"Tesla and the Dharma Initiative"

Many of the weird-science aspects woven into the TV series LOST, are areas that Nikola Tesla experimented with in his amazing lifetime. Although there have been no open references to Tesla seen yet in the series, there is no mistaking his imaginative imprint on the many projects of the Dharma Initiative. Electromagnetic manipulation, magnifying transmitters, the transmission of electrical energy without wires, and the Teslascope for extraterrestrial communications, could have all fit into the D.I. footprint of heuristic endeavors. Surely the early Dharma scientists must have been inspired by such a man who dared to step outside the realm of the possible, to experiment with the impossible! We are told this same sentiment and aspiration is one that Alvar Hanso himself lived by.

There are also similarities between Tesla's dreams ending in tragic misfortune, and the abrupt halt to the D.I.'s scientific progress and existence. While many of Tesla's achievements and applications have been the building blocks of the advancement of modern civilization, he was also misused and cheated by his early employers, governments, and competitors, resulting in the inability to receive much of the money that he earned and the due attention that his later and more obscure works deserved overall. Even in death he was not able to fulfill his biggest dream of supplying free electric energy to the world as it is said that his papers mysteriously disappeared from his hotel apartment, leaving little of his later plans behind for us to follow. As for the Dharma Initiative, while its idealistic aims to save the world began with noble intentions, the group seems to have evolved into veering off the path of its intended altruism. We are told that in its recent history the Initiative was corrupted, compromised, and overturned by internal and external forces, causing a premature end of the D.I.'s zealous project of saving the world from itself, leaving not much behind but a small secretive and otherworldly society.

If only Tesla, Hanso, and the D.I. could have lived and worked in the same era! With Hanso's limitless fortunes, Tesla could have had all the financial backing that he needed to realize even his most outrageous ideas. And The Dharma scientists could have secretly manufactured his projects on the island, without the fear of the aggressive and destructive competitors that haunted Tesla. Then the D.I. could possibly have attained their goal of solving and changing the Valenzetti Equation variables, and giving it as a gift to the world.