He died in loneliness and poverty. On January 7, 1943, he had unpaid debts and a reputation for being a dark, even slightly demonic persona. In fact, he was the master of his time, an underappreciated genius of electrical engineering, the author of at least 300 patents and the creator of over 120 pioneering inventions that are still used today or contributed to the dynamic development of electrical engineering and other branches of science in the 20th century. What seems absurd today, Nikola Tesla has never been freed from suspicions of collaboration with the supernatural. This opinion prevented him from raising funds for the implementation of some plans. Almost 300 patents on account, including radio, electric motor, hydroelectric power plant, and solar battery. Nikola Tesla was one of the greatest - and perhaps the most underrated - scientists in history. Few people know that he was one step away from achieving a breakthrough that was to change the way electricity is transmitted. And with it, start a new industrial revolution.
The legacy of this mysterious mind is also a fierce arena of competition and strife, often offending the ideals in which it believed. Museums and memorials about Nikola Tesla are regularly stolen, and attempts to reach the previously unpublished theories of his authorship are met with hostility and incomprehensible aggression by potential keepers of his secrets. The English screenwriter Jonathan Nolan, who tried unsuccessfully to collect at least scraps of information about the unknown arrangements and plans of this visionary, was convinced of this.
Perhaps the first thing young Nikola heard was the majestic thunder of lightning. In a mysterious twist of fate, a man who spent his life taming electricity was born in the middle of a stormy night. It took place on July 10, 1856 in the Serbian village of Smiljan, now located in Croatia. As was customary, Tesla, as the son of a local Orthodox priest, should follow in his father's footsteps. His mother, although she could not write, instilled in him a curiosity for inventions, which with time turned out to be stronger.
In fact, from an early age, Nikola was an extraordinary child. He constructed the first water turbine on a nearby stream at the age of five. During his walks in the park, he often experienced blinding visions in which he saw ready-made machines, people and places that he had never seen before. As he wrote years later in his autobiography: "I lived there, met people, made friendships and acquaintances, and, perhaps unbelievable, they were as dear to me as those from normal life". This experience never left him, being at the same time a stigma and a reason for his greatest successes.
Tesla's talent was close to being wasted in the depths of the turbulent history of 19th-century Europe. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the village of Smiljan, which at that time was under the Austrian Habsburg administration. Today, this village, with a population of around 400, is part of Croatia. Tesla, however, was born into a Serbian family. His father Milutin was an Orthodox priest who carried out his ministry under unfavorable conditions, when the Serbian Orthodox Church was devoid of autocephaly. Milutin Tesla's involvement in spiritual matters almost led to the writing of other fates for his son Nikola, who, according to his father's expectations, was to become his successor - a priest of the Serbian Orthodox Church.
However, Nikola Tesla never wore a cassock. In 1873, he developed cholera, the effects of which chained him to bed for at least nine months. Then, as you can learn from one of Nikola's biographies, his father promised himself that he would allow his son to pursue any passions when he recovered, and would even financially support his education at a higher level. At that time, Nikola was already noticed among local teachers as a skillful mathematician. While the early period of his education in Smiljan and Gospić was typical and did not distinguish him from his peers, the years spent in the gymnasium in Karlovac were marked by successes. First, Nikola Tesla graduated from this four-year school with brilliant results within three years (1870-1873), and second, he often embarrassed teachers with his exceptionally agile mind, especially when it came to performing various calculations and applying mathematical rules. For this reason, not all teachers liked him, but that was not the case with someone who deserves to be called the "promoter" of Nikola Tesla's talent today.
Even before he was 12, he had memorized logarithmic tables. He also began developing the first engines of his own design. His linguistic abilities were manifested just as quickly, he remembered new languages with surprising ease - during his studies he already spoke English, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Latin. With all this, Tesla was a titan of work, sleeping only two hours a night. One account says that he was overwhelmed by a problem and spent four days in his laboratory without rest. At the university, on the other hand, in order to close a library, he had to be thrown out first. Nikola was also famous for the fact that he almost never carried measuring instruments with him. His calculations "by eye", to the amazement of the lecturers, almost always fell within a tenth of a millimeter.
Thanks to the efforts of a local professor, who recognized the talent of his student, Tesla in 1875 enrolled at the prestigious Austrian Technical University in Graz. It was then that he began to seriously consider alternative energy sources to fossil fuels. At the end of the 19th century, research into electricity flourished. It still seemed mysterious and dangerous. Often there were accidents in which horses, having stepped on a horseshoe on the rail of a tram, knocked down the coachmen when electrocuted. Perhaps it was because of this danger that the study of tension seemed so fascinating to the young physicist.
After less than three years, Nikola decided that he could learn nothing more at the polytechnic. In 1878 he left Graz, breaking ties with his family. For a time he seemed to dissolve into thin air - his friends even thought he had drowned. Meanwhile, Tesla was in Budapest, where, thanks to his amazing skills, he was hired as chief engineer at the national telegraph center, in time contributing to the launch of the first telephone line in Austria-Hungary.
The first and perhaps the only and most important master of Nikola Tesla was the Croatian professor of mathematics and physics, Martin Sekulić, who was somewhat overlooked in his biographies, who supported and developed the teenager's math talent during his period in Karlovac. He also repeatedly persuaded his father to send his son to a polytechnic university and organized some of the funds for his education.
An important role in Nikola Tesla's early life was played by his brother Dane, who tragically died when Nikola was 5 years old, although he himself managed to remember him as an extremely gifted man. Both brothers were to inherit their abilities from their mother, Georgina (née Mandić), who, despite the lack of education, was an intelligent and inventive woman, admired and famous in the area for her originality. Who knows in what direction the talent of Georgina Tesla or one of her three daughters Mika, Angelina and Marica, Nikola's sisters, would have developed if they had lived at least in the second half of the 20th century?
In the whole family, only Nikola had a chance to develop his talent. He used this opportunity in a wonderful way, although he often encountered many obstacles on his way. He was supposed to start higher education in 1874, but he had to hide for several months before being enrolled in the Austro-Hungarian army. So, it was not until 1875 that he started engineering studies at the Technical University in Graz, which he did not, however, graduate. Nikola Tesla achieved good results in his studies and aroused the interest of the professors of this university, but at the same time he had no resistance to criticize them. The conflict between a novice scientist and a respected German professor Jacob Poeschl about the construction of the so-called Gramme's generator.
In addition, during the initial period of his studies, Nikola Tesla worked regularly, conducting his first experiments in the field of electrical engineering. University professors in their letters to Nikola's father suggested that he should take his son from Graz, because his extremely busy lifestyle would lead him to inevitable death. These suggestions were somewhat exaggerated. A known weakness of the aspiring scientist was his addiction to gambling, which exhausted his willingness to work and led him to lose funds to support himself in Graz. During the second and third years of studies, Nikola Tesla devoted less and less time to study, but he was devoted to gambling, most often various card games for money. The main result of the aspiring scientist's addiction to gambling was parting with the university. During the exam session in the first semester of the third year of studies, Nikola Tesla did not take the exams and his education at the Technical University in Graz was interrupted in December 1878.
Adhering to modern colloquial language, we would say that Nikola Tesla was in a deep ditch then. Marc Seifer, in a book about his life, even stated that after being expelled from school in Graz, the aspiring scientist suffered a nervous breakdown. He was undoubtedly very talented, promising to be an excellent electrical engineer, but blunt honesty towards the professors of the university in Graz, combined with addiction to gambling, made the future of Nikola Tesla a huge question mark. It was then that Father Milutin played an important role in his life again.
At the turn of 1878 and 1879, Nikola Tesla worked as a draftsman in Maribor, he was also often seen in the streets of Slovenia, where he played cards. His fate was interested in the father who tried to persuade his son to return to his native Gospic. This one refused. Only the local police in April 1879 forcibly sent Nikola Tesla home because he did not have a residence permit in Maribor, which was then required. Nikola Tesla, in accordance with the wishes of his father, then took up a teaching job at a local school, which he once graduated. During this time, Milutin Tesla died unexpectedly, but a few days before his death, he managed to tell his son that he still had high hopes for him. It is difficult to say whether Milutin Tesla suggested to Nikola that he should reconsider his involvement in the Serbian Orthodox Church, or whether he meant that his son would take up his studies again and try to develop his scientific talent.
In any case, as early as 1880, Nikola Tesla unsuccessfully tried to study in Prague, and in 1881 he moved to Budapest, where he started working at the state-owned telegraph company Ferenc Puskás, known as the Budapest Telephone Exchange. Nikola Tesla did not have a university education, he was not an engineer and he never made up for it, but since he started working in Budapest, his scientific talent has been gradually developing. Two more jobs reflected the development and growing importance of Nikola Tesla in the electrotechnical environment. In 1882 he started working and quickly gained a good reputation in the French company Continental Edison Company, which, based on the patents of Thomas Edison, dealt with the design and creation of upgrades in electricity. However, in 1884, disappointed with the way the company was managed, Nikola Tesla moved to New York, where he was personally hired by Thomas Edison himself to do his job without much enthusiasm.
Edison Machine Works. It led, inter alia, pioneering research and production of electrical devices used in various industrial segments.
Just a few months after starting work in the immediate vicinity of Edison, Nikola Tesla implemented important improvements in Edison Machine Works. Seeing the potential of his employee, Edison offered Tesla a solution to the problem of increasing the efficiency of the main production plant. He then said, "I'll give you $ 50,000 if you do it." In this way, Nikola Tesla's work on improving the efficiency of Edison Machine Works lasted over a year, where the key to solving this problem was to change the use of electricity in electric generators. Nikola Tesla proposed using a more efficient alternating current than the direct current used in Edison's company. A respected American entrepreneur and inventor, reluctant to pay any compliments, had to agree with Tesla. Anyway, when he later asked for the promised bonus, Edison said to him, "Tesla, you don't understand our American sense of humor," offering him a $ 10 a week raise. It's worth it
noted that Nikola Tesla was earning $ 18 a week at the time, so Edison offered him a fairly significant increase in income. However, offended Tesla decided to leave Edison Machine Works.
Since then, his activity has gained considerable momentum. In 1886, he collaborated with Robert Lane and Benjamin Vale, who supported him financially in establishing Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. American entrepreneurs, however, focused on the desire to earn money over the vision of creation, believing that Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing would be an ordinary production factory. Nikola Tesla had other plans, and he quickly broke off cooperation with greedy businessmen.
Taught by experience, in 1887 he acquired new investors, ie Alfred S. Brown representing the interests of Western Union, as well as the New York attorney Charles F. Peck, who together with him created the Tesla Electric Company, where the inventor could easily implement his visions. Tesla Electric Company's total income was divided into three parts: Tesla's profit, Brown's and Peck's profit, and an investment fund. Good working conditions led to the explosion of Tesla's talent.
The aforementioned conflict with Edison, apart from personal animosities, also had a civilization dimension. This is because in the persons of these two inventors two different ideas of the electrification of the world clashed. Although the Tesla concept allowed for much less energy loss and the use of much thinner cables, Edison decided to defend its monopoly at all costs. A real war began between the old master and the angry young. Edison, having money and what we could call a media base today, unleashed the psychosis of fear by trying to prove the alleged danger of alternating current. In gloomy spectacles, animals were electrocuted. The archives have preserved films in which an elephant was almost "fried" alive with high tension. The inventor of the light bulb was also not afraid to go to the extreme by arranging the first execution on the electric chair. According to eyewitness accounts, several approaches had to be made before the prisoner died, which resulted in the burning of the spinal cord.
With absolute certainty that his idea was better, Tesla did not give up. To convince people to him, Edison had to be beaten in every way. The ideal situation arose in Chicago at the 1893 World Exhibition. Placing his pavilion on it, a Serbian immigrant offered to illuminate the entire neoclassical building complex and create a spectacle that no man had ever seen before. In addition to the current itself, Nikola also needed light bulbs, and the patent was of course owned by Edison. Undaunted by the difficulties, he set to work as if in a trance. As Jeff Behary of the American Electricity Museum says, "Tesla beat Edison at his own game. Not only did he create an alternate light bulb, he did it faster and cheaper than its inventor." The effect was electrifying and his name became known all over the world overnight. Edison had to acknowledge defeat.
In the following years, Nikola Tesla introduced the world, among others an innovative AC generator (manufactured under the license of another inventor, George Westinghouse, who also financially supported Tesla in the creation of an AC power plant), constructed a radio and radio-controlled devices. He contributed to the development of solar and hydro energy and robotics, pushed for the concept of wireless lighting and data transmission, postulated the need for free energy, and some of his works and ideas were used in astronautics, automotive, military, medicine and other areas of knowledge. It is hard not to notice that Nikola Tesla conducted research for the development of the world, and not out of a primitive desire for profit or fleeting fame.
Driven by the wave of success, Tesla had all the predisposition to turn his achievements into millions of dollars. But financially, his life is a history of missed opportunities. The most spectacular of them was the fulfilled childhood dream of harnessing the energy of the monumental Niagara Falls. Thanks to his persistence, a huge hall with transformers was built at the waterfall, which, powered by the energy of the falling water, supplied electricity to the nearby Buffalo. Unfortunately, George Westinghouse, who was in financial trouble, turned to Tesla to cancel his patent royalties. Tesla treated him like a friend - he agreed and torn the contract for the salary from the power station at the waterfall. In one fell swoop, he lost a source of income that the then millionaires could only dream of.
It was the same with the radio. While Marconi was the first to transmit a radio signal across the Atlantic, there were as many as 17 competitor patents in his device. The Italian scientist received the Nobel Prize for his invention, but shortly after Tesla's death, the US Supreme Court revoked an earlier patent decision, assigning the radio to him. Also in the case of the construction of the radar, Émile Girardeau admitted that the main ideas he drew from the work of a genius Serb who never saw a dollar for his ideas used. Even the production of the world's first remote control device (a metal boat) did not bring him profit - the US military was in no hurry to spend money on radio-controlled torpedoes.
Nikola spoke more and more often about the fact that the world had not matured to his vision, but he would not stop working. It is not surprising then that after the fire, which at the end of the nineteenth century consumed a large part of his life achievements, he focused all his efforts on a project that was supposed to change the face of the world in a straight line - we are talking about World Wide Wireless, in short ... WWW.
In the spring of 1899, at the request of the US government, Tesla traveled to Colorado Springs to work on the development of a radio communication system. A huge station built in the area generated enormous lightning, which once contributed to the blowing up of a nearby power plant. The population began to fear him, and he himself became known as perhaps the first "mad scientist" in the world. In fact, Tesla thought day and night about the possibility of wireless and free transmission of electricity and information. However, his optimism did not always affect investors. "If electricity is to be available to everyone, where are we going to put the counter?" One of them asked.
In 1905, Tesla wrote that he dreamed of: "A cheap and simple device that everyone can fit in a pocket will receive news from the world or any other. The whole Earth will be transformed into one giant brain". At one point during the work on the project, sensational news circulated in the press about the alleged contact with an alien civilization. Although Tesla was in fact the first in the world to construct the prototype of the current radio telescopes, it was laughed at and taken little seriously because it mistook cosmic rays for a signal sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.
The genius inventor achieved short-term popularity in the early 20th century. The media and the world of science became interested in him, and in 1915 there was even speculation about the Nobel Prize for Nikola Tesla, although he was also regularly involved in disputes of various types. Any work by Tesla on the use of alternating current was long tried to discredit Thomas Edison, and the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi dishonorably patented the design of the radio, although he relied on patents by Nikola Tesla in his efforts. The inventor also struggled with a group of other scientists or amateurs of inventiveness, who drew on his ideas and attributed them to themselves.
Moreover, Tesla, which seems absurd today, has never been freed from suspicions of collaboration with the supernatural. Even at the beginning of the 20th century, a huge transformer constructed according to his idea (co-financed by J. P. Morgan), the so-called The Wardenclyffe Tower or Tesla Tower, which was erected in the village of Shoreham on New York's Long Island, were described by local residents as "the devil's invention", although it was supposed to be used for wireless data transmission at that time unimaginable. The transformer was demolished in 1917, but in the following years among Americans, even the educated ones, there was a perception of Tesla's demonic connections, which, moreover, prevented him from raising funds for the implementation of certain plans. Nikola Tesla was guided by reason and scientific methods in his work, but his bold visions undoubtedly outgrown the times in which he lived.
In his private life, although he did not have much of it, Tesla did not avoid gambling (during his stay in the USA he devoted himself to this addiction to a lesser extent, then playing more often than playing pool than cards), and his greatest hobby was watching pigeon behavior. The inventor never married, consciously devoting his life to science. He also had no qualms about the risks associated with uncertain investments, which were his most sophisticated visions. When making financial decisions, he was guided by passion, not economic calculus, which probably contributed to his poor financial condition at the end of his life.
It is worth remembering that Nikola Tesla led a regular and orderly but exhausting lifestyle. The results of his work aroused admiration and envy. Quite quickly, on July 30, 1891, he was granted American citizenship. He was also a laureate of several awards, incl. The Edison Medal in 1916. Today, Americans are eager and proud to talk about the merits of Tesla, taking a role in protecting his talent, seeing him more as an American than a Serb. The inventor also received countless commemorations and honors postmortem. It remains to be asked why this fascinating, deserved and at the same time unsurpassed mind was dying in poverty and oblivion? Let Tesla answer himself, who said back in 1919: "the world is not ready for my project". Has anything changed since then?
Nikola, accustomed to skepticism, continued his work, convincing the New York financiers with his charisma to invest in another, even larger broadcasting station. While the facility was being considered for closure due to financial difficulties, Tesla was confident it was inevitably getting closer to its ultimate goal. Unfortunately, due to the outbreak of World War I and the lack of any real successes, the project was suspended and the large antenna was dismantled.
Over the years, Tesla more and more often referred to the philosophy of the East, in his writings the cosmos was compared to a symphony of electricity, which is waiting to be tame.
Based on this assumption, he rightly predicted that each object has its own vibration frequency, and by strengthening it, we can have an impact on its structure. Rumor has it, towards the end of his life, he claimed to be in possession of a device the size of an alarm clock, which could collapse the Brooklyn Bridge after an hour's vibration. He also confessed to possessing plans for a mysterious "death ray". Unfortunately, the last stage of the Serbian emigrant's activity, mainly due to the posthumous requisition of documents by the FBI, still seems to be full of ambiguities. Abandoned and lonely, he died in 1943 in a modest hotel in New York.
Who really was the man who lit the world? At the height of his fame at banquets organized at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Tesla charmed the New York elite like a seasoned magician. Handsome and gallant, he loved to watch the expressions of his guests as he passed thousands of volts through his body as he lit a light bulb in his hand.
Although women adored him, he never married, devoting his life to science. In time, he began to withdraw from the world and to show symptoms of a mental illness. He hated pierced ears, the touch of a woman's hair, or the touch of a hand. He attached more and more importance to the number three, e.g. he circled the building three times before entering it. There were times when he talked to pigeons as to people. After the death of one of them, he stopped publishing, claiming that his mission was complete.
Some say it was the price he paid for one of the most brilliant minds in history. Inventions appeared in his imagination, he dreamed of wireless energy that would power the whole world and avert conflicts. In virtually every field, from broadcast to radiation, he was ahead of officially recognized discoverers.
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