1. HE WAS BORN DURING A LIGHTNING STORM
Nikola Tesla was born around midnight, between July 9 and
July 10, 1856 during a fierce lightning storm. According to family legend,
midway through the birth, the midwife wrung her hands and declared the
lightning a bad omen. This child will be a child of darkness, she said, to
which his mother replied: “No. He will be a child of light.”
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| This tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo was taken. Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines via Wikimedia Commons. |
2. HE WAS REALLY FUNNY
Most people don’t know that Tesla had a terrific sense of
humor, Seifer said. For example, after dining with writer and poet Rudyard
Kipling, he wrote this in a correspondence to a close friend:
April 1, 1901
My dear Mrs. Johnson,
What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He
actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure
to get hair and cockroaches in the soup.
Yours truly,
N. Tesla
3. HE AND EDISON WERE RIVALS, BUT NOT SWORN
ENEMIES
Many have characterized Tesla and inventor Thomas Edison as
enemies (see this andthis,)
but Carlson says this relationship has been misrepresented. Early in his
career, Tesla worked for Edison, designing direct current generators, but
famously quit to pursue his own project: the alternating current induction
motor. Sure, they were on different sides of the so-called “Current Wars,” with
Edison pushing for direct current and Tesla for alternating current. But
Carlson considers them the Steve Jobs and Bill Gates of their time: one the
brilliant marketer and businessman and the other a visionary and “tech guy.”
On a rare occasion, Edison attended a conference where Tesla
was speaking. Edison, hard of hearing and not wanting to be spotted, slipped
into the back of the auditorium to listen to the lecture. But Tesla spotted
Edison in the crowd, called attention to him and led the audience in giving him
a standing ovation.
Seifer qualifies it more, saying the two had a love/hate
relationship. At first Edison dismissed Tesla, but came to eventually respect
him, he said.
“When there were fires at Tesla’s laboratory, Edison
provided him a lab, so clearly there was some mutual respect,” Seifer said
4. HE DEVELOPED THE IDEA FOR SMARTPHONE
TECHNOLOGY IN 1901
Tesla may have had a brilliant mind, but he was not as good
at reducing his ideas to practice, Carlson said. In the race to develop
transatlantic radio, Tesla described to his funder and business partner, J.P.
Morgan, a new means of instant communication that involved gathering stock
quotes and telegram messages, funneling them to his laboratory, where he would
encode them and assign them each a new frequency. That frequency would be
broadcast to a device that would fit in your hand, he explained. In other
words, Tesla had envisioned the smart phone and wireless internet, Carlson
said, adding that of all of his ideas, that was the one that stopped him in his
tracks.
“He was the first to be thinking about the information
revolution in the sense of delivering information for each individual user,”
Carlson said.
He also conceived of, but never developed technology for
radar, X-rays, a particle beam “death ray” and radio astronomy.
5. ‘HE SHOOK THE POOP OUT OF MARK TWAIN’
One famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that
he had an earthquake machine in his Manhattan laboratory that shook his
building and nearly brought down the neighborhood during experiments.
Tesla’s device wasn’t actually an earthquake machine, Carlson
said, but a high frequency oscillator. A piston set underneath a platform in
the laboratory shook violently as it moved, another experiment in more
efficient electricity.
It didn’t bring the block to ruins, Carlson said, but it did
“shake the poop out of Mark Twain.” Twain was known for having digestive
problems, so Tesla, who knew Twain through their gentlemen’s club, invited him
over. He instructed Twain to stand on the platform while he flipped on the
oscillator. After about 90 seconds, Twain jumped off the platform and ran for
the facilities.
6. HE HAD FAMOUS FRIENDS
People aren’t aware that he was close friends with
conservationist John Muir, Seifer said. Muir, one of the founders of the Sierra
Club, loved that Tesla’s hydroelectric power system was a clean energy system.
It runs on waterfalls, which Tesla referred to as “running on the wheelwork of
nature.” Also among his friends: financiers Henry Clay Frick and Thomas Fortune
Ryan. “He lived in the Waldorf Astoria, at the height of the gilded age,”
Seifer said, adding that his fame later in life lessened.
7. PEARLS DROVE HIM CRAZY
Tesla could not stand the sight of pearls, to the extent
that he refused to speak to women wearing them. When his secretary wore pearl
jewelry, he sent her home for the day. No one knows why he had such an
aversion, but Tesla had a very particular sense of style and aesthetics,
Carlson said, and believed that in order to be successful, one needed to look
successful. He wore white gloves to dinner every night and prided himself on
being a “dapper dresser.”
Every photograph of Tesla, he said, is very carefully
constructed to capture his “good side.”
8. HE HAD A PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY AND A FEAR OF
GERMS
Tesla had what’s known as a photographic memory. He was
known to memorize books and images and stockpile visions for inventions in his
head. He also had a powerful imagination and the ability to visualize in three
dimensions, which he used to control the terrifying vivid nightmares he
suffered from as a child. It’s in part what makes him such a mystical and
eccentric character in popular culture, Carlson said. He was also known for
having excessive hygiene habits, born out of a near-fatal bout of cholera as a
teenager.
