Struggling Life Of a Man Way Ahead Of His Time-Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was underlooked most of his life, he is known for shaping today’s electrical age. As the legend goes Tesla was on a stormy night in Smiljan, Croatia, his mother said that “He will be a child of light”. His father was a priest and his mother worked on small household appliances. From a young age, Tesla would amaze people, by memorizing entire books, logarithmic tables, he would create 3D shapes of any object by memory. This was all accomplished by sleeping 2-3 hours per day.
At 19 Tesla went to the Technical University of Graz, where he spent most of the time thinking about A-C, his obsession with A-C would not allow him to do homework. Not submitting assignments on time, his professor got worried and called on Tesla’s father telling him “the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits would kill him”. Tesla eventually had a nervous breakdown and could no longer continue his studies, he dropped out. On a windy day as he was walking in a park, a thought came to his mind, not having a piece of paper, he sat on the ground and started to drew diagrams on the sand. What he had come up with, was the idea for a brushless AC motor.
Later he moved to Paris and got a job repairing DC power plants with Continental Edison Company. At the time, the company was installing lights across the city. Management took notice of Tesla’s intelligence, and one of the managers, Charles Batchelor was called to the US to oversee a project. Upon his arrival, he met Edison and told him about Tesla. Tesla was invited to see Edison in New York.
On June 6th, 1884 Tesla was at the docks where his money and luggage were stolen and he arrived at the New York Harbor with 4 cents to his name. He got to work right away, creating drawings for Edison. Upon presenting his work to Edison, Edison offered him a job at the Manhattan headquarters. Tesla’s first project with Edison Machine Work was to improve the design of the arc lamp. Arc lamps at the time were very popular but they required high voltage which was not possible with Edison’s low-voltage system. Edison told Tesla that, he would pay him $50,000 if he could come up with a solution. Finding a solution was critical, as the company had contracts for installing lamps in Manhattan. When Tesla did find a solution he asked for the money he was promised, Edison said, “When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke”. Furious, Tesla walked out.
To test his arc lamp design, Tesla started a company, The Electric Light and Manufacturing. This helped him receive his first patents in the US. The investors, however, did not show much interest in Tesla’s ideas, with the market heavily controlled by two major players one of them being Thomson-Houston Electric, the competition was high. Investors thought that instead of designing a new system they should develop a utility within the existing system. Their decision left Tesla penniless and he lost control of his patent.
In 1888 Telsa received another patent for an A-C induction motor. Tesla was now, 30, and had no money. He found a job digging ditches for $2 a day. Word got out that a Serbian man who used to work for Edison had come up with a different way to generate current, by now Edison had another competitor, a man who has made a name for himself with the new railway air brake system, George Westinghouse. They were competing for the contract to supply electricity to New York’s power grid. This rivalry between them became known as, The War Of Currents. After hearing that Tesla had an alternative to Edison’s DC, Westinghouse approached Tesla and offered him a job as a consultant, he also bought patent rights from Tesla for $60,000 cash with royalties. The feud between Edison and Westinghouse went to an extreme.
Hearing about Westinghouse’s new system the New York State expressed a desire to purchase three Westinghouse alternating-current dynamos, but Westinghouse refused, as he knew that they wanted to use his system to electrocute, prisoners. Newspapers picked up this story and an electrician salesman named Harold Brown started to work with the State, to build an electric chair. As Edison knew that Tesla was the one who helped Westinghouse develop this system, he paid Harold behind the scenes to use AC in the electric chair design.
On August 6, 1890, a prisoner was strapped onto the chair with the AC dynamo originally designed by Tesla. Witness, say that when the switch was turned on, blood dripped down from his hand, and his face twisted completely, the switch was turned off after 17 seconds but then someone shouted “He Is Still Alive” and the switch was turned back on, as the current passed his body, many watching fainted, Doctors at the scene pronounced the prisoner, dead, saying “There Will Never Be Another Electrocution”
Word got out, Westinghouse with sorrow replied, “They could have done better with an ax” Tesla, who wanted to help humanity with his inventions, was horrified. He tore up the royalty contract and completely sold out his patent rights to Westinghouse.
Separated from Westinghouse royalties, Tesla worked on his own inventions, one of which was the high-voltage transformer, known today as the Tesla coil, capable of generating high voltages and frequencies. He soon discovered that these coils made it possible to send radio signals. He quickly filed a patent, beating an Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi. The nation was still under stress after the electrocution at the prison. To prove that AC was purposefully used for harm, Tesla gave an exhibition in his lab where he lit lamps by allowing electricity to flow through his body. In 1895 his New York lab burned down, his research and notes went up in flames.
Having limited funds but a desire to build a worldwide system for wireless plants that could send messages, media content, and broadcast through electrical power he started to look for investors, and he found one in JP Morgan. Morgan signed a contract with Tesla in 1901, agreeing to give him $150,000 to develop and build a wireless station. Tesla purchased 200 acres of land in New York and work started. It later turned out that the cost was misjudged, and Tesla asked Morgan for an extra $450,000, Morgan demanded to see the account history. Doubting Tesla’s ability to manage a project, Morgan pulled out. Tesla’s rival, Guglielmo was showing advancements with his design. And then Tesla found out that Guglielmo was backed up by Edison. With no money coming in, Tesla had no choice but to abandon the project. The staff was laid off and the site tower was demolished, pieces were sold for scrap to help pay the debt.
Tesla had a hard life and by 1912, Tesla started to lose hope; he was showing signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 1931 he was featured on the cover of Time’s magazine which led to a settlement with the Westinghouse Corporation, Westinghouse would provide Tesla with $125 per month and pay off his monthly rent. During his last days, Tesla lived at a New York Hotel, working on new inventions. The boy who drew a diagram in the park found himself walking in the park again feeding pigeons. Tesla passed away on January 7, 1943, he was 86.
Hundreds filed for the funeral service, a man who paved the way for many technological developments of modern times was honored by the city, by naming a street after him the “Nikola Tesla Corner”. Throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed, and developed many inventions for which he received 300 patents. Sadly he could not get the recognition he deserved in his lifetime, he will be known as one of the greatest inventors, who shaped today’s electrical age.
