Text: Subject: Re: [svpvril] Nicholas Tesla Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 15:20:07 -0800 From: Michael Riversong Reply-To: svpvril@yahoogroups.com To: svpvril@yahoogroups.com Toward the end of his life, Tesla was in contact with US Military services, particularly the Army and the Navy. This interview took place in March, 1988, at Ralph Berkstresser's home in Phoenix, Arizona. I believe he was 83 years old at that time. He was with the Army during WWII, and his job was to pick Tesla's brains during the last six months of his life. He said that he learned a lot from Tesla in that time, particularly concerning subtle energies. While he didn't go into great detail, he did say that Tesla was an influence on most of his own inventions. You have probably seen those purple metal plates that are so popular among New Agers, which supposedly make everything better. For example, if you put one in a car, it will not break down as much. That's probably Ralph's most well-known invention. He also put together some interesting systems for enhancing plant growth. It is well known, and Ralph confirmed this, that through a bureaucratic mistake, most of Tesla's private papers, which he kept in his room, were sent to his nephew in Yugoslavia. This nephew was his only real heir, and Tesla did not have much in the way of material goods at that time. Ralph said that a few papers did manage to get into FBI hands, but not much. Yugoslavia during WWII was mostly run by the Nazis, but the borders were very changeable. Lots of Russian troops were sporadically fighting all over that country. Shortly after this nephew got the papers, he was visited by Russian KGB agents, who took much of the material away. This incident is the basis for many statements by Tom Beardon regarding how the Russians managed to weaponize some of Tesla's technology. Some papers and personal effects were saved, and eventually ended up in a museum in Belgrade after Tito took control of the country. I know that the Tesla Society was in communication with this museum during the 1980's. Ralph and i talked about Tesla for a while. We talked a bit about gravity theory and free energy technologies. Then, he got into something that i found rather alarming. He went on for a long time without allowing any interruption on the subject of Jesse James. He went into great detail about how James had not been killed in a gun battle as history attests, but had instead escaped to Arizona. According to his account, which i had heard in a briefer form elsewhere, James founded the town of Jerome, had several wives, became extremely wealthy from mining, and lived to the age of over 100. I don't know why Ralph was so obsessed with this subject, but i was unable to divert him back to Tesla for the rest of the day. Ralph struck me as a sociable, good-hearted, kind person. In fact, he gave me several purple plates for my trouble. I still have a couple of these. As for some confusion about the hotel where Tesla was staying, several sources have confirmed that it was the Waldorf-Astoria. But that hotel has moved since that time, so perhaps the physical location is where one person mentioned in another post.

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