When asked about notable scientists in history, who would you think about? Albert Einstein? Isaac Newton? Thomas Alva Edison? Little did we know Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest minds until the last decade. He was long neglected by the world despite his greatest inventions which are still predominant across the world today. He was known for his futuristic visionary far ahead of his time.
His birthday June 10 is proclaimed as World Tesla Day by the USA. His major contributions include alternating current (AC) induction motor. Despite his contributions in science, he led a miserable life which left him penniless in a small hotel room in New York at the time of his death. He was not just a scientist or an engineer, he was also a poet, philosopher, music fanatic, a linguist and a connoisseur of food and drink.
Born on 10 July 1856 into an ethnic Serb in the village Smiljan, Lika country in the Austrian Empire as the fourth child to Milutin Tesla an Orthodox priest and Duka Tesla. His mother despite being unschooled was highly intelligent used to make her own household appliances and has the ability to memorize Serbian epic poems.
Nikola Tesla credited his mom for his memorising ability, creativity and poetic touch. He was able to memorize whole books and logarithmic tables which amused people around him. He was said to have a photographic memory. He was able to do complex mathematics like calculus in his head. He is a linguist who could speak eight languages namely English, French, Serbo-Croatian, Latin, Italian, Hungarian, German, Czech. Since his childhood, he had had flashbacks to events that happened when he was younger.
His primary schooling was done in Smiljan before his family moved to Gospic where he completed his middle school. He then completed his high school in Higher Real Gymnasium at Karlovac. His interest in math and physics develop to love in electricity with the help of his physics teacher.
With a military frontier scholarship, he studied at the Technical University of Graz. He was rewarded as a star student in his first year at the university scoring highest grades. However, he got into a conflict with one of his professors over Gramme dynamo’s working. Tesla lost his scholarship and got addicted to gambling and used all of his tuition money, allowances to it. He couldn’t write exams as he was unprepared and couldn’t get grades for his last semester. Later in 1880, he joined philosophy at University of Prague but couldn’t get grades her either. So, technically which means he never graduated. Tesla had always had health issues from contracting cholera in 1873, suffering a nervous breakdown in 1879 and many more.
It is said that works a lot with no holidays and meagre sleep. His professors sent warning letters to Tesla’s father stating he would die of overwork and insisted him to take Tesla home, which Tesla read after his father’s death. In 1881, he first worked with a telephone company as an electrical engineer in Budapest, Hungary. Nikola Tesla then worked in at Budapest telephone exchange company in the same year as chief electrical position. In 1882 Tesla got a job in Paris with the Continental Edison Company.
Nikola Tesla worked in the Ivry-sur-Seine suburb of Paris. In 1884, he went to New York to work for Thomas Edison with money as little as four cents, calculations of a flying machine, some of his own poems and a letter of introduction from his manager Charles Batchelor stating “I know two great men and you are one of them. The other is this young man!” Soon Tesla was hired after a quick discussion about his plans with Edison. They started working hard on improvising Edison’s plans and inventions. But since the two are from different background with different personalities, they couldn’t work together for a long time. Edison was a mastermind who knew how to run a business, marketing and was a financial power, while Tesla was vulnerable and philosophical. Through the eyes of Tesla, the reason for their partition was Edison not standing by his statement which said he would pay Tesla a sum of $50,000 if he could improve the DC generation plan of Edison. When he improved, Nikola Tesla mentioned Edison refused to pay the amount and said: “when you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate American joke”. Soon after this Tesla quit the job and they parted their ways. This part of this life from 7 December 1884 to 4 January 1885 has just one phrase on his diary covering two pages “Good by to the Edison Machine Works”.
After parting ways from Edison, he worked on an arc lighting system and took the help of attorney Lamuel W. Serrell, the attorney who Edison uses for the help with patents. This got him two investors to fund him to start Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. After completing his work with arc lighting he was forced out of the work since investors haven’t shown much interest in it. It thus left Tesla penniless. He worked as a daily wage labourer at repair shops and ditch-digging works to earn for his living.
In 1886, Nikola Tesla met Alfred S. Brown and they discussed starting a company based on Tesla’s idea. In 1887 they formed Tesla Electric Company and they soon set up a laboratory for Tesla. In the same year, Induction motor that ran on AC current was developed. In 1888 he worked for Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company’s Pittsburgh labs and worked on powering the city’s streetcars on Alternating power. Due to some financial trouble, they had called some agreements off. But six years later, he purchased Tesla’s patents for a sum of $216,000 as part of a patent sharing agreement with General electric. This gave him enough money to fund his own projects and interests for many years.
In 1891, Tesla got US citizenship and also patented his Tesla Coil. From 1892 to 1894 Tesla was the vice president of the present IEEE (then, American Institute of Electrical Engineers). He worked on Polyphase system and Steam-powered oscillating generator. In 1895, Edward Dean Adams set up to fund Nikola Tesla Company to develop and market Tesla’s patents.
On 13 March 1895, his lab in the 4th floor of South avenue building caught fire through the basement and collapsed into 2nd floor. Nikola Tesla then rebuilt his lab in East Houston Street. He also worked on X-rays, radio remote control.
Author
Yellam Vishitha Reddy
Jain University
