By: Evan Niles
“The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.” The modern world is a work of art; one contributed to and made possible by the hard work of the bold and creative innovators scattered throughout time. The world has evolved and grown to represent all that is mans ambition, from the imposing skylines of the worlds super cities, to the intangible, but ever important digital world, man has made its mark for all time, but some men have contributed more than others.
The leaps and bounds in the inventions of Austro-Hungarian genius, Nikola Tesla, have made nearly all faucets of modern life possible. From his infatuation with wireless possibilities, to his infamous Alternating Current and Tesla Coils, he made what would become the ease with which millions go about their day to day lives. No other inventor has driven technology to develop so rapidly or pushed the very edge of technology in order to fundamentally change the way in which people go about the medial task of life, but he was not without his struggles.
Tesla is a man clouded in mystery, dying in solitude with no money, he left only his inventions. These same inventions, or at least an improved or manipulated version, are present in all houses and buildings in the modern world, and are in fact in most electronic devices used today. However, some of his inventions would never make it out of the lab, simply due to their grandiose scale, or enormous price tags. Some of Telsa’s inventions, he would never see any recognition for, those he did receive praise for, were sold off at cut-rate prices so that he may move on to the next undertaking and dig himself out of debt. Through his hardships, be it scientific, or personal, Tesla became an almost forgotten memory in the pages of history, but an ever important inventor nonetheless. His childhood, his varied middle life success, and late years have made for a fascinating story that ushered in the twenty-first century.
Being born at precisely midnight on the night of 9 July/morning of 10 July 1856 during a fierce lightning storm the small town of Smiljan, Croatia (formerly the Austro-Hungarian Empire), proved to be an omen of what the future had in store for Nikola Tesla. Tesla was the genetic inheritor of a line of inventors on his mother’s side, his grandfather and great-grandfather had been semi-successful at creating household and agricultural inventions, as well as being successful and revered orthodox priest. His mother, Đuka, was soft on him and saw the creative genius within him, allowing him to have his space and to grow to be an inventor.
Tesla’s father, Milutin, was the son of an officer in the great army of Napolean, and had himself received a prominent military education. He was quite the natural philosopher, poet, and writer, who “later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence.”[i] Tesla remarked in his memoir. Tesla’s father had pushed for his son to go into the clerical work and become a priest, but Tesla resented this and longed to stray from the similar path his father had lead, “I was intended from my very birth for the clerical profession and this thought constantly oppressed me. I longed to be an engineer but my father was inflexible.”[ii]
Tesla remarks in his memoirs he wrote for Electrical Experimenter that there were perhaps more important factors in his early life than his upbringing that would lead him to be the eccentric inventor he became. During his childhood, Tesla suffered greatly from visions in his head that impaired his ability to function as a normal person would, “often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined.”[iii] Tesla was able to simply have a word spoken and he could visualize the object so vividly he would question whether or not it had physically been there at that moment.
Tesla tried numerous times, and with numerous doctors, to figure out exactly what these visions were, and whether or not they could be suppressed or remedied. None of the psychologist or physiologist he visited could ever give him a definitive answer, which lead him to come up with is own diagnosis. “The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation.”[iv] Tesla understood that these visions came from a great distress, but was certain it was not because he was crazy since he believed, “I was normal and composed.”[v]
Perhaps these visions were the result of a genetic predisposition he had inherited, since his brother, who had passed in a riding accident when Tesla was merely 5, used to have a similar condition. Tesla was unsure of what would have caused this condition, but he came up with a system to help manage it, or so he thought. He would simply try to calm his mind and focus on one specific object and channel all of his energy into it. This worked for some time, but as he began to run out of objects he had seen in his life, the objects he had already visited in his mind offered less and less of a reprieve from his hallucinations. Tesla, being the self-diagnosing man he was, decided that the answer was to simply see more things so that he would have a wider catalog of things to distract him. Tesla set out to travel the country side of Croatia when he was 17, traveling day, and night, searching for new and unique things to calm his mind.
The importance that Tesla took away from his early self-reliance and pressure from his parents was that he expanded his mind and learned things about himself that he may have never known otherwise. “I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind.”[vi] For a would-be inventor, this opened so many doors for him, not only mentally, but in the business world as well. The great many of these doors would lead Tesla’s inventions to prominent daily use in the modern world, and cement Tesla’s place in history as a prominent inventor, however, it would not be without its ups and downs pushing the genius to his limits.
Behind these doors were a great many powerful men, but in order to get there, Tesla had to migrate to the United States. In 1884 Tesla made the arduous journey from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the bustling city of New York. Two years prior to the move to America, Tesla had begun simple work for Thomas Edison in France at the Continental Edison Company. Tesla then relocated to New York and was almost immediately hired by Edison directly so that he could work at Edison Machine Works in Manhattan. Tesla began doing simple electrical engineering, and quickly progressed to more difficult problems.[vii] But these problems would soon grow to more than just work assignments.
Tesla went to work to redesign the Edison Company’s direct current machines; a task that Edison thought could not be done. According to Tesla, he told Edison he could make the machines more efficient and better economically, to this Edison supposedly responded that he would award Tesla $50,000 if he could do so. Tesla successfully completed this task and then inquired about his payment, Edison immediately said he was joking and that Tesla did not understand American humor, instead offering him a mere $10 a week pay increase. Tesla immediately resigned, leaving him jobless in this new country.
After this, Tesla would hit a low point in his life. He got entangled with some entrepreneurs who named a lighting company after him, but had no interest in his inventions. Tesla did not want to sit idly by and let his mind rot, so rather than be caged, he quit and went to work digging ditches for the measly pay of $2 a day. But this job itself was just as trying as the others he had faced in America. Tesla considered that winter to be one of the hardest, and he began to question his existence, and whether or not his education had any real value.
These hardships and decisions to leave these successful companies would however bring Tesla good fortune. In April 1887, Tesla teamed with two men, Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union superintendent, and Charles F. Peck a New York attorney who would found Tesla Electric Company. The men set up a laboratory for Tesla in Manhattan and set the genius to work. That very same year Tesla would make his mark on the world, and arguably his most successful invention, the alternating current induction motor. This ground breaking motor set itself apart from other electric motors at the time because it was a self-starting motor which meant no sparking when the magnets and brushes started up, meaning that the whole system endured less wear and tear, making it far more economical and efficient. Improved versions of these motors have found their way into countless devices in today’s modern world.
In 1888, Tesla had perhaps the most significant meeting in his life. Tesla had arranged for his motor and AC designs to be shown off to the eccentric millionaire, George Westinghouse. In July, partners in Tesla Electric Company negotiated a deal with Westinghouse to award Tesla $60,000 and $2.50 for every horsepower the motors achieved. Additionally, Westinghouse would hire Tesla for the mind boggling amount of $2,000 a month, nearly $53,000 in today’s market.
Westinghouse had previously been engaged in a “War of the Currents” with Edison and was now pitting Tesla’s fabulously efficient AC designs against Tesla’s old employer, Edison, and his inefficient DC systems. This war would soon turn dirty, killing elephants in the streets to show how one mode was supposedly more dangerous than the other, in an effort show which was the right choice, Edison, or Tesla. Tesla would ultimately win through a series of power plays set up by Westinghouse which made Edison’s own company turn against him, leaving him no longer in charge of it. Tesla now had the world’s stage; the coveted 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, it would now be lit for the first time ever by Tesla’s designs and AC systems.
However satisfying this victory was, it was short lived. In 1894 Tesla had been experimenting with electrical discharge tubes and accidentally discovered X-rays. Tesla at the time referred to the phenomenon as “radiant energy of invisible kinds”[viii], he did not know what he had found, but knew it was ground breaking and began compiling notes and experiments on the devices. Sadly, in March of 1895, his laboratory burned to the ground destroying all the work and notes he had on the X-rays and several other experiments. In hindsight, Tesla had successfully discovered the modern marvel, but it would not become evident until 1934 when the New York Herold Tribune published an article where Tesla recounted the events. Grimly, because of his emerging perfectionist personality, he never made his finds public, and lost the patents to Wilhelm Röntgen who filed his own patents in November 1895.
Perhaps the worst debacle in Tesla’s experimentation career was yet to come, one that would cost him millions, the radio. In 1896 Tesla had set up a new shop and begun to experiment with radio controlled devices. His flagship, quite literally, was a remote controlled boat he dubbed “teleautomaton”. The genius spent no time in wasting to show it off, he set the vessel to sail at Madison Square Garden while a crowd of dumbfounded witnesses made outrageous claims about the vessel, claiming it was magic, or telepathy, and that it was even controlled by a trained monkey hidden within.[ix]
Things seemed to be going well, but as the trend goes in Tesla’s life, things turned very bad, very fast. In 1900, Tesla was granted patents for a “system of transmitting electrical energy” and “an electrical transmitter”, both building towards a radio. Mere months later, Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, which Tesla had himself been working towards. This began a lengthy legal battle arguing that the transmission was done with 17 Tesla’s patents. Tesla would be awarded the patents in 1903, but again as the pattern goes, the decision was overturned in 1904 re-awarding the patents to Marconi.[x]
Tesla’s life it seemed was in shambles, but he had one more trick up his sleeves. J. P. Morgan, banking mogul, had given Tesla a contract for $150,000 to set up what would be the Wardenclyffe Tower facility.[xi] Tesla, not wanting to live in the shadow of the radio decided that he would take wireless to the next level and that he would do it better than anyone else could. The project was set up with the idea that large towers might be built, and they would emit massive amounts of electricity through the atmosphere, giving free power to everyone. While this idea seems absurd today, to the genius of electricity, it seemed feasible. Modern science has shown that electricity can be transferred from miniature versions of the Wardenclyffe Tower, but it does not travel far, and does not transfer energy efficiently. Tesla however would not get to find this out. His experiment was taking too long and costing Morgan too much money. Tesla had constantly been tearing the tower down and rebuilding it with better materials, making it astronomically expensive. In 1917 the tower was torn down and scrapped in an effort to recoup some of the money Tesla had sank into the project.
Tesla’s inventions left him a man of meager means for having accomplished so much. His emerging OCD tendencies and longing for perfections ruined many of his late life inventions, leaving him penniless several times throughout his life. He would take a few more stabs at the creative path, but would receive his last patent in 1928 for a plane that would vertically take off, a VTOL craft, a design that is still undergoing perfection by the great militaries of the world.[xii] Tesla created a great many a things, but received little credit for them, and even less pay.
Late in his life Tesla would live modestly and delve deeper into his odd behaviors. George Westinghouse and his company, Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing began to pay Tesla $125 a month as well as paying his rent at the Hotel New Yorker, at which he now resided. Why this happened is a little unclear, several sources say Westinghouse was worried about potential for bad publicity surrounding the impoverished conditions their former star inventor was living under.[xiii]
Regardless of why this happened, it leads Tesla to dive deeper into his odd fascinations, and left more time for him to dabble with the darker side of inventions. His final project was a Directed-Energy weapon, one that he only theorized about, but claimed it could shoot down 10,000 enemy aircraft and brings whole armies to a halt, dead, in their tracks.[xiv] Upon his death these files would be taken almost immediately and safeguarded, even to this day, by the FBI. The secrets of these papers may never be known to the public, but some have theorized that it has led to the advent of the Rail Gun, now used by the U.S. Navy.
Tesla’s death was about as uneventful as his last ten years; he died alone and unexpectedly from coronary thrombosis. It is not certain exactly when he died, since he placed a do not disturb sign on his door and was left that way for two days, but it is believed that he died on 7 January, 1943. Tesla enjoyed a lavish funeral, with friends a business partners alike in attendance, and the creation of a death mask that is on display at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
In spite of the non-personal life Tesla led, he has a unique place in history. His devices have driven many of the modern appliances and contraptions the world enjoys today, but Tesla himself is rarely mentioned in the history books, and what is said, does very little to offer a worthy look at his extraordinary life. He is, for all intents and purposes, forgotten to those who made the mechanical leaps through the timing of his tragedies. He has touched so many lives by leaving his inventions to carry out his legacy as well as making the modern life a little bit more electric. Tesla is a man who pushed the world into the twenty-first century by pushing his inventions and very being to the limits.
Notes
[i] Nikola Tesla, My Inventions, ed. Ben Johnston, (Hart Brothers, Williston, Vermont, 1982), accessed 2/20/2016. http://www.teslasautobiography.com/
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Charles W. Carey, American Inventors, Entrepreneurs & Business Visionaries (Infobase Publishing, 1989), 337.
[viii] Maja Hrabak et al., “Nikola Tesla and the Discovery of X-rays,” RadioGraphics 28 (July 2008): 1189–92.
[ix] Christopher Eger, The Robot Boat of Nikola Tesla (Self-published, June 22, 2015).
[x] Thomas H. White, Nikola Tesla: The Guy Who DIDN’T “Invent Radio.” (Self-published, November 1, 2012).
[xi] William J. Broad, “A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure.” The New York Times, May 4, 2009.
[xii] Nikola Tesla, Tesla Patent 1,655,114 Apparatus for Aerial Transportation, United States Patent Office.
[xiii] Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004).
[xiv] Marc J. Seifer, “Tesla’s ‘Death Ray’ Machine,” Nikola Tesla. Accessed February 20, 2016. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_2.htm.
Additional Sources
Burgan, Michael. “Nikola Tesla: Physicist, Inventor, Electrical Engineer.” Mankato, MN: Capstone, 2009.
O’Neill, John J. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla. New York: I. Washburn, 1944.
Seifer, Marc J. Wizard: The Life and times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius. New York: Citadel Press, 1996.
“The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.” The modern world is a work of art; one contributed to and made possible by the hard work of the bold and creative innovators scattered throughout time. The world has evolved and grown to represent all that is mans ambition, from the imposing skylines of the worlds super cities, to the intangible, but ever important digital world, man has made its mark for all time, but some men have contributed more than others.
The leaps and bounds in the inventions of Austro-Hungarian genius, Nikola Tesla, have made nearly all faucets of modern life possible. From his infatuation with wireless possibilities, to his infamous Alternating Current and Tesla Coils, he made what would become the ease with which millions go about their day to day lives. No other inventor has driven technology to develop so rapidly or pushed the very edge of technology in order to fundamentally change the way in which people go about the medial task of life, but he was not without his struggles.
Tesla is a man clouded in mystery, dying in solitude with no money, he left only his inventions. These same inventions, or at least an improved or manipulated version, are present in all houses and buildings in the modern world, and are in fact in most electronic devices used today. However, some of his inventions would never make it out of the lab, simply due to their grandiose scale, or enormous price tags. Some of Telsa’s inventions, he would never see any recognition for, those he did receive praise for, were sold off at cut-rate prices so that he may move on to the next undertaking and dig himself out of debt. Through his hardships, be it scientific, or personal, Tesla became an almost forgotten memory in the pages of history, but an ever important inventor nonetheless. His childhood, his varied middle life success, and late years have made for a fascinating story that ushered in the twenty-first century.
Being born at precisely midnight on the night of 9 July/morning of 10 July 1856 during a fierce lightning storm the small town of Smiljan, Croatia (formerly the Austro-Hungarian Empire), proved to be an omen of what the future had in store for Nikola Tesla. Tesla was the genetic inheritor of a line of inventors on his mother’s side, his grandfather and great-grandfather had been semi-successful at creating household and agricultural inventions, as well as being successful and revered orthodox priest. His mother, Đuka, was soft on him and saw the creative genius within him, allowing him to have his space and to grow to be an inventor.
Tesla’s father, Milutin, was the son of an officer in the great army of Napolean, and had himself received a prominent military education. He was quite the natural philosopher, poet, and writer, who “later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence.”[i] Tesla remarked in his memoir. Tesla’s father had pushed for his son to go into the clerical work and become a priest, but Tesla resented this and longed to stray from the similar path his father had lead, “I was intended from my very birth for the clerical profession and this thought constantly oppressed me. I longed to be an engineer but my father was inflexible.”[ii]
Tesla remarks in his memoirs he wrote for Electrical Experimenter that there were perhaps more important factors in his early life than his upbringing that would lead him to be the eccentric inventor he became. During his childhood, Tesla suffered greatly from visions in his head that impaired his ability to function as a normal person would, “often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action. They were pictures of things and scenes which I had really seen, never of those I imagined.”[iii] Tesla was able to simply have a word spoken and he could visualize the object so vividly he would question whether or not it had physically been there at that moment.
Tesla tried numerous times, and with numerous doctors, to figure out exactly what these visions were, and whether or not they could be suppressed or remedied. None of the psychologist or physiologist he visited could ever give him a definitive answer, which lead him to come up with is own diagnosis. “The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation.”[iv] Tesla understood that these visions came from a great distress, but was certain it was not because he was crazy since he believed, “I was normal and composed.”[v]
Perhaps these visions were the result of a genetic predisposition he had inherited, since his brother, who had passed in a riding accident when Tesla was merely 5, used to have a similar condition. Tesla was unsure of what would have caused this condition, but he came up with a system to help manage it, or so he thought. He would simply try to calm his mind and focus on one specific object and channel all of his energy into it. This worked for some time, but as he began to run out of objects he had seen in his life, the objects he had already visited in his mind offered less and less of a reprieve from his hallucinations. Tesla, being the self-diagnosing man he was, decided that the answer was to simply see more things so that he would have a wider catalog of things to distract him. Tesla set out to travel the country side of Croatia when he was 17, traveling day, and night, searching for new and unique things to calm his mind.
The importance that Tesla took away from his early self-reliance and pressure from his parents was that he expanded his mind and learned things about himself that he may have never known otherwise. “I observed to my delight that I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind.”[vi] For a would-be inventor, this opened so many doors for him, not only mentally, but in the business world as well. The great many of these doors would lead Tesla’s inventions to prominent daily use in the modern world, and cement Tesla’s place in history as a prominent inventor, however, it would not be without its ups and downs pushing the genius to his limits.
Behind these doors were a great many powerful men, but in order to get there, Tesla had to migrate to the United States. In 1884 Tesla made the arduous journey from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to the bustling city of New York. Two years prior to the move to America, Tesla had begun simple work for Thomas Edison in France at the Continental Edison Company. Tesla then relocated to New York and was almost immediately hired by Edison directly so that he could work at Edison Machine Works in Manhattan. Tesla began doing simple electrical engineering, and quickly progressed to more difficult problems.[vii] But these problems would soon grow to more than just work assignments.
Tesla went to work to redesign the Edison Company’s direct current machines; a task that Edison thought could not be done. According to Tesla, he told Edison he could make the machines more efficient and better economically, to this Edison supposedly responded that he would award Tesla $50,000 if he could do so. Tesla successfully completed this task and then inquired about his payment, Edison immediately said he was joking and that Tesla did not understand American humor, instead offering him a mere $10 a week pay increase. Tesla immediately resigned, leaving him jobless in this new country.
After this, Tesla would hit a low point in his life. He got entangled with some entrepreneurs who named a lighting company after him, but had no interest in his inventions. Tesla did not want to sit idly by and let his mind rot, so rather than be caged, he quit and went to work digging ditches for the measly pay of $2 a day. But this job itself was just as trying as the others he had faced in America. Tesla considered that winter to be one of the hardest, and he began to question his existence, and whether or not his education had any real value.
These hardships and decisions to leave these successful companies would however bring Tesla good fortune. In April 1887, Tesla teamed with two men, Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union superintendent, and Charles F. Peck a New York attorney who would found Tesla Electric Company. The men set up a laboratory for Tesla in Manhattan and set the genius to work. That very same year Tesla would make his mark on the world, and arguably his most successful invention, the alternating current induction motor. This ground breaking motor set itself apart from other electric motors at the time because it was a self-starting motor which meant no sparking when the magnets and brushes started up, meaning that the whole system endured less wear and tear, making it far more economical and efficient. Improved versions of these motors have found their way into countless devices in today’s modern world.
In 1888, Tesla had perhaps the most significant meeting in his life. Tesla had arranged for his motor and AC designs to be shown off to the eccentric millionaire, George Westinghouse. In July, partners in Tesla Electric Company negotiated a deal with Westinghouse to award Tesla $60,000 and $2.50 for every horsepower the motors achieved. Additionally, Westinghouse would hire Tesla for the mind boggling amount of $2,000 a month, nearly $53,000 in today’s market.
Westinghouse had previously been engaged in a “War of the Currents” with Edison and was now pitting Tesla’s fabulously efficient AC designs against Tesla’s old employer, Edison, and his inefficient DC systems. This war would soon turn dirty, killing elephants in the streets to show how one mode was supposedly more dangerous than the other, in an effort show which was the right choice, Edison, or Tesla. Tesla would ultimately win through a series of power plays set up by Westinghouse which made Edison’s own company turn against him, leaving him no longer in charge of it. Tesla now had the world’s stage; the coveted 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, it would now be lit for the first time ever by Tesla’s designs and AC systems.
However satisfying this victory was, it was short lived. In 1894 Tesla had been experimenting with electrical discharge tubes and accidentally discovered X-rays. Tesla at the time referred to the phenomenon as “radiant energy of invisible kinds”[viii], he did not know what he had found, but knew it was ground breaking and began compiling notes and experiments on the devices. Sadly, in March of 1895, his laboratory burned to the ground destroying all the work and notes he had on the X-rays and several other experiments. In hindsight, Tesla had successfully discovered the modern marvel, but it would not become evident until 1934 when the New York Herold Tribune published an article where Tesla recounted the events. Grimly, because of his emerging perfectionist personality, he never made his finds public, and lost the patents to Wilhelm Röntgen who filed his own patents in November 1895.
Perhaps the worst debacle in Tesla’s experimentation career was yet to come, one that would cost him millions, the radio. In 1896 Tesla had set up a new shop and begun to experiment with radio controlled devices. His flagship, quite literally, was a remote controlled boat he dubbed “teleautomaton”. The genius spent no time in wasting to show it off, he set the vessel to sail at Madison Square Garden while a crowd of dumbfounded witnesses made outrageous claims about the vessel, claiming it was magic, or telepathy, and that it was even controlled by a trained monkey hidden within.[ix]
Things seemed to be going well, but as the trend goes in Tesla’s life, things turned very bad, very fast. In 1900, Tesla was granted patents for a “system of transmitting electrical energy” and “an electrical transmitter”, both building towards a radio. Mere months later, Guglielmo Marconi made his famous first-ever transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, which Tesla had himself been working towards. This began a lengthy legal battle arguing that the transmission was done with 17 Tesla’s patents. Tesla would be awarded the patents in 1903, but again as the pattern goes, the decision was overturned in 1904 re-awarding the patents to Marconi.[x]
Tesla’s life it seemed was in shambles, but he had one more trick up his sleeves. J. P. Morgan, banking mogul, had given Tesla a contract for $150,000 to set up what would be the Wardenclyffe Tower facility.[xi] Tesla, not wanting to live in the shadow of the radio decided that he would take wireless to the next level and that he would do it better than anyone else could. The project was set up with the idea that large towers might be built, and they would emit massive amounts of electricity through the atmosphere, giving free power to everyone. While this idea seems absurd today, to the genius of electricity, it seemed feasible. Modern science has shown that electricity can be transferred from miniature versions of the Wardenclyffe Tower, but it does not travel far, and does not transfer energy efficiently. Tesla however would not get to find this out. His experiment was taking too long and costing Morgan too much money. Tesla had constantly been tearing the tower down and rebuilding it with better materials, making it astronomically expensive. In 1917 the tower was torn down and scrapped in an effort to recoup some of the money Tesla had sank into the project.
Tesla’s inventions left him a man of meager means for having accomplished so much. His emerging OCD tendencies and longing for perfections ruined many of his late life inventions, leaving him penniless several times throughout his life. He would take a few more stabs at the creative path, but would receive his last patent in 1928 for a plane that would vertically take off, a VTOL craft, a design that is still undergoing perfection by the great militaries of the world.[xii] Tesla created a great many a things, but received little credit for them, and even less pay.
Late in his life Tesla would live modestly and delve deeper into his odd behaviors. George Westinghouse and his company, Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing began to pay Tesla $125 a month as well as paying his rent at the Hotel New Yorker, at which he now resided. Why this happened is a little unclear, several sources say Westinghouse was worried about potential for bad publicity surrounding the impoverished conditions their former star inventor was living under.[xiii]
Regardless of why this happened, it leads Tesla to dive deeper into his odd fascinations, and left more time for him to dabble with the darker side of inventions. His final project was a Directed-Energy weapon, one that he only theorized about, but claimed it could shoot down 10,000 enemy aircraft and brings whole armies to a halt, dead, in their tracks.[xiv] Upon his death these files would be taken almost immediately and safeguarded, even to this day, by the FBI. The secrets of these papers may never be known to the public, but some have theorized that it has led to the advent of the Rail Gun, now used by the U.S. Navy.
Tesla’s death was about as uneventful as his last ten years; he died alone and unexpectedly from coronary thrombosis. It is not certain exactly when he died, since he placed a do not disturb sign on his door and was left that way for two days, but it is believed that he died on 7 January, 1943. Tesla enjoyed a lavish funeral, with friends a business partners alike in attendance, and the creation of a death mask that is on display at the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
In spite of the non-personal life Tesla led, he has a unique place in history. His devices have driven many of the modern appliances and contraptions the world enjoys today, but Tesla himself is rarely mentioned in the history books, and what is said, does very little to offer a worthy look at his extraordinary life. He is, for all intents and purposes, forgotten to those who made the mechanical leaps through the timing of his tragedies. He has touched so many lives by leaving his inventions to carry out his legacy as well as making the modern life a little bit more electric. Tesla is a man who pushed the world into the twenty-first century by pushing his inventions and very being to the limits.
Notes
[i] Nikola Tesla, My Inventions, ed. Ben Johnston, (Hart Brothers, Williston, Vermont, 1982), accessed 2/20/2016. http://www.teslasautobiography.com/
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Ibid.
[vii] Charles W. Carey, American Inventors, Entrepreneurs & Business Visionaries (Infobase Publishing, 1989), 337.
[viii] Maja Hrabak et al., “Nikola Tesla and the Discovery of X-rays,” RadioGraphics 28 (July 2008): 1189–92.
[ix] Christopher Eger, The Robot Boat of Nikola Tesla (Self-published, June 22, 2015).
[x] Thomas H. White, Nikola Tesla: The Guy Who DIDN’T “Invent Radio.” (Self-published, November 1, 2012).
[xi] William J. Broad, “A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure.” The New York Times, May 4, 2009.
[xii] Nikola Tesla, Tesla Patent 1,655,114 Apparatus for Aerial Transportation, United States Patent Office.
[xiii] Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2004).
[xiv] Marc J. Seifer, “Tesla’s ‘Death Ray’ Machine,” Nikola Tesla. Accessed February 20, 2016. http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/tesla/esp_tesla_2.htm.
Additional Sources
Burgan, Michael. “Nikola Tesla: Physicist, Inventor, Electrical Engineer.” Mankato, MN: Capstone, 2009.
O’Neill, John J. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla. New York: I. Washburn, 1944.
Seifer, Marc J. Wizard: The Life and times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius. New York: Citadel Press, 1996.