Nikola Tesla, who would be 159 years old on Friday, dreamed a century ago of a wireless world in which messages of all kinds would crisscross the globe and connect people.

At one point, this prolific Serbian-American inventor and scientist may have been even more famous than Thomas Edison. He held around 300 patents and is best known as the father of the alternating current power-supply system, which won “the war of the currents” over Edison’s direct current.

Tesla’s work made it possible for high-voltage power to travel long distances safely and cheaply — and that is how power is delivered into our homes today. Despite his brilliance, he died penniless and alone in a hotel room in Manhattan.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in his work, not in small part, perhaps, because of successes of electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA, +1.63%

The car maker’s founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, have said they chose to name the company after Tesla because “without his vision and brilliance, our car wouldn’t be possible,” according to an old post on the company’s website that has been since removed but it is archived here. Current Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk joined the company soon after and had nothing to do with the name choice.

Following are eight must-see sites in the U.S. for Tesla fans.

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Niagara Falls: The Westinghouse Power Plant

Tesla came up with the winning plan to harness the power of Niagara Falls, something that had been attempted for years with no success.

His generators, which hummed for nearly 70 years until the facility closed in 1961, powered the world’s first large-scale alternating current hydroelectric plant, the Adams power plant.

When the switch was thrown in 1895, the plant sent power 20 miles away to homes and businesses in Buffalo, N.Y., and just a few years later was feeding energy to New York City, 450 miles away.

The project’s backers included some of the wealthiest men of the Gilded Age, such as J.P. Morgan (who would later financially support an aging and penniless Tesla) and John Jacob Astor.

Sadly, the power plant was among the few commercially successful and viable enterprises that Tesla would help create and live to see.

Today, the building is a national historic landmark and a feature of the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area. A bronze statue of Tesla sits on Goat Island in Niagara Falls State Park, although there are plans to move it closer to the power plant.

Tesla’s Wardenclyffe lab on Long Island

This is the site of what is probably Tesla’s biggest scientific and financial bust.

By 1901, this lab and tower were under construction on what had been a potato farm in Shoreham on Long Island’s north shore. Tesla called the lab Wardenclyffe, after the former landowner, banker James Warden, and set out to work on wireless electrical communications.

He got as far as partially building the giant transmitter tower and domed frame. But the project needed copious amounts of money to keep going — and money was tight after the stock market crashed (known as the Panic of 1901) and backers such as J.P. Morgan saw the successes that other inventors, such as Guglielmo Marconi and his telegraph, had achieved while spending less. Money for Tesla’s Wardenclyffe dreams dried up.

The tower was later demolished, and the building became a manufacturing site. By the late 1980s, it was empty and boarded up.

A group of Tesla enthusiasts bought the plant in May 2013, after years of raising awareness about its historic significance and with the help of a crowdfunding campaign. They have dedicated a Tesla statue on the grounds, with plans to open a science center there.

Elon Musk is a backer and has donated $1 million to the center.

The facility, which is being restored, is closed to the public except for occasional events and scheduled volunteer cleanups. But visitors can see the Tesla statue from the nearby road and the large octagonal foundation of the defunct transmission tower, according to the center’s website.

Interestingly, Tesla may have succeeded in transmitting power wirelessly at a lab in Colorado Springs, Colo. that predated Wardenclyffe. That lab was located on North Foote and Pikes Peak avenues, but the exact location isn’t known.

The New Yorker Hotel

New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan

In the last decade of his life, Tesla lived at the New Yorker Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, now called the Wyndham New Yorker Hotel.

He died alone in his rooms — no. 3327-3328 — on Jan. 7, 1943 at age 86. There is no grave to visit; he was cremated and his ashes are now in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia, where they are displayed in a urn. (Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia, where there is also a memorial center, to Serbian parents.)

Tesla was “one of the more idiosyncratic guests ever to stay” at the New Yorker, and required everything he dealt with to be divisible by three — whether it was napkins, towels, or slices of bread, said Joseph Kinney, the hotel’s archivist and historian.

Visitors and researchers from all over the world ask to stay in room 3327, Kinney said. There’s no surcharge for that room, but it is often booked months in advance, he said.

“I’ve had people weeping in that room, it meant so much to them,” Kinney said.

Some who stay in the room come hoping for a paranormal experience, and a few guests have claimed unusual things happened during their stay, he said. He added: “I stayed one night myself and unfortunately Mr. Tesla didn’t visit me.”

Tesla Society

Tesla Corner in New York City

In his last years, Tesla took a keen interest in pigeons, even claiming to fall in love with one. He is said to have walked every day to Bryant Park, several bocks away, so he could feed the pigeons there.

The corner of West 40th Street and Avenue of the Americas, at the southern end of the park, is now named Nikola Tesla Corner. The park is, of course, a New York City tourist attraction in its own right.

Liberty Science Center

Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J.

Here is where a part of Tesla’s dreams are realized.

A one-million-volt lightning show with a pair of Tesla coils and robotic drums takes place three times a day on Saturdays and Sundays at the Liberty Science Center, in Liberty State Park. The shows often fill up and last about 25 minutes.

The show is an outgrowth of “Electrified,” a 2012 performance that magician David Blaine put out in New York City with the help of the center’s science educators. Afterward, Blaine donated two of his coils to the Liberty Science Center, and the center built its own Tesla lightning show.

The Jersey City presentation displays one of Tesla’s ideas: the wireless transmission of electricity through the air. He couldn’t get the idea to work over great distances.

“However, Tesla was correct that wireless transmission is possible, and we demonstrate that in the show by placing fluorescent bulbs about 10 feet from the Tesla coils, and they just start glowing when we fire up the coils,” said Paul Hoffman, the center’s president and chief executive.

“Tesla fans start cheering when they see this, because it demonstrates that the ‘mad scientist’ wasn’t so mad and his instincts were right,” he said.

J.B. Spector/Museum of Science and Industry

Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry

Nikola Tesla scored a big win when AC power — and not Edison’s DC power — was used to light Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair, also called the Columbian Exposition. This helped cement it as the standard of electrical power.

One of the buildings that was built as part of the fair’s celebrated “White City” is now Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. It has a 20-foot Tesla coil in its Science Storms exhibit, and the resulting indoor lightning show with 1.5 million volts of electrical discharge creates arcs that jump up to 10 feet.

A Tesla statue in California, and the Tesla Motors factory

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One of these California sites is easy to visit. The other will require some luck.

A bronze statue of Nikola Tesla sits at 260 Sheridan Ave. in Palo Alto, 3 miles from Tesla Motors’ headquarters. The site offers free Wi-Fi and has a time capsule that is to be opened on Jan. 7, 2043, on the 100th anniversary of Tesla’s death.

Impressively, the statue was backed by a crowdfunding campaign that raised $127,000 in 30 days.

Tesla fans will have a harder time visiting the Tesla Motors factory in Fremont, Calif., about 40 miles east of San Francisco, where the Model S sedan is built. Two upcoming models, the Model X, which will be an SUV, and the mass-market Model 3, also are to be built there.

The company does offer tours, but they aren’t open to the general public. However, tours aren’t limited to owners, a spokeswoman said. For example, a group of veterans toured the factory on Veterans Day this year.

But fans can wander into the Tesla store on the property, where they can buy shirts, hats and jackets. (A wider selection is sold online.)