TESLA - The tormented genius who electrified the scientific world

You might drive one of the cars, maybe you’ve heard of the coil, but just how much do you really know about the late 19th century inventor and technological wizard Nikola Tesla?

- Callum McKelvie

Mostly remembered for being part of an epic struggle against the American inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, that tale is largely exaggerated as are many connected to the life of the Serbian-American genius. He spoke of creating wireless power, death rays and even flying machines, yet Nikola Tesla was no crank. Certainly a one-of-a kind mind, he was the creator of the AC power, induction motor and hydroelectric power systems, inventions that helped shape the world as we know it.

Nikola Tesla was born at midnight between 9 and 10 July 1856 in Smiljan in the Austrian Empire, in what today is Croatia. Part of a large family, he was one of five children. However, tragedy struck when his older brother Dané was killed while Tesla was just a child. This incident turned out to have a profound effect on the young Tesla. “Dané sadly died quite young in a horse riding accident and his parents were absolutely devastated,” begins historian W Bernard Carlson, author of Tesla: Inventor Of The Electrical Age. “But young Nikola was traumatised. He had an eidetic memory. For example, if you told him to think about a juicy apple, he could visualise that apple in front of him. So after his brother died, his mind was flooded with horrific images and he would get terrible nightmares that overwhelmed him.” Tragedy aside, however, Tesla’s imagination – once he had learned to control it – would soon become one of the inventor’s greatest gifts.