Tesla was born an ethnic Serb within the Austrian Empire. He had an eidetic memory that he attributed to his mother, who made craft tools and mechanical appliances. Tesla was also able to perform integral calculus in his head, causing his professors to believe he was cheating.
After high school, Tesla contracted cholera and was near death, bedridden for 9 months. Tesla’s father, an Eastern Orthodox priest, bargained in prayer, promising to send Tesla to the best engineering school. Upon recovering, Tesla avoided conscription into the army by running away to Tomingaj and exploring the mountains. He claimed that his time in the elements made him stronger physically and mentally, and Mark Twain’s writings had inspired him.
Tesla enrolled in college, and was fascinated by electricity demonstrations by Professor Jakob Poschi, even making suggestions to improve the electric motor the professor demonstrated. In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, to work at a telegraph company. Tesla was given the title of chief electrician, and made many technical improvements.
Tesla moved to the Continental Edison Company in Paris, installing indoor incandescent lighting citywide and gaining experience in electrical engineering. He designed and built improved versions of generating dynamos and motors. Tesla was sent to troubleshoot problems at other Edison utilities.
In 1884, Edison manager Charles Batchelor asked that Tesla be brought to New York to troubleshoot installations and improve generators. Tesla was assigned to develop an arc lamp street lighting system. Arc lighting required high voltages incompatible with the Edison low-voltage incandescent system. Tesla’s designs were never produced, because of incandescent advancements or Edison’s deal with an arc lighting company.
Soon after leaving Edison Tesla worked on patenting an arc lighting system. In March 1885, he met with a patent attorney, who introduced Tesla to businessmen Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail. Lane and Vail agreed to finance an arc lighting manufacturing and utility company in Tesla’s name. Tesla obtained the patents on the improved DC generator, and built and installed the system in Rahway, New Jersey.
Once the utility was operational, Lane and Vail abandoned manufacturing and opted to simply run an electric utility. They formed a new company, abandoning Tesla’s company and leaving Tesla penniless. They also controlled his patents because he had assigned the patents to the company in exchange for stock. So Tesla was left to work as a ditch digger.
But Tesla’s fortunes soon changed. In late 1886, Tesla met Alfred Brown and Charles Fletcher Peck, experienced in launching tech companies. Based on Tesla’s ideas for electrical equipment, they agreed to finance him. Together the three men formed the Tesla Electric Company, with an agreement to an even profit split. Tesla developed a self-starting induction electric motor that ran on alternating current, and avoided sparks and high maintenance. Peck and Brown patented and publicized the motor, and Tesla demonstrated the motor at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.
George Westinghouse learned of the demonstration. He needed an AC motor for the AC system he was already marketing. Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with Westinghouse for the induction motor and transformer designs.
Trouble brewed for Westinghouse Electric, which had refinanced its debts. The new lenders demanded a cutback on spending, including the per motor royalty in the Tesla license. The Tesla motor had been unsuccessfully stuck in development, while Westinghouse paid $15,000 annually. Realizing that having Westinghouse continue to champion the motor was better than trying to eventually obtain future royalties from the lenders, Tesla released Westinghouse from the royalty clause. Later, Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s patent for $216,000 in an agreement with General Electric.
The licensing made Tesla wealthy, and he began his most significant work. Tesla came up with the “oscillating transformer,” or “Tesla coil,” that produced high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency AC electricity.
Tesla attempted to develop a wireless lighting system, and demonstrated publicly his ability to light incandescent light bulbs from across a stage. He participated in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, a key event in demonstrating AC power to the American public. Tesla demonstrated his wireless lighting system and also introduced his steam powered reciprocating electricity generator.
In 1898, Tesla demonstrated a boat that used a radio control, but radio control remained a novelty until after World War I.
In 1906, Tesla demonstrated a 200 horsepower 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. Though it met with engineering difficulties, Tesla did license the idea to a precision instrument company, eventually finding use as luxury car speedometers and other instruments.
In the 1890s through 1906, Tesla dedicated significant time and money to trying to transmit large amounts of power around the world through the upper atmosphere, facilitated by the low pressure air. To study the conductivity of low-pressure air, Tesla researched at high altitude in Colorado Springs and convinced John Jacob Astor IV to fund him and become a majority shareholder; Astor later perished on the Titanic. Tesla conducted experiments with a large coil operating in the megavolts range, producing artificial lightning and thunder consisting of millions of volts and discharges up to 150 feet.
Based on his experiments, Tesla recruited investors and obtained $150,000 from J.P. Morgan. He began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower for the north shore of Long Island. Tesla his plans in an attempt to leap ahead of Guglielmo Marconi’s radio-based system, but Morgan would not provide more money. In December 1901, Marconi successfully transmitted the Morse code for the letter “S” from England to Newfoundland, defeating Tesla in the race. By the time Wardenclyffe was built, investors were putting their money into Marconi’s system. Tesla lost the property in foreclosure in 1915, and the tower was demolished in 1917.
Tesla was tall, at 6 feet, 2 inches, but weighed only 142 pounds. He was known to be an elegant, stylish bachelor who ate at Delmonico’s in New York every night. In addition to having an eidetic memory, Tesla was fluent in eight languages. Though he tended toward being reclusive when working, Tesla was admired and praised by those with whom he socialized. In middle age, Tesla became a close friend of Mark Twain, who described Tesla’s induction motor invention as “the most valuable patent since the telephone.”
From 1900, when he moved into the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Tesla developed a habit of moving from one New York hotel to another every few years, and leaving unpaid bills behind. It was not until 1934, when Westinghouse Electric began paying Tesla a monthly “consulting fee,” that Tesla moved to the Hotel New Yorker and began paying his rent. Westinghouse may have been concerned with bad publicity about the impoverished living conditions of the company’s former star inventor.
In 1937, Tesla was struck by a taxicab after midnight, and thrown to the ground, wrenching his back and breaking three of his ribs. Tesla refused to consult a doctor, as he always did, and never fully recovered. In 1943, at the age of 87, Tesla died of a coronary thrombosis in his hotel room. He was eulogized by the mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, over the radio. In 1952, his entire estate was shipped to Belgrade in 80 trunks. Tesla’s ashes followed, and are display in a gold-plated sphere in the Nikola Tesla Museum, in Belgrade, Serbia.
In 1960, the International System of Units (SI) measurement of magnetic flux density was named the tesla in his honor.