Re Marconi vs Tesla.
(Of course Tesla also was known for his work on DC power.)
Marconi won the Nobel prize for wireless communication. Marconi was the first to achieve trans Atlantic radio communication. While it’s true Tesla applied for lots of patents for radio communication he was never able to achieve long distance radio communication.
“There, he (Tesla) conducted experiments with a large coil operating in the megavolts range, producing artificial lightning (and thunder) consisting of millions of volts and discharges of up to 135 feet (41 m) in length,[146] and, at one point, inadvertently burned out the generator in El Paso, causing a power outage.[147] The observations he made of the electronic noise of lightning strikes, led him to (incorrectly) conclude[148][149] that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy.
During his time at his laboratory, Tesla observed unusual signals from his receiver which he speculated to be communications from another planet. He mentioned them in a letter to a reporter in December 1899[150] and to the Red Cross Society in December 1900.[151][152]Reporters treated it as a sensational story and jumped to the conclusion Tesla was hearing signals from Mars.[151] He expanded on the signals he heard in a 9 February 1901 Collier’s Weekly article entitled "Talking With Planets", where he said it had not been immediately apparent to him that he was hearing "intelligently controlled signals" and that the signals could come have from Mars, Venus, or other planets.[152] It has been hypothesized that he may have intercepted Guglielmo Marconi’s European experiments in July 1899—Marconi may have transmitted the letter S (dot/dot/dot) in a naval demonstration, the same three impulses that Tesla hinted at hearing in Colorado[152]—or signals from another experimenter in wireless transmission.[1]”
