The genius who lit up the world. He invented the 20th century but died penniless and alone.
Nikola Tesla was the archetype of the mad scientist. A Serbian-American inventor, he gave us the alternating current (AC) electricity system that powers the world today. He was a visionary who predicted smartphones, Wi-Fi, and directed energy weapons, yet he struggled to navigate the business world.
1. He was born during a lightning storm
Tesla was born around midnight in 1856 in modern-day Croatia. Legend says a fierce lightning storm raged during his birth. The midwife called it a bad omen, saying he would be a "child of darkness." His mother replied, "No. He will be a child of light."
2. He had a photographic memory
Tesla had eidetic memory. He could memorize entire books and recite them at will. More impressively, he could visualize complex machines in 3D in his mind. He would build, test, and fix inventions in his imagination before ever putting pen to paper. When he finally built them, they worked exactly as he had envisioned.
3. The War of the Currents
When Tesla arrived in America, he worked for Thomas Edison. They became bitter rivals. Edison promoted Direct Current (DC), which was safe but couldn't travel long distances. Tesla championed Alternating Current (AC), which could power cities miles away. Edison launched a smear campaign (even electrocuting elephants) to prove AC was dangerous, but Tesla won the "war" when his AC system powered the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.
4. He invented the radio (technically)
Guglielmo Marconi is often credited with inventing the radio, winning a Nobel Prize for it. However, he used 17 of Tesla’s patents to do it. Tesla famously said, "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." In 1943, months after Tesla's death, the U.S. Supreme Court finally overturned Marconi's patent and upheld Tesla's priority.
5. He wanted to give the world free energy
Tesla’s most ambitious project was the Wardenclyffe Tower in New York. He intended it to transmit not just radio signals, but wireless electricity to the entire world—for free. When his financier, J.P. Morgan, found out he couldn't put a meter on it to charge people, he pulled the funding. The tower was eventually demolished for scrap.
6. He was obsessed with the number 3
Tesla suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). He was fixated on the number 3. He would walk around a block three times before entering a building, wash his hands three times, and only stay in hotel rooms with numbers divisible by 3. He famously died in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.
7. He loved a pigeon
Tesla never married, saying invention required solitude. "I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men," he said. In his later years, he fed pigeons in the park. He claimed a specific white pigeon was his soulmate, saying, "I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me."
8. He predicted the smartphone
In a 1926 interview, Tesla described a future where "We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance... and the instruments through which we shall be able to do this will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket."
9. The Earthquake Machine
Tesla claimed he once attached a small oscillator to the iron pillar of his Manhattan lab. It found the resonance frequency of the building, causing a mini-earthquake that shook the neighborhood and shattered windows. Police and ambulances arrived, but Tesla had already destroyed the device with a hammer to stop it.
10. He died broke
Despite his inventions creating trillions of dollars in value for the world, Tesla was terrible with money. He ripped up a royalty contract with Westinghouse that would have made him the world's first billionaire, just to help the company survive. He spent his final decades living in hotel rooms on credit, dying alone and in debt in 1943.