Nikola Tesla: Genius Extraordinaire.

When we look around us, we see different things, but whatever we see is possible due to the presence of light. Everything in our house, every appliance that runs on electricity, we have Nikola Tesla to thank for that. Nothing in today's world, with the modern light festivals to the induction motors that generate energy for our cities would be possible without Tesla.

Nikola Tesla was born in Smilijan, which is present day Croatia in July 1856. According to legend, the night he was born, there was a lightning storm. One of the midwife during his birth told Tesla's mother that this child would be a child of darkness, to which his mother replied, "No, he will be a child of light." Little did she know how prophetic this would be.

Tesla lost his older brother when he was a child and this would have an impact on his life forever. He had hallucinations in which he saw beams of light which would alter his perspective as to what's real and what is not. This would result in Tesla calculating impossible equations and experiments in his mind with a mind blowing accuracy. It is said that Tesla never used a paper and pen because all of his knowledge was in his head. There have been very less notes found from Tesla, mainly because Tesla penned down his ideas a long time after he had calculated them.

Tesla's mother had an eidetic memory in which one can recall an image from memory with high precision and this was passed on to Tesla. Tesla showed interest in engineering as a child but he contracted cholera. His father said that if he survives then he will put him in college. Tesla miraculously survived and then went to a university in Austria where he was known to work every single day from 3 AM to 11 PM. His peers were worried that he would die from exhaustion. Tesla could perform meticulous calculus problems in his head and he spoke 8 languages fluently. Though he was a bright child, he did not finish his schooling as he became addicted to gambling and cut ties to all of his family members so as to keep them from finding out.

While walking in a park, Tesla had an epiphany about a current which would oscillate back and forth continuously, a current we know today as Alternating Current. The invention of Alternating Current would prove crucial because nothing in today's world would be possible without it. Tesla started working in Thomas Edison's electric company but his work was recognized there too and he was also promoted. At one instance, Tesla's manager asked for his help to improvise some DC machines and offered him 50,000$ for it, and when he did he was laughed at by Edison saying he didn't understand their 'American Humor'. At first Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla would be on good terms but this would not last. Soon the clash between the ideologies of AC vs DC current began and hence began the war of currents.

In 1885 Tesla started his own company but was fooled and his company as well as the patents for AC current were lost. After that, he had to work a worker's life by digging ditches everyday for 2$ just in order to survive, until 1887. In 1887, Tesla invented the Induction Motor, a version of which can be found in today's Tesla Cars. This caught the attention of George Westinghouse who then partnered with Tesla and offered him 2,000$ a month for his work as royalty. Edison tried multiple times to disregard Tesla along with AC and he would stop at nothing for it. Edison secretly funded the Electric Chair which used AC Current to show the idea as evil in people's minds. He even electrocuted a circus elephant named Topsy and even made a film about it called 'Electrocuting an elephant.'

Tesla's genius knew no bounds. Amongst his notes, an idea for a machine which could potentially end wars in one shot of this machine were found. This machine could potentially destroys hundreds of fighter planes in the sky, they would just drop dead. But nobody believed Tesla. His genius wasn't even acknowledged until after his death. The inventor of the radio Guglielmo Marconi would be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics but his invention would not have been possible without Tesla's ideas, and none of Tesla's legal arguments would end in his favor until after his death. Marconi has been said to have received funding from Edison for helping him defeat Tesla.

AC Current was being accepted all over in the world especially after the first AC powered power plant was installed at Niagara Falls, where a statue of Tesla can still be seen today.

Unfortunately, Westinghouse's company would lose all of it's money and go 10 million dollars into debt. Westinghouse went to Tesla and begged him to let him go of his contracts and out of pure compassion for his friend, Tesla ripped the contracts that were going to award him 12 million $ which in today's terms are 300 million $. This would have made Tesla the wealthiest man on the planet and he walked away from it.

Tesla moved to New York and set up multiple laboratories, he was often visited by Mark Twain, who was a close friend of Tesla's. Tesla further pioneered many things such as remote controlled drones, which was so advanced at the time that people thought that he was using magic to move it. Another one would be the Tesla Coil which can be seen in the cover of this blog. The Tesla coil could generate massive amounts of current at once. Tesla Coil could produce voltages over a million volts. For a better understanding, the voltage in each house is 220 V. You can imagine the rest.

Soon the Tesla Coil would fall too. In 1895, a fire broke out in Tesla's lab which destroyed his inventions. A downward spiral began from here. Tesla moved into the New Yorker Hotel where he had the same diet for 10 years and was obsessed with feeding the pigeons outside his window. On January 7th, 1943, Nikola Tesla's body was found in room 3347. One of the greatest geniuses of all time, died broke and alone. His ideas have shaped the world today as we know it. Even for the internet, we have to thank Nikola Tesla. It was him who imagined a world with wireless communication everywhere.

One of the main reasons Tesla was not known everywhere is because he was never a capitalist. He believed in seeing a better world and had we acknowledged his genius, we would be a lot more advanced. Tesla's mother had rightly said that he was a child of light, for he proved to be it not just for her, but for the entire world.