Nikola Tesla Invented E-Discovery Technology in 1938, According to Newly Discovered Journal Now Housed at ACEDS

In a stunning discovery earlier this year, a journal belonging to famed inventor Nikola Tesla was discovered when custodial staff were cleaning out the basement at the New Yorker Hotel, Tesla’s residence from 1934 until his death in 1943. The journal contains Tesla’s notes on many ideas he was concocting during that time-period, though most were already well-known, having been announced during his annual birthday press conferences. But one entry, dated April 1st, 1938, revealed detailed descriptions, specifications, and schematics for a machine that could capture the contents of wireless transmissions and record them onto magnetic tape. More impressively, he conceived the technology to search through those messages recorded on the tape by date or a primitive keyword search. This design also had a connector, allowing it to do the same for information recorded on vinyl records or cylinder rolls.

“In essence, Tesla invented the first e-discovery technology,” said Dr. Sidney Zweibel of the Banzai Institute. “His continual court cases regarding his patents, particularly with Edison and Marconi, led him to an understanding of the importance of tangible evidence in the civil court. By 1938, as more and more information was being shared electronically over wireless radio, he recognized that this information was being literally, as it were, ‘lost to the ether.’ And so, he invented a way to capture, store, and search that information, which could then be produced at a later time.”

Attorney Wayne Jarvis commented, “Even if electronic information was a defined part of the discovery process back then, and Tesla’s solution had been made available, I doubt anyone would have adapted it very quickly. Even now, in 2017, most legal teams are still operating a fractured and fragmented approach to e-discovery.”

This amazing find may have been doomed to the recycling bin or at best left gathering dust in some second-hand shop if it hadn’t been for the keen eyes of the janitorial staff at the New Yorker Hotel. The crew that were on shift when the journal was discovered had all recently finished graduate degrees in a variety of fields within the humanities and had taken the job cleaning the hotel basement because wait-staff and bartending jobs had become too competitive in the city and rent was coming due. Gina Wilson, who just finished her master’s thesis “Shadows and Light: Modernity in the Early Cinematic Arts” at NYU, said, “Being down here in the basement is the most important academic work I’ve done since beginning my studies 6 years ago.”

Because of its significance to e-discovery history, the journal will be archived with the Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists. ACEDS Executive Director, Mary Mack, had this to say of the find: “We are thrilled to have the Tesla journal. We have contacted the Sedona Conference, the EDRM, LTPI, Lawyers for Civil Justice, the Federal Judicial Counsel, and the Rules committee to set up another Duke Conference to change the definition of ESI from electronically stored information to ethereally stored information in Tesla’s honor.”