# Tesla lectures the AIEE on high-frequency alternating-current phenomena

Date: 1891

## The fact

On 20 May 1891 [Tesla](/people/nikola-tesla) addressed the AIEE on phenomena of alternating currents of very high frequency, with demonstrations. Lectures in London, Paris and at the Franklin Institute followed in 1892–93. This Fact is the 1891 professional lecture, not a broadcast statute.

## Context

The coil patent is a related instrument. Public spectacle (lights without wires in a hall) is not utility-scale wireless power. Later Colorado Springs overclaims are a separate worsening row.

Nikola Tesla is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

IEEE/ETHW and Britannica independently describe the early-1890s high-frequency lecture tour.

Official or archival record: Engineering and Technology History Wiki — Nikola Tesla (https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla; IEEE / ETHW).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on the lectures; medium on any later radio coefficient uniquely from this night.

A lecture-hall lamp is not a transmitter network. Name Lodge and Hertz as prior physics.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 1891 AIEE high-frequency lecture and a subsequent European tour. Not established: that Tesla uniquely invented radio in 1891.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Nikola Tesla: https://factrail.ai/people/nikola-tesla

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla
- https://ethw.org/Nikola_Tesla

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-tesla-high-frequency-lectures-1891