Nikola Tesla: An Overlooked Genius
Tesla - The inventor
Whenever we peek for the most prominent brainiac people from our history, we notice a plethora of identical individuals with their grandest minds. Upon discovering these most distinguished minds of all time, we recognize many philosophical individuals such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Alva Edison, Sir Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, and many more. Apart from them, we overlook a very influential inventor of all time named Nikola Tesla, who dedicated his entire life to developing exceptional technologies to work for the refinement of humankind. He was one of the most distinguished scholarly individuals with zero egos, famished with more to comprehend, and an exquisite mind full of great ideas and innovations to make the human race flourish. Alternating-Current (AC) is one of the most significant innovations by Nikola Tesla that changed the entire globe with efficient energy supply and production.
Furthermore, Tesla invented additional sophisticated technologies, including the rotating magnetic field, the Tesla coil, wireless lighting, X-ray, radio remote control, wireless power transmission, the bladeless turbine, and many more. His immersive inventions have earned him around three hundred patents internationally. Tesla could speak around nine distinct languages. His eidetic memory influenced him to visualize everything he designed in his mind. However, some people find his extreme photographic memory and quirky sleeping habits full of mystery.
How did Tesla's boyhood make him one of the most phenomenal-minded people?
Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American innovator, engineer, and futurist. In 1856, Tesla was born in Smiljan, which the Austrian Empire recognized as Croatia. He was born into a Christian family. His father was a priest. Tesla was born in the night of darkness and severe thunderstorms. At that moment, people believed that Tesla was a child of darkness. Unlike others, Tesla's mother, Đuka Mandić, believed her child would bring lightness to this dark world. When Tesla was five, he witnessed his older brother Dane's heartbreaking death in a horse-riding mishap. Tesla completed his preliminary schooling in his birthplace. After completing his primary education, he moved to Karlovac to attend high school. Tesla was enlightened about the demonstration of electricity by his physics professor. With his impressive intelligence, he could accomplish integral calculus in his mind and graduated in 1873, finishing a four-year term in three years. After being inspired by the demonstration of electricity by his physics professor, Tesla wanted to be an engineer. However, his father wanted him to be a priest, like any typical father. When Tesla returned to Smiljan after graduating, he was infected with cholera and came very close to extinction. Tesla's father got emotional and eventually consented to send Tesla to the best engineering school if he healed from the sickness. Communication with nature made him physically and mentally robust while escaping from the Austro-Hungarian military after his immediate recovery from cholera. He joined Imperial-Royal Technical College in 1875 and possibly gained the highest grades. He once demonstrated to the professor how to enhance an electric motor using alternating currents. Surprisingly, in his third year, he began failing in school and finally dropped out! After being dropped out, he operated as a draftsman for a wage of 60 florins! In 1879, Tesla's father died due to an unknown disease.
Nikola Tesla began his engineering career.
In 1881, Tesla shifted to Budapest, Hungary, to operate for the Budapest Telephone Exchange, a telegraph company. Tesla was assigned as the chief electrician there. While working there, Tesla attempted to enhance a telephone amplifier that was never patented. Thus, Nikola Tesla began his engineering career.
Tesla's Unpatented Telephone Amplifier - Budapest Telephone Exchange
Tesla worked with Edison and moved to the US.
In 1882, the Continental Edison Company hired Tesla, impressed by his dynamic advancement. Tesla performed at the Société Electrique Edison to install lighting systems. The company noticed Tesla's brilliance in physics and engineering. Eventually, Tesla started to develop enhanced versions of dynamos and motors. After two years of joining the Continental Edison Company, Tesla resettled in New York City, US, and began to operate at the Machine Works on Manhattan's Lower East Side. After six months, Tesla got an offer of $50,000 from Edison to design twenty-four types of precise machines. After completing the tasks, Edison denied giving $50,000 to Tesla. That was the moment when the relationship between Edison and Tesla was sabotaged. Finally, Tesla quit Edison's company, Edison Machine Works, in 1885.
Edison's Headquarters in Milan
Commencing Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company
After leaving Edison Machine Works, Tesla started a company named Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing with financial support provided by Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail. After some time, Tesla became a direct opponent of Thomas Edison after inventing the future of electricity: alternating current (AC). Edison believed the direct current (DC) system was better than the alternating current (AC) system. However, DC was inefficient in transmission over long distances because of its energy loss. Tesla's alternating-current (AC) model reduces that energy loss significantly, as it is on a periodic system. Frequent changes in direction allowed Tesla to increase its energy efficiency, but on the contrary, it became destructive and deadly. Edison took this advantage and bluffed people by publicly executing animals and death-sentenced prisoners, using alternating current (AC), stating alternating current (AC) is dangerous and could kill them. Although having a mind full of kindness, Tesla never felt broken or humiliated. Tesla continued without caring about those incidents, even though bluffs were coming from Edison. Ultimately, the world converted to using AC instead of DC after comprehending its higher efficacy. This great inventor's notable inventions were the AC, the induction motor, the Tesla coil, X-rays, wireless lighting, and wireless power. Regardless, there are some disagreements among people about the radio patent.
Certification of the Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Company
Tesla’s later living circumstances, personal life, and habits
Though Tesla was one of the most eminent inventors of all time, he was full of deficits at the end of his life. He was highly focused on inventing different technologies. As a result, he never finagled financial security for himself. Moreover, he never committed to any relationship in his entire life for the sake of his research. Ultimately, Tesla faced loneliness in the latter part of his life. At that moment, Tesla thought of a strategy to move from one different hotel to another every few years and leave with gigantic unpaid bills.
On the other hand, Tesla was fond of pigeons and enjoyed feeding them every day. Once, he spent $2,000 to build a device that could heal a wounded pigeon. This activity refers to the captivating kindness of Nikola Tesla. Most people attempt to link his strange sleeping habits to his eidetic memory. He followed an extreme configuration of a polyphasic sleep schedule, recognized as the Uberman sleep cycle. It is developed with six evenly spaced naps lasting twenty minutes each, providing two hours of sleep per twenty-four hours. Tesla followed this extreme method of sleeping throughout his entire life. Likewise, his operating habits were also very strange to ordinary people. Commonly, Tesla worked every day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and had dinner at 8:10 p.m. After that, he resumed his work until three in the morning. Once, Tesla reportedly worked for around eighty hours in his lab without taking any breaks, food, or sleep. He also walked 8 to 10 miles daily to stay physically fit.
The Tesla Experimental Station
Demise, resting place, and a culmination of Tesla’s life
Nikola Tesla died of cardiac failure in 1943 at the age of 86 in New York City, US. He did not even get any company while passing! Tesla is resting peacefully at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia. Very few individuals are passionate about their lives and work for the flourishing of the human race. However, many of Tesla's inventions were classified by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) because people were not ready for that technology and could misapply those inventions during that period. People like Nikola Tesla will never be forgotten and will live among us eternally with their outstanding contributions to this world. To conclude the article, let us glance at this Nobel individual's secret behind his refined way of originating from two of his viral quotes:
“Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.”
