First and foremost, I want to thank those of you who have been patiently awaiting the publication of this particular Heathen Edition. When we Heathens originally planned a tentative, pre-launch release order of Heathen Editions way back in 2016-ish, this book landed in the #3 slot and never moved, and was never going to move, because if you know you know. And of all the Heathen Editions that we’ve published so far, this one is by far the most image-heavy (84 images/illustrations in total), which drastically slowed its production. Why? Because most publishers who have published a version of this book do not include the images, but given how often Tesla makes reference to the illustrations we couldn’t imagine publishing our edition without them, and we weren’t happy with the quality of the images as sourced from the original Electrical Experimenter magazines¹The Electrical Experimenter, the successor to Modern Electrics, was an American technical science magazine published from May 1913 to July 1920. and also couldn’t imagine republishing them as they were (probably why most other publishers opt out), so we set about restoring each of them to a level of quality that we think actually exceeds the as-printed originals. A daunting, laborious task whose fruits we hope speak for themselves.

Moreover, when we revisited the original EE magazines, we took notice of the other articles that Tesla had penned in addition to his serialized autobiography My Inventions and wondered why no one had yet collected those in one volume — and that’s when it occurred to us: why not collect all of the articles that Tesla contributed to EE in 1919 in a single volume, especially since Tesla cross-references all of the articles so often?

So that, dear reader, is what you now hold in your hands: every article that Tesla wrote and contributed to Electrical Experimenter in 1919, including two additional articles (one is actually from late 1918, but Tesla references it so often we felt its inclusion was imperative) that also focus on his experiments and inventions, which may or may not have been authored by Tesla himself — but were more likely penned by EE editor Hugo Gernsback.²Hugo Gernsback (1884–1967) was a Luxembourgish–American inventor, writer, editor, and magazine publisher, best known for publications including the first science fiction magazine. His contributions to the genre as a publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, he is sometimes called “The Father of Science Fiction.”

Gernsback, it would seem, was quite the Tesla devotee, as evidenced by his introductions to each chapter of the My Inventions serial, and the other essays as well. From the vantage point of today, some would lead you to believe that Tesla only recently gained respect for his achievements, so we felt it important to include these introductions to better illustrate the reverence that Tesla was afforded by a few in his own time. Like the images, inclusion of Gernsback’s introductions also seems to be something no other publisher has yet done until now.

As for the text, we have chosen to modify some of Tesla’s odd spelling tendencies for modern eyes (e.g. “tho” is now though, “imprest” is now impressed, and so on). Additionally, we have researched and appended 156 footnotes to better clarify and identify some of the science, technology, and persons noted by Tesla, as well as to help you quickly locate the pages, illustrations, or chapters that he cross-references throughout. Where appropriate, we have included text and/or images that Tesla referenced outside of the original EE magazines. All to say that we have labored to make an informative and educational edition that we hope is an illuminating read.

Switching gears — if you’re a fan of Netflix’s series Stranger Things (because who isn’t?), then you may find this bit of trivia interesting: We recently read the book The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time, which is cited as a source of inspiration for the series (Montauk was even the early working title of the show), wherein the author claims that some of the technology used for the Montauk Project was designed for RCA in the 1930s by Tesla using the alias “N. Terbo.”³Nichols, Preston B. (1992). The Montauk Chair. The Montauk Project: Experiments in Time (p. 70). Sky Books. For those unfamiliar, the Montauk Project is “officially” labeled a conspiracy theory that alleges there were a series of United States government projects conducted at Montauk Air Force Station in Montauk, New York, for the purpose of developing psychological warfare techniques, which included time travel.

While that may certainly sound far-fetched at the moment, you may not think so after reading this book as Tesla quite specifically outlines that he had developed the technology and used it to modify the weather before he penned these articles⁴See p. 67–68; p. 86 of our Heathen Edition — now over a century ago! — and he also outlines how he had developed “aerial machines devoid of sustaining planes, ailerons, propellers and other external attachments, which will be capable of immense speeds.”⁵See p. 103 of our Heathen Edition You know, like UFOs? One may be able to argue how those words can be interpreted, exactly, but it’s far more difficult to misinterpret the Tesla-approved illustration featured on p. 102.

And so, here you have Tesla confirming — again, over a century ago — two science facts that most people today still claim to be in the realm of science fiction. So, when it comes to a Tesla time travel allegation, it may be worth noting that The Montauk Project author Preston B. Nichols said that Tesla was “ahead of his time.” And Margaret Cheney subtitled her Tesla biography “Man Out of Time.”

Maybe they’re trying to tell us something?

As for us Heathens, we love that there are far more questions than answers when it comes to Tesla—

May that mystery live on!