Nikola Tesla harnessed the alternating current, invented radio technology and patented 700 inventions, including the wireless remote control and spark plugs. But by 1943, the inventor died alone of a heart attack in a New York hotel room -- a fringe figure, an also-ran in the scientific community. He was impoverished, obsessed with the number three and saw the Nobel Prize awarded to another man for an invention he had created years earlier.

"Nikola Tesla's ideas," The New York Times wrote in his obituary, "bordered increasingly on what some considered the fantastic as he advanced in age." Still, as Tesla once insisted: "The present is theirs, the future is mine."

That future, it seems, is now. This year -- the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth -- Belgrade International Airport will be renamed the Nikola Tesla Airport. On the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, a statue will be unveiled to honour the man whose work enabled the construction of the world's first hydroelectric power plant. And starting this month, scientists from around the world are recognizing Tesla at conferences in Serbia, Croatia, Australia, Canada and the United States ...