The 1960s Engineer Who Proved Tesla Right: William C. Brown and the Microwave Power Beam
In 1964, an engineer named William C. Brown flew a small helicopter for 10 hours without fuel — powered entirely by a microwave beam aimed from the ground. It was the first practical proof that Tesla's dream of transmitting usable power through the air was not just theory. Eleven years later, in 1975, Brown partnered with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the Goldstone facility in California to push the experiment further: they successfully beamed 30 kilowatts of electricity over 1.6 kilometers (about a mile) at a remarkable 54% end-to-end efficiency — a record that still draws citations today. These milestones are the direct technical ancestors of every modern wireless power demonstration, from Japan's 2026 NTT laser transmission to DARPA's long-range power beaming program. Tesla described the physics in his 1900 Century Magazine article; Brown and NASA showed it could work in the field.