The world owes a debt of gratitude to the author of nearly eight hundred inventions in the field of electrical and radio engineering for the second (technological) phase of the industrial revolution. While the average person might struggle to comprehend the blueprints, formulas, and diagrams of this legendary inventor, rumors about the “secrecy of his archives” have fueled interest in his scientific legacy for almost a century. Myths of varying degrees of credibility associated with his name continue to intrigue. Fascinating facts about Nikola Tesla’s biography pertain not only to his work but also to his personal life—or rather, the lack thereof: the solitary immigrant lived his life as a bachelor and left no descendants, as he devoted his life energy to scientific research.
Main Inventions
Nikola Tesla opened the door to the widespread use of electricity. Even if the remarkable achievements of the American-Serbian engineer and experimenter were limited to the creation of an alternating current generator based on the effect of rotating magnetic fields, that alone would have been enough to secure his pivotal role in the development of future global technologies. It’s no wonder that science historians have dubbed this unique engineer and innovator the “inventor of the 20th century.”
However, the contribution of this brilliant physicist to technological progress extends far beyond his primary invention. The engineer even had a hand in creating a “perpetual motion machine”: after Nikola Tesla installed a box with two rods in a Pierce-Arrow car in 1931, replacing the traditional internal combustion engine, the vehicle ran for an entire week without needing a recharge.
Among his gifts to humanity are wireless energy transmission, remote control, fluorescent lighting, electric clocks, solar-powered engines, electric meters, frequency meters, improvements in steam turbines, radio equipment, and much more. The so-called “Tesla drone,” demonstrated at an electrical exhibition in 1898, became one of the first prototypes of a radio-controlled boat and telemechanics in general. His last patent was granted in 1928 for a vertical takeoff aircraft.
Nikola Tesla’s radio-controlled boat model, 1898
A Science Enthusiast
Nikola Tesla holds over 700 patents registered in 26 countries. The author of the first samples of high-frequency electromechanical generators and high-frequency transformers defined the development of a new branch of electrical engineering and developed principles for treating with high-frequency currents, testing their effects on himself and discovering their potential for medical applications.
Tesla also studied the effects of X-rays before their official discovery by Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen and, researchers believe, likely preceded Guglielmo Marconi and Alexander Popov in inventing radio. It is known that since 1893, the engineer had been actively engaged in wireless communication and invented the radio mast.
Nikola Tesla was the author of valuable ideas that could have made him the wealthiest person in the world. However, the inventor ended his life in debt, as he found meaning in scientific exploration rather than in accumulating wealth. His biography includes not only ideas for promising technologies but also deception from employers, scientific rivalry, and the basic struggle for survival in a foreign country, including digging ditches for a piece of bread.
Interesting Facts About Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla developed the ability to harness the energy of the cosmos and initiated contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. His “demonic” appearance—a tall, slender brunette with sunken cheeks and piercing eyes—matched the traits of his extraordinary personality. From childhood, Tesla was haunted by flashes of light and vivid visions invisible to others, which he often confused with reality. He considered light to be the eternal and primary energy, essentially, God.
Those who knew Tesla regarded him as a visionary: he advised one friend to avoid traveling on the infamous Titanic and persuaded another to cancel a train ticket that later met with disaster. This eccentric man never had a romantic partner, believing that family and children would distract him from his beloved work.
Tesla at the age of 23
Instead, he had a beloved bird, which he treated as his most cherished companion and for which he lived. Nikola Tesla constantly fed pigeons near his hotel and became particularly attached to a “special white pigeon,” with whom he formed a genuine friendship. He would take the bird to his room when it needed care. After her death, the heartbroken man suffered so deeply that he struggled to work for a long time. “She was my only love, and now my purpose in life is gone,” lamented the lonely inventor.
Quirks and Phobias
Throughout his life, the inventor had many fears and prejudices that people “in their right minds” found amusing. For instance, Tesla’s diet always included milk and honey, which he believed would help him live for a century and a half. Although he actually died sixty years earlier than he intended, he tried to avoid medical help and passed away from a coronary crisis at the age of 87, which is quite respectable.
At the same time, after contracting cholera at the age of 17, Nikola Tesla developed a lifelong phobia of microbial contamination (an obsessive-compulsive disorder that was a response to the real threat he faced) and suffered from a panic fear of germs throughout his life. His misophobia (fear of contamination) manifested in compulsive handwashing, cleansing rituals, and avoidance behaviors triggered by unpleasant intrusive thoughts.
It is known that in hotels, Tesla had his towels changed 18 times a day. He avoided handshakes, refrained from touching other people and surfaces, and was afraid of railings, doorknobs, keys, and telephones. He shunned tables, sofas, other people’s dishes, soap, and jewelry. Rumors circulated about his fear of pearls: Tesla categorically avoided women wearing pearl jewelry.
A Techie from the Countryside
The future electrical researcher was born on a stormy night on July 10, 1856. He was the fourth child of Milutin Tesla, a priest of the Orthodox Church, and Georgina (née Mandic), also the daughter of an Orthodox priest. In total, this Serbian family had five children: two sons and three daughters. Nikola Tesla’s homeland was the village of Smiljan near the town of Gospić in Croatia (then part of Austria-Hungary), making him a compatriot of both Serbs and Croats.
His illiterate mother could teach her children only folk songs, of which she knew many, while Nikola sought further knowledge at the gymnasium (the family moved to Gospić in 1862). He continued his education at the Higher Real School in Karlovac, and in 1875, he enrolled at the Polytechnic School in Graz, where he studied electrical engineering alongside physics, mathematics, and mechanics. Tesla did not officially receive his bachelor’s degree due to numerous absences from lectures.
The restored house where Tesla was born in the village of Smiljan
However, some biographers write about the diligence of the boy, who managed to cover the curriculum of two courses in one year. He studied textbooks from 3:00 AM to 11:00 PM and did not complete his studies only because he ran out of money. It is also known that in 1880, Tesla studied for a year in the philosophy department at Charles University in Prague, and in 1881, he moved to Budapest, where he got a job at a telegraph company.
American Humor
From 1882 to 1884, Nikola Tesla worked at Edison Machine Works: he initially worked for the famous American inventor Thomas Edison in Paris and Strasbourg, and later in the U.S. (installing lighting equipment and repairing electric motors). However, the company deceived the inventor by failing to pay him the promised reward. The engineer was denied a stipulated bonus of $50,000 (equivalent to about a million dollars today).
The engineer, who repaired direct current motors and generators, irritated Edison with his penchant for research, and the enterprising employer decided to exploit his employee’s “creative streak” for his own needs: Tesla was to improve the performance of Edison’s devices with his inventions. During his year at the company, the engineer enhanced his employer’s machines with 24 innovations, improving the operational characteristics of the equipment and creating new types of switches and regulators.
Edison Machine Works, where Tesla worked
However, instead of the expected bonus, the inventor received a suggestion from Edison to… improve his English skills, as the immigrant “didn’t understand American humor well.” Offended, Nikola Tesla immediately quit and even later refused to accept a joint Nobel Prize with his tormentor (though Edison also declined it). On another occasion, investors did not pay the inventor for his idea of an arc lamp for street lighting, offering instead shares in the future manufacturing company, and in response to his refusal, they slandered the inventor and withdrew their services.
The War of Currents
In 1886-87, the young engineer survived by doing odd jobs digging ditches and other manual labor from autumn to spring. But the talented electrical engineer eventually found people who believed in him. Further financial support from acquaintances allowed Nikola Tesla to open his own street lighting installation company in 1887, and he illuminated many American cities in the early 20th century.
Before long, a buyer emerged for forty of his patents: Nikola Tesla’s inventions significantly increased the wealth of industrialist George Westinghouse, bringing the inventor an average of $25,000 for each patent. Collaboration with Westinghouse Electric provided the creator of the first working model of an alternating current induction generator with both scientific and financial satisfaction.
In partnership with his new ally, the engineer opened an office on Fifth Avenue in New York, next to Edison’s office. This marked the beginning of a fierce competitive battle between Tesla-Westinghouse’s alternating current systems and Edison’s direct current. The “War of Currents,” as this competition was termed by the Encyclopædia Britannica, ultimately saw Nikola Tesla emerge victorious: the dominance of alternating current in the production and transmission of electricity over direct current continues to this day.
Mark Twain in Tesla’s laboratory, 1894
Energy Without Borders
In 1888, Tesla applied the phenomenon of rotating magnetic fields he discovered in the design of a high-frequency electrical generator, and three years later, he invented a transformer for producing high-frequency oscillations of high voltage. The powerful multi-phase alternating current generators of Nikola Tesla enabled Westinghouse Electric to activate the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, Niagara Falls, in 1895.
However, alongside this landmark event, a fire broke out in Tesla’s laboratory. The building on Fifth Avenue was completely destroyed on March 13, 1895. The fire consumed Nikola Tesla’s new inventions, including a mechanical oscillator, an innovative method of electric lighting, research into the nature of electricity, and a method for remote wireless transmission of messages.
Nevertheless, the scientist did not view this misfortune as an irreparable tragedy, as he was able to restore everything lost from memory. By autumn, the inventor had resumed his research—he moved to a new laboratory on Houston Street, from which he transmitted a radio signal over a distance of 30 miles (48 kilometers) in 1896, and three years later, he built a laboratory to study the electrical potential of the planet in Colorado Springs. His observations led him to contemplate the idea of wireless energy transmission over unlimited distances.
On the Edge of Fantasy
This possibility was demonstrated in 1899 during a public display of gas discharge lamps and electric motors that operated wirelessly on high-frequency current. An experiment generating standing waves proved their spherical propagation from the transmitter, increasing in intensity as they reached diametrically opposite points on Earth. Nikola Tesla modeled ball lightning, discovered a method to create artificial thunderstorms, and even suggested ways to induce earthquakes in remote parts of the globe.
Some even associate the researcher’s experiments with the Tunguska meteorite fall: on the eve of that event, the scientist requested the locations of the least populated areas of Siberia. The culmination of those unprecedented studies occurred between 1900 and 1905 when Nikola Tesla attempted to achieve wireless energy transmission on Long Island. A series of experiments were conducted in complete secrecy, and after the onset of World War I, he contemplated creating a superweapon: “One day, a machine will be invented that can eliminate several armies with a single action.”
The physicist’s experiments could serve both destructive and creative purposes. For instance, the scientist proposed a way to provide affordable electricity to all humanity. Interestingly, funding for the creation of such a station based on the Wardenclyffe project was cut off after Tesla’s plans to attempt to obtain a massive amount of energy using an impulse method became known. John Pierpont Morgan’s withdrawal from investing led to the closure of one of the most ambitious and mysterious experiments of its time. In 1917, the heavily constructed tower was demolished by the American government, which feared interest from German spies.
The “Secret Legacy”
In 1937, the elderly scientist was struck by a taxi in New York while crossing the street. Nikola Tesla, as was his habit, did not seek medical attention and lived for several more years, hardly leaving his hotel room in Manhattan. He died at the age of 87 at the New Yorker Hotel, approximately on the night of January 7-8, 1943. Two days prior, his nephew visited him and was the last family member to see him alive. The housekeeper hesitated for three days to enter the room due to the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. In 1957, the urn containing the ashes of the great inventor was transferred from New York to the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade. A unit of measurement for magnetic induction (the tesla) and the eponymous car company (Tesla) are named in honor of the scientist.
Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, where Tesla died
According to writer Tim Schwartz, after the scientist’s death, his papers were seized from his hotel room by FBI special agents. Allegedly, this agency suspected that some of his drawings had been stolen by German intelligence during his lifetime for the creation of flying saucers, prompting measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. Meanwhile, other discovered documents of Tesla, according to the author of a sensational book, were sold to pay off the inventor’s debts and bills.
It was from those sold papers, the author claimed, that it became known how the scientist described hostile extraterrestrials attempting to control the human brain. And there are many such dubious speculations associated with the name of Nikola Tesla. Some of our contemporaries link climate change, tsunamis, and earthquakes to a secret tectonic weapon that the legendary scientist might have contributed to creating. “Death rays,” “airborne energy transmission,” and so on—these are irresistible topics for discussion and a “fertile” ground for fantasies that fall into the realm of conspiracy theories. There will always be a place for the mysterious inventor who understood what others could not.