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@Oliver Schick
From a quick Google, there certainly isn't any doubt that Tesla was an extremely important inventor, and his Wikipedia entry is certainly enormous and sets your mind reeling.
It seems that he strayed into many areas that are still considered unimaginable today--some of the stuff that's on-line about him seems like a catalogue of themes for any future science fiction.
The 'free energy' device claims seem to revolve around this (page in German), his 'free energy receiver':
http://www.tesla-info.de/fenergie.htm
The page notes that it is not known whether this ever worked, and that apparently Tesla left out crucial details in his notes for fear of having his ideas stolen. So, not much hard evidence on that one, really. Who knows whether it might work? I don't know anything about engineering, but Wingedangel seems to be a very practical person and engineer, so perhaps she understands this better.
Many of Tesla's other inventions seem to have worked, even if his own attempts at building machines on their basis were often seemingly ahead of his time. He was also fairly chaotic concerning finance and his life looks like a rollercoaster of misfortune and missed opportunities.
Certainly extremely interesting, and I had also never heard of Tesla before she mentioned him in another thread somewhere. Whatever is true about his life and his inventions, the level of neglect that is apparent about him seems disproportionate.
I'm particularly interested in his claims about Einstein and Ruđer Bošković.