s death-ray experiments. As the inventor had just died, Spanel feared that Kosanovic would obtain the pertinent papers and pass them to the Soviets.

Spanel had already begun to make a name for himself in media and military circles by having invented floating pontoon stretchers for soldiers wounded in amphibious landings and by turning back the million-dollar profits to the government for the war effort. Born in Odessa in 1901, Spanel would later became [sic] a vociferous anti-Communist who spent upward of $8 million throughout the 1940s and 1950s “buying space in the United States press to reprint articles that would contribute to an understanding of world problems.” Having fled to France in 1905 to escape the anti-Semitic pogroms [sic] of Russia with his family as a child, Spanel, at the age of seven, came to the United States in 1908. A graduate of the University of Rochester, Spanel had invented electrical appliances and pneumatic products in the early 1920s before starting the International Latex Corporation in 1929. Realizing the potential importance of the Tesla invention in the “democratic” fight for world supremacy, Spanel had contacted Dr. D. Lozado, adviser to Vice President Wallace, and Mr. Bopkin of the Department of Justice. Bopkin agreed to contact J. Edgar Hoover regarding the affair, and Lozado conferred with Wallace and perhaps even FDR, calling Spanel back shortly after their conversation to convey that the government was “vitally interested in Tesla’s papers.”

Spanel had also contacted one Boyce Fitzgerald, whom the FBI had pegged as “an electrical engineer who was a protégé of Tesla’s,” who had also called Cornels. Haaving met Fitzgerald at an engineering meeting a few years earlier, Spanel became highly interested in the Tesla weapon, possibly hoping to become involved in a profitable business developing the death-beam device for the U.S. military.

Seifer, Marc J. Wizard. pp. 448-449.

Playtex's website, the successor to International Latex, states, in pertinent part, regarding its history:

The history of Playtex begins in America. Not with bras and girdles as might be expected, but with vacuum sweepers. The company was founded by Abraham Nathaniel Spanel. He used latex in the production of his products and, with this interest toward supplying households and especially women, with innovative goods, a host of products were produced, e.g. bathing caps, aprons, baby pants and girdles.

1933

Prototype of "Living Girdle" was manufactured. A one-piece rubber foundation garment you sprinkled with talc and rolled on - sold in a tube. Good-bye to whalebone and combrinc. The first use of rubber in women's underwear was to prove more liberating to women's lives than bra burning in the 70's.

During the war the company supplied the government with latex for defense equipment such as stretchers, life-rafts, life jackets and parachutes. After the war, the company resumed it's emphasis on women's products and magazines and billboards across America hailed the wonders of the 'Living Girdle'. The one and only girdle, with miracle latex on the outside and kitten-soft fabric on the inside. The new invisible Playtex girdle gave millions of women new, slimmed, trimmed down figures.

http://www.playtex.co.za/about.aspx

Not much appears to be available on Spanel. Why was an entrepreneur in the latex industry so interested in Tesla?