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For context, Tesla was 79 at the time he gave this interview. He had spent his entire life working on electromagnetism within the framework of prerelativistic theories, such as aether theories and a concept according to which "all space is filled with a gaseous substance." He accomplished some important things, but he was also somewhat of a kook and a charlatan. He had only two years of formal university education. In the New York Times interview referred to in the question, he promised an apparatus, which he never actually produced, "by which mechanical energy can be transmitted to any part of the terrestrial globe."