Nikola Tesla When we think of the great legendary minds of this world, we think of physicists and scientists like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton; but when we think of the person that is the base of all the technology we have now, we tend to forget Nikola Tesla. When he thinks of a new invention, he visualizes it, and thinks about it; then he tries his best to create it.

Nikola Tesla was born in a small village in 1856 in a particularly violent thunderstorm. He was called a “child of darkness” but his mom called him a “child of light”. When he was in school he had an amazingly strong memory that he could remember every dream he had since he was a baby. That’s why he had such great marks that his teachers thought he was cheating. It was clear that Tesla was a remarkable kid. He would perform integral calculus in his head; at that time it was so unusual. After he finished school early, he had a close rush with death; He had cholera. He said he might live if his father let him study engineering, and Tesla’s father agreed. In contrast to him

being incredibly sick and ill, he amazingly recovered. After that, his father let him study engineering at Hardboard University which would change the course of history forever.

At the age of 21, Tesla got the highest marks, could speak 7 different languages, and was the star student at his university’s record. He studied from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM daily. By the second year in his university, Tesla became addicted to gambling. Through his third year he gambled away all of his allowance, he still managed to gamble back his loses and gave it back to his family. He also never graduated from university, and he never got grades for it. In December of 1878 he ran away from his family. It was so intense that his cousin thought he had drowned in a river. In 1880, Tesla finally traveled to America, while he was traveling, he got robbed and arrived with 4 cents in his pocket and nothing else. After looking for a job everywhere, he decided to work for Thomas Edison. Edison had motors that would spark and stop; he then asked Tesla to improve them and offered him $1,000,000 and then Tesla got excited and jumped to work. Tesla worked hard for days, and when he returned to Edison, Edison just took his model

and said he was joking; he offered Tesla $10 per hour but Tesla refused; and this was the start of the current wars.

After being cheated on by Edison, Tesla tried to put his electricity to help the world, and not just for money. Tesla eventually struck up a relation with George Westingham. This would put him in direct competition with Edison and his company. Edison was undeveloped because his motors would be very dangerous, inefficient, and his dc current could only travel one mile. On the other hand, Tesla’s current could travel more distances, use thinner wires, and be less dangerous. The current wars were on, and the prize for the winner was the privilege of lighting the world up. By 1893, there were a lot of shady business deals, stolen ideas, and depression. By this time, the war of the currents was at its maximum. Edison knew that Tesla’s AC was better than his DC, so he needed a way to let people hate AC and love DC, but how? Families started seeing their pets getting stolen near Tesla’s lab. That’s because Edison hired teenagers to steal pets there and paid them twenty-five cents for each animal. Now that he has the animals, he went down street showing people that AC electricity was dangerous. What he did is he shocked every animal and the audience watched as they died. But then Tesla came up and

made another show where he made AC electricity pass through his own body and the audience watched in amazement. That was checkmate for Edison.

Before jumping into conclusions, let’s take a look at some of the other stuff Tesla invented. Tesla invented the first example of tele-automation: a toy radio controlled boat. People at the time were shocked, they thought that Tesla was using magic, wizardry, or even trapping a monkey in there. Tesla also took the first x-ray photos and for some reason, Edison claimed to do this and claimed it could heal blindness even though Tesla said they were dangerous. One of his most well-known and helpful inventions was the moving water generator when he lit 2 million light bulbs using only water from Niagara Falls. The earthquake machine was another successful but weird invention, he made a building wobble so much using a pocket sized machine. When the police came to see what they thought was an earthquake, Tesla simply put the machine back in his pocket and walked away. Conclusions: Tesla's ideas helped America grow into an industrial nation and a powerhouse of the 20th century yet he's marginalization was prevalent then and continues. Today, he is almost nonexistent if you look through many of today's text books this is mainly because

he did not care about profit, fame, or fortune; as Tesla famously said: “I don’t care that they stole my ideas, I care that they didn’t have any ideas”. He only wanted to make the world a better place. This was the polar opposite of most of the businessmen that day unfortunately took advantage of Tesla's nature profiting from his work and leaving him with nothing could be a lesson to us all: Have the purest intentions. But stand up for yourself and know your work.