Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs
Near Colorado Springs, Colorado
In eighteen ninety-nine, Nikola Tesla came to Colorado Springs and built an experimental station on Knob Hill, drawn by the thin dry air and the region's spectacular lightning. Inside he raised the largest Tesla coil ever made, a magnifying transmitter more than forty feet across, and used it to hurl artificial lightning bolts and study how electricity might travel through the earth itself. He dreamed of sending power and signals without wires, even from Pikes Peak to Paris.
Tesla worked here only until January of nineteen hundred, yet he believed he made some of his most important discoveries in this place. The lab was later torn down and its lumber reused, its contents sold at auction two years later. A marker honoring Tesla stands in Memorial Park, said to be among the first monuments to the inventor anywhere in the United States.
