BIOGRAPHY OF NIKOLA TESLA

                                            BIOGRAPHY OF NIKOLA TESLA
He grew up to be over six feet tall, a fashionabledresser, and friends with some of the most famous Americans of his time. But he started life in a corner of the AustrianEmpire…

                                      Early Life

                                                     
When Nikola Tesla was born, the Austrian Empire still existed. An ethnic Serb, he came into the world inmodern-day Croatia on July 10th, 1856. His birth seemed to foreshadow his life’swork, as his mother was in labor during a massive lightning storm. The lightning that flashed during Tesla’sbirth was considered an ill omen by the midwife, but Tesla’s mother didn’t agree. Instead, she proclaimed that:“He will be a child of light.” His mother was not wrong - as we know today,Tesla is the reason we have alternating current electricity. But, on top of that, starting in childhood,Tesla saw flashes of light that reportedly came to him before he had ideas. There’s another side of the story to theflashes of light that has emerged, however. It’s possible that these flashes - or visions- were actually caused by a traumatic event he witnessed in childhood. When Tesla was just five years old he sawhis only brother, Dane, die in a horse riding accident. It was after this that Tesla began havingthe flashes of lights and visions.

 He had them for the rest of his life. The family lived in a modest home, one thathas since been rebuilt complete with a statue of Tesla in the yard. Tesla’s father was an Eastern Orthodox minister,and his mother was a brilliant woman who was an inventor herself. She created mechanical appliances to use aroundthe house, and her tinkering and creative thinking undoubtedly influenced her son. Tesla’s mother also had an incredible memory. She could memorize entire epic poems, andTesla credited his own photographic memory to the genes he inherited from his mother. He memorized entire books, visualized hisprojects and ideas, and spoke several languages. In his early years at school, Tesla’s studiesfocused on German, math, and religion. By the time he entered the later years ofhis education science had become a key focus. He moved away from his family to attend theHigher Real Gymnasium. Here, Tesla was accused of cheating becauseof his photographic memory.
                                                       
His outstanding memory allowed him to performintegral calculus using only his mind - no pen or paper required - and so his teachersbecame suspicious. Nonetheless, Tesla was able to finish thenecessary work to graduate in only three years instead of the customary four. During his three years at the Higher RealGymnasium, Tesla was introduced to a phenomenon that ultimately defined his career and howhe’s remembered today. In his physics class, the teacher demonstratedelectricity. Tesla was fascinated. But it would be some time before he couldlaunch a career studying and using electricity. He became ill shortly after graduating in1873.

For nine months, he was bedridden with choleraand only narrowly escaped death. His brush with death helped form Tesla’slifelong germaphobe tendencies...he was so fearful of germs that it took him 18 napkinsto get through a single meal. In 1874, Tesla was expected to be conscriptedinto the military. Tesla had no interest in serving, and managedto escape from the requirement by running away to a mountainous region where he wasable to disguise himself as a hunter. After a year, Tesla was able to emerge fromthe mountains and start seriously studying science. He began attending classes at Austria Polytechnic,where he quickly showed himself to be both a talented and diligent student. In fact - he may have been too diligent. Years after he left the school, and afterhis father had died, Tesla discovered a pile of letters that the school sent to his fatherwarning them that Tesla was overworking himself.
                                                                
According to Tesla himself, he was workingincredibly hard - getting up at 3 AM, and not going to bed until 11 PM. During that time, he was fully focused onhis studies. He didn’t even take off holidays or Sundaysfrom this routine. By the time his first year was over, he hadpassed twice as many exams as he needed to and received the highest grades possible. But even someone with a brain like Tesla’scouldn’t sustain that kind of schedule. His second year in school was a complete reversalfrom his first. After losing a scholarship at the end of hissecond year, Tesla began gambling. Gambling wasn’t just a pastime for him - hewas addicted to it. He lost his tuition money gambling, and thenwhen final exams rolled around he was unprepared to take them. He never did take them...and so he never graduated.

Unwilling to face his family and tell themhe did not graduate, Tesla simply fled to the town of Maribor and took up work as adraftsman. He started gambling again, playing cards onthe street. At first, some of Tesla’s friends thoughthe had drowned, but Tesla’s father figured out the truth eventually. He tried to get his son to return home, butTesla refused. Eventually, he was forced to return home whenhe was arrested for not having a residence permit. For a year, Tesla worked as a teacher in Gospic,the town where his family lived. But his extended family wanted to help himget back to school...so they pooled their funds and off to Prague he went. But it wasn’t an easy jump back into academia.
                                                             
He arrived too late to actually enroll. And even if he hadn’t been late, Tesla wasmissing some of the key studies required to enroll. Namely, Czech and Greek. So he did not achieve his academic dreams,but by 1881 Tesla was able to find work in his preferred field. He had found a job as an electrical engineerwith the Central Telephone Company in Budapest. While working there, he and a friend had ahabit of walking through the park. One day during the walk, Tesla got one ofhis visions - he knew how to build an induction motor. He picked up a stick, found a patch of dirt,and sketched out his idea there and then. He then built a prototype of the motor. It made sense to him, and he knew the importanceof it, but he couldn’t drum up much interest for his invention in Europe. AmericaWhile Tesla was working in Europe, Thomas Edison had launched his Edison Company - whichincluded a branch in Paris.

 Tesla secured a job at the Continental EdisonCompany helping with the installation of lighting in Paris. His talents were soon taken advantage of fordesign and for troubleshooting. And within two years, he was recruited totravel to America to work for Edison directly in New York. He and hundreds of others worked in Manhattan,installing lights and building out an electric utility for New York City. Tesla described his experiences and impressionsof Edison: “I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884,and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays notexcepted.
                                                               
His existence was made up of alternate periodsof work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusementof any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had notmarried later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life topreserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passionfor work.” But as he had in his first year of school,Tesla was also a non-stop worker. One story relates that he stayed out all nightworking, and took some gibes from people for being out all night. When Edison found out he was actually outworking, Tesla earned Edison’s respect. Working for Edison wasn’t ideal for Tesla,though.
                                                                
He only lasted six months at the company. Edison and Tesla disagreed over the alternatingcurrent and the direct current, with Tesla favoring alternating and Edison favoring direct,but it’s still unclear if that disagreement was the primary reason Tesla ended up leavingthe company. Tesla and Edison also differed in their approachesto business and science - Edison was attuned to the marketing side of things, while Teslawas highly focused on the scientific invention and innovation part of the work. It’s possible his leaving may have beenprecipitated by a bonus he thought he was getting...and was then refused. The manager at the Edison Company challengedemployees to design two dozen different machines.

The first person to successfully do so wouldreceive a huge bonus - fifty thousand dollars! That translates to millions of dollars bytoday’s standards. Tesla jumped at the chance to tackle the inventionand earn a huge amount of money. He completed the task, presented his work...andwas denied the bonus. The manager and Edison claimed the challengehad been issued jokingly...and Edison himself told an upset Tesla:"Tesla, you don't understand our American humor.” Regardless of the reason, the fact is thatTesla departed from Edison’s company after only a few short months. He had it in his mind that he was going tostart his own company, researching and working with alternating currents. It wasn’t so easy to just get started, though. When Tesla quit Edison’s company, he hadto earn money to live on by digging ditches for only two dollars a day. "My high education in various branches ofscience, mechanics and literature seemed to me like a mockery," he said of this time.
                                                      
 While he was doing that, though, he was pitchinginvestors. He found people who liked what they heard,and trusted the scientific knowledge of this young immigrant. By 1885, he was working on getting his arclighting system patented and had a funding promise from two businessmen to start TeslaElectric Light and Manufacturing. Only a year into the venture, though, theypulled out and left Tesla in the lurch. Yet again, the inventor was penniless. In 1886, though, he met two men who were lookingto invest in scientific inventions. They set Tesla up with a laboratory in NewYork City, established a profit-sharing structure, and the Tesla Electric Company was born. In only a year, Tesla had created an inductionmotor that ran on alternating current. This time, he had two business partners whowere ready and willing to handle the marketing and business end of things. Soon after, Tesla published a paper entitled:"A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers.” It laid out his ideas, and it got him noticed. George Westinghouse read the paper, and heliked what he read. Westinghouse licensed Tesla’s inductionmotor, and also gave him a consulting job at the Westinghouse Electric and ManufacturingLab in Pittsburgh. Westinghouse wanted to be the person who providedthe United States with long distance power, and he believed Tesla was the person to helphim achieve his goal. In the early 1890s, Westinghouse and Edisonwere competing heavily in the electric industry.

Edison was throwing out claims that Tesla’sAC current wasn’t safe, and meanwhile Westinghouse was facing financial difficulties. But Westinghouse paid Tesla for the licensing,and so he had the ability to continue working on projects that he wanted to. One of those projects was the Tesla coil. The Tesla Coil, which he patented in 1891,allowed electricity to be transmitted wirelessly. It was the first invention of its kind, andit was used in antennas, used to send telegraphs, and even though the original design isn’tused anymore, a different version of it is still used in tv and radio to this day. 1891 was a landmark year in Tesla’s lifefor another reason, too. Along with the patent for the Tesla Coil,he was also granted U.S. citizenship. Tesla continued his relationship with Westinghouseinto the 1890s, as they sought out his help for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Westinghouse was in charge of lighting theentire event, but also had its own display. Here, he gave demonstrations to the public,showing how an AC current worked.

Tesla’s next major project came at Niagarafalls. Power was being generated at the falls, butthere was a need for an efficient transmission system. Based on Tesla’s recommendation, Westinghousewas hired to build an AC generation system at Niagara. Tesla did the design work, and the resultinghydroelectric power plant began providing electricity to the city of Buffalo, New York. With all of these projects, Tesla was gainingvisibility both in American and around the world. And he was getting to know other high profilepeople, too. Not all of them were in the scientific sphere,either. One of the American celebrities that Teslagot to know was Mark Twain. Even when he was living in Croatia, Teslawas reading Twain’s books. The two met in New York City, having crossedpaths at a social event. Twain had always been interested in technologicalinnovation, and so the two spent much time together in Tesla’s lab. A photograph of Twain’s hand that Teslatook using light from “Crookes Tubes” brought Tesla right to the edge of discoveringx-rays...unfortunately he didn’t realize how close he had come until x-rays were actuallydiscovered and the use of crookes tubes in the invention was made known. Twain was also a part of another Tesla experiment...anexperiment specifically designed to address Twain’s digestive issues.

 Twain was often constipated, and he wasn’tshy about complaining of the condition. Tesla had developed a vibrating disk thatwould essentially shake whoever stood on top of it. He urged his author friend to climb on boardthe device, and literally have his digestion issues solved by shaking his bowels loose. When Tesla thought Twain had had enough ofthe shaking treatment, he told him to get off. But Twain didn’t want to get off. He stayed on top of the disk, and continuedto be shaken, ignoring Tesla’s urgings. He shouldn’t have ignored Tesla - eventuallythe shaking did its job, and then some, on Twain’s bowels. He couldn’t control them. The famous author had quite literally goneto the bathroom in his suit in the middle of Nikola Tesla’s laboratory. Tesla never stopped inventing. He said that he only slept two hours per night,and he was always looking for the next project. Wireless transmission of electricity was oneof his main goals, but he needed funding to achieve it.
                                                            
Living in New York, he had ample access towealthy people. He was able to convince J. Pierpont Morganof the viability of wireless transmission, and the banker provided him with one hundredfifty thousand dollars to build a transmission tower. He was competing with Marconi to transmitwireless messages, but Marconi got there first. Investors, including Morgan, pulled theirfunds from Tesla’s project and he was forced to abandon the effort in 1906. When the project was abandoned, Tesla didn’tjust have to stop construction - he had to actually mortgage the property. Tesla owed huge amounts of money to the WaldorfAstoria. He lived at the lavish hotel, and he livedlarge - spending twenty thousand dollars - that’s nearly five hundred thousand today - in theshort time he lived there. In 1917, the transmission tower was demolishedafter Tesla lost it in foreclosure. He also tried to sue Marconi, asserting thathe had stolen Tesla’s ideas to create his wireless transmission technology. Tesla was a genius, there’s no doubt aboutit. But he was a difficult man - he had many quirksand obsessions, and was completely, utterly focused on his work. He never married, thinking a woman in hislife would interfere with his work.

As he said,“I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by marriedmen.” But there also indications Tesla didn’tthink he was worthy of women. Then, he became dissatisfied with the attitudeof modern women in the 1920s. In 1924 interview, Tesla explained his thoughtson women: “I had always thought of woman as possessingthose delicate qualities of mind and soul that made her in these respects far superiorto man. I had put her on a lofty pedestal...I worshipedat the feet of the creature I had raised to this height, and, like every true worshiper,I felt myself unworthy of the object of my worship.But all this was in the past. Now the soft-voiced gentle woman of my reverentworship has all but vanished. In her place has come the woman who thinksthat her chief success in life lies in making herself as much as possible like man--in dress,voice and actions, in sports and achievements of every kind.” Tesla put some of his social and nurturingenergy that he wasn’t putting towards women towards the pigeons that flocked throughoutNew York City. And one in particular caught his attention.
                                                                         
“I have been feeding pigeons, thousandsof them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, purewhite with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she wouldcome flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman,and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purposeto my life. “When that pigeon was hurt, Tesla invented a device to help heal its injured wing andleg. Tesla lived out his life in New York City,never married, but surrounded by the famous and the intellectual. He invented constantly, right up through the1930s when he was well into his seventies. In January 1943, a maid decided to enter Tesla’shotel room even though he had put up a Do Not Disturb sign. It had been up for 48 hours...when the maidopened the door, she was confronted with the sight of the famous inventor’s body. He died of coronary thrombosis at 86 yearsold. Behind him, Tesla left a legacy of invention,innovation, and scientific exploration. He played a crucial role in the spread ofelectricity and the creation of devices that led to the technology we have today.