you're watching american history tv on c-span 3. >> tesla was fascinated with this new creation going on in the world. he started working right away with thomas edison. that was some conflict there. what developed was a current committedn was very to using direct-current and tesla stood alternating current is more economical and more effective and can be transferred over great distances at far less

cost. tesla was interested in a lot of other areas of physics and what tristan. eventually, he comes to colorado in 1899. >> this exhibition explores the ideas that he was exploring it during his career. the sister reproduction of photographs and through artist that is on things we found interesting to explore with the exhibition was the there is sort of this misconception that science is

totally straightforward, that there is -- that the process of trial and error doesn't involve equalities like intuition or creativity, and i think that's really been proven untrue. there is this very creative sort of intuitive piece to science. and we wanted to sort of make that a little more transparent, thinking about tesla and his process, and how his ideas seem to come, in some cases, from nowhere, where the trajectory from where he started to where he ended up seems a little unclear. we wanted to look at that, that process. what does that mean for a scientist, to sort of make intuitive leaps or seemingly intuitive leaps? this piece is by artist bradshaw in collaboration with bishop.

and it's called tesla radio rock, part of an ongoing series of bradshaw's, where she explores the resident capacities of rocks to transmit radio signal. and one of the things that tesla was exploring when he was here in colorado springs, was he was trying to understand whether the earth had enough resonant capacity that you could transmit electricity and radio signals directly through the earth to get a transmission to the other side of the globe instantaneously. that's one of the things he was exploring here. he left colorado springs thinking that this was a possibility, because he did find some resonant capacity of the earth. unfortunately, it's not resonant enough to do what he had hoped it would do. and then the intergalactic signals reference a phenomenon that he experienced when he was here.

he heard some very mathematically precise and repeated radio bursts when he was listening with his large receivers. and he felt that the only conclusion that he could come to was that it was originating from mars and that it was a sign of intelligent life because of its mathematical regularity. and scientists later on came back and replicated the experiments that he was doing and found that what he was listening to was radio bursts from jupiter's moon, which comes in these very regular mathematically predictable bursts. we could hear that space noise transmitted through the rock in this piece. >> tesla had been -- he was friends with a man named leonard

curtis. and he knew some of the experiments that tesla wanted to conduct. so he invited him to come here. and you know, he said, if you want to test the upper atmosphere in new york, you're basically at sea level or ten feet above sea level. but he said if you come here, you're at 6,000 feet, so that made a lot of sense to tesla. so he arrived here on may 17 of 1899, and he was here then for the next seven months. the first thing, when he arrives here, is he works out with leonard curtis the agreement that he would have some space to build a laboratory and also that curtis was on the board of the power company in colorado springs, so curtis provided him all the electricity he needed in his lab. he was interested in testing out his theories on wireless

teleography, being able to send messages or photographs or music without using wires. we have to understand the context of that time, that if you wanted to send a message to someone in another city, there had to be a wire. so you either used a telephone or a telegraph. but by that point, tesla understood scientifically that we could send things without using wires. but he wanted to test his theories. his phrase, when he gave his first talk here, was he wanted to send a message from pikes peak to paris. he knew he could use a wireless method in distances of, say, 50 feet. he had done that on little boats on a pool, with electronics, able to control those. but he needed to have a transmitter that had far more power.

and that's one of the things he did at his laboratory, is developed this transmitter that created ten million volts in order to send messages or whatever long distances. and he also had to develop receivers that would connect properly with that transmitter. so the pictures that we've seen of him at his laboratory, which was about 222 feet tall, and he tested out what we know as the tesla coil. basically having lightning going off in the room, because the tesla coil takes current that we get normally and increases the frequency to a point where it was an enormous amount of voltage.

the great story, or one of the popular stories that came out of his experiments here was that he and an assistant were working one night, testing this for the first time, and he told the assistant to throw the switch, and all of a sudden there was electricity filling his lab. it was creating thunder. it went out the top. and then, in about five or six seconds, it went off. and tesla asked his assistant, why did you shut that off? and he said i didn't. but what had happened is he blew out the power plant in town. but on terms of the practical things that came out of his work here, he certainly laid the basis for x-rays, for fluorescent lights, and a number of the things that we have today. and he was one of a number of scientists at that time that made a major contribution to the

technological age we have today. >> lout the weekend, american >> you are watching american history tv all weekend, every weekend on c-span 3. -- conversation about the world war ii leadership styles of president roosevelt and winston churchill. the roosevelt house public policy institute posted this hour and 40 minute

>> welcome to roosevelt house. i am andrew polsky, the acting dean of hunter college. and professor of political science. our program this evening features two visitors, who are deeply knowledgeable about the decisions that led up to be historic moment 70 years ago when allied forces stormed ashore of normandy to begin the final struggle of the liberation of europe from nazi germany. nigel hamilton is the author of the just published book "the mantle of command." among many other works, allen packwood is the director of director of churchill archives centre, the leading authority on all things western churchill. in a few moments, i will turn off the microphone to tina, the sponsor of our series on churchill of which at this evening's program is the final installm