Nikola Tesla and Interplanetary Communication - News from 1901

As the scientific community strove to make sense of new discoveries at the turn of the 20th Century, Nikola Tesla was at the forefront. His experiments and discoveries paved the way for the wireless communication we enjoy today.

In this newspaper article from 1901, Tesla speculates about communicating with other planets. The editors took it a step further by printing illustrations of what citizens of other planets might look like and the news they might receive from Earth.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, January 4, 1901, Page 2.

BELIEVES WE CAN COMMUNICATE
WITH THE FAR-OFF PLANET MARS
---------------
Electric Wizard Nikola Tesla Makes an Astounding Discovery While
Experimenting With Feeble Electric Actions Trans-
mitted Through the Earth

How the Residents of Other Planets May Be Expected to Get in Touch With Uncle Sam's Domains if Teslas' (sic) Idea of Inter-Planetary Communication Should Become a Reality.

Great interest has been aroused over the article in The Inquirer of yesterday regarding the possibility of interplanetary communication. Nikola Tesla's recent discovery while conducting experiments in relation to wireless transmission of energy leads this eminent electrician to believe that it is within the range of probability to communicate with Mars.

Regarding his interesting experiments and the results obtained during a sojourn of two years in Colorado Mr. Tesla says:

"It was in investigating feeble electrical actions transmitted through the earth that I made some observations which are to me the most gratifying. Chief among these certain feeble electrical disturbances which I could barely note occurred, and which by their character unmistakably showed that they were neither of solar origin nor produced by any causes known to me on the globe. What could they be?

The Jupiter Weather Bureau reporting weather conditions on Earth and in Chicago.
(Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, January 4, 1901, Page 2.)
"I have incessantly thought of this for months, until I finally arrived at the conviction, amounting to almost knowledge, that they must be of planetary origin. As I think over it now it seems to me that only men absolutely stricken with blindness, insensible to the greatness of nature, can hold that this planet is the only one inhabited by intelligent beings.

Citizens of Mercury read news from Earth.
(Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, January 4, 1901, Page 2.)
"I have perfected my transmitting apparatus so far that I can undertake to construct a machine which will without the least doubt be fully competent to convey sufficient energy to the planet Mars to operate one of these delicate appliances which we are now using here, as, for instance, a very sensitive telephone instrument.

People living on another planet read about Philadelphia's New Year celebrations.
(Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, January 4, 1901, Page 2.)
"With regard to my work in other lines which I have simultaneously carried on my progress has been most satisfactory, and I hope that soon electrical energy may be turned to the usages of man in a way and for purposes such as to surpass in importance all that we have ever done heretofore."