Was legendary inventor Nikola Tesla murdered after inventing the first weapon of mass destruction?
New Discovery series Tesla’s Death Ray: A Murder Declassified investigates the theory and follows attempts to rebuild his theoretical weapon.
Tesla, famous for his work on alternating current and who now has a modern-day electric car company named after him, was one of the most famous minds of his day.
But he died in mysterious circumstances, found dead in his hotel room in 1943 at the age of 83 with his safe reportedly cracked open and some research gone.
In 2016, documents declassified by the FBI revealed new details about a weapon he had apparently formulated called the Death Ray.
The papers are also said to show that world superpowers from the US to the Soviet Union were interested in it. But was his death linked in some way to the weapon, and with people trying to get their hands on it?
In Tesla’s Death Ray: A Murder Declassified, military analyst Jack Murphy and Tesla historian Cameron Prince attempt to unravel the truth behind the weapon and Tesla’s death.
They also join forces with engineer Aron Koscho as he attempts, along with a team, to assemble and fire a prototype of the Death Ray.
The idea is that if the weapon was actually a plausible invention, then that adds weight to the theory that Tesla may have lost his life over it as part of some sort of top-secret operation.
Watch the trailer for Tesla’s Death Ray: A Murder Declassified, below.
Tesla’s Death Ray: A Murder Declassified airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on Discovery.