Nikola Tesla was a Serbian and naturalized American inventor born in 1856 in the Austrian-Hungarian empire. He was an electrical engineering student who dropped out of university after losing then earning back gambling money. He moved to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison. Despite his many achievements, including inventing alternating current, wireless communication, and remote control, he died alone and broke in 1943. Tesla was a genius who spoke eight languages and could visualize and build inventions entirely in his head without writing anything down. Though handsome, he was celibate his entire life in order to focus on his work inventing technologies that still power our modern world.

1. NIKOLA TESLA: Man out of time

2. Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the Austrian-Hungarian
empire and was a Serbian and naturalized American
inventor. Son of a priest, he was the forth of five
children. In 1870 Tesla attented a Gymnasium and later,
in 1875, he entered the Graz University where he
studied electric engineering. During his first year at
University he managed to get the best grades possible
and to pass twice as many exams than required. During
his second year he lost all his money gambling and then
succeded in earning them all back, always by gambling.
He then dropped out of the university and then in 1884
moved to United States, where he begun working for
Thomas Edison. Despite being one of the most
important scientists of the century, he died broke and
alone in a New York City hotel room in 1943.

3. TESLA’ Tesla in his Colorado Springs lab.

4. Achievements

5. Despite being relatively unknown today, we have to
thank Tesla for the Second Industrial Revolution and for
the digital age we are living in. He is infact the inventor
of alternating current which still powers our homes and
cities today. He also invented radio and did not mind not
taking credit for it. He also came up with the idea of the
radar in 1916, but when he presented the project to the
Us Navy they said that there would never be any
application of it in war. He was one of the first pioneers
of x-rays. Also, most notably, he invented wireless
communication and remote control. Among all the things
that he discovered, he also built the first hydroelectric
plant at Niagara Falls, a prototype of a transistor and set
the basis for massive communications, computer
science, widespread electricity and renewable sources
of energy.

6. His character

7. Tesla was a genius. He spoke eight languages: Serbian,
English, Czech, German, French, Hungarian, Italian and
Latin. He could memorize entire books and recite them
all at will. He could visualize devices entirely in his head
and then build them without ever writing anything down.
And even more impressive, although he was considered
to be a handsome man (he was almost 200 cm tall in
1890) and very popular with the ladies, Tesla lived to be
86 and was celibate his entire life. As a matter of fact, he
turned down love affairs and relations with women
because, not only was he too busy creating artificial
lightning in his apartment, but he also thought that dating
them would interfere with his work.

8. Why should he be remembered?

9. Tesla and his inventions shaped today's society as it is
and had a major effect on our daily lives. It is thanks to
his genius that we are now living in this digital age,
which, incredibly enough, he foresaw back in 1909,
when internet and mobile phones were but imagination.
He is truly a man ahead of its time: he was considered
insane for what he said, much like Galileo. His writings
and drawings were either non-existent or
incomprehensible to others, much like Leonardo's. He
managed to replicate in his laboratory natural
phenomena which still boggles today's scientists minds.
…and just imagine a life without remotes.