Unfortunate Forgotten Genius
There happens to be an abundant quantity of individ
uals that remain unaware of an
eccentric yet heroically innovative man who knew ho
w to utilize a force that not only radiates
around us, but within us. The price of valuable rar
ity is contributed to a man of great imaginative
intellect who had a brilliancy of manipulating thes
e forces. Price also becomes one of the
unfortunate reasons why wide radiuses of people are
clueless as to the existence of a man named
Nikola Tesla; the eccentric yet heroic, inventor. T
he reason for his remarkable achievements in
manipulating tiny particles made up of molecules an
d atoms is formally known as electricity,
which is derived from the Greek
Shamefully, when i
t came to Tesla’s
word, (electron).
inventions in using electricity, he was disrespecte
d by other scientist and inventors who took
credit for his ideas and discoveries. Nikola Tesla
is arguably one of the top three genius’s in
history having well over 700 patents/inventions, an
d it was Tesla who was the one who truly
made an impact on how we use electricity today. For
the sake of keeping his memories alive, this
essay will provide awe-inspiring truths about his w
ork, along with why a deeper awareness
remains of great importance in learning how electri
fying Nikola Tesla truly was (Jasmina,
Vujić).
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Nikola Tesla was born into a Serbian family on July
10
th
, 1856. According to Tesla, he
was born on
the stroke of midnight, just as a lightning bolt t
ore through the skies of a small
village in what is now Croatia (former Yugoslavia).
Tesla being the fourth child out of five, had
an older brother who died from a car accident, thre
e sisters, a father who was an Eastern
Orthodox priest, and his mother, whose father was a
lso an Eastern Orthodox priest. With Tesla’s
mother designing and building many of the appliance
s in his home, her ingenuity made him
renowned.
He was also often accused of cheating as a child an
d adolescent. This was allocated to
being a brilliant student, able to perform complex
mathematical operations in his head (Richard
B. Gunderman, MD, PhD Aleks Alavanja, BA).
An attempt of Tesla’s first invention was made at t
he youthful age of four. A twig
he used as an axle, and with his brothers help, he
made a waterwheel from a disk. To only
imagine the spark of excitement that was on four-ye
ar-old Tesla’s face when he placed it in a
nearby brook and saw it turn! The thrilled young Te
sla was proud of his achievement. He was
definitely a youthful innovative boy. Another memor
able childhood playback would be at the
age of fifteen when he found a book at his uncles e
ngraved with the words Niagara Falls. Tesla
really had confided in his uncle and told him that
someday he would harness the power of the
Niagara Falls. Noteworthy to say the least, Nikola
Tesla could imagine a prototype start to finish
in his head and then make it happen by putting the
prototype into action; all without having to
write anything down on paper: A true visionary. Thi
s is would be a key in how he harnessed the
power of Niagara Falls. But before his appreciated
opportunity in doing such a marvelous task,
he would go through the “AC/DC Wars” with good ole’
Thomas Edison
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(Vuckovic, John Ivan).
“I went through all my years of undergraduate elec
trical engineering school (1951–1956)
without hearing the name Nikola Tesla, even in thos
e courses explicitly dealing with AC
machines, or with energy transmission, or with wire
less (radio) communications” (Valentinuzzi,
During the early years of electricity, direct curre
nt (shorthanded as DC) was the standard
Max E)
in the U.S. A current that runs continually in a s
ingle direction, like in a battery or a fuel cell i
s
what Edison had in mind for lighting the world. But
there was one problem. Direct current is not
easily converted to higher or lower voltages. In Te
sla’s case, he believed that alternating current
(or AC) was the key to this problem. While DC can o
nly be switched at low voltages, AC can
readily be switched by circuit breakers at any volt
age. AC generators are more reliable, simple,
and cheaper than DC generators, in addition to its
frequency being able to be precisely
controlled. This makes it useful in motors that req
uire accurate speed e.g. Clocks, tape recorders,
VHS machines (Valentinuzzi, Max E.).
To be able to harness the power of Niagara Falls se
ems such an impossible task to the
ordinary person. With both interested in operating
various uses in electricity, Edison and Tesla
had the opportunity of getting an acquaintance when
Tesla got the chance to work under Edison.
It began when he decided to venture to the United S
tates from the Edison Company in France
where he had been helping to enhance the performanc
e of its electrical equipment. When he
arrived in the United States, he brought with him a
letter of recommendation from an Edison
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associate. It stated, “My Dear Edison: I know two g
reat men and you are one of them. The other
is this young man!” And it was this great man who r
edesigned Edison’s DC (direct current)
generators achieving dramatic improvements in effic
iency. Edison told him if he could deliver on
his promise of knowing how to make such improvement
s, he would pay him $50,000. When
Tesla asked about the money, Edison told him he did
not understand American humor (Richard
B. Gunderman).
Tesla made a conscious decision to quit working for
Edison. He ended up digging ditches
for two dollars a day. Luckily, he was later introd
uced to a man named George Westinghouse Jr.,
of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Tesla wou
ld sell him on his idea of his alternating
current motor and because of Westinghouse’s confide
nce in him, along with seeing great
potential in Tesla’s ideas, he gave him $1,000,000
for patent rights and a royalty of one dollar per
horsepower. The money was shared between a man nam
ed Mr. Brown and other people who
helped Tesla with his projects (John Ivan Vuckovic)
.
An absorption connecting to the evolvements of the
mind can evaluate true acceptance in
the understanding of learning that “great” men, may
lead to deplorable disappointments… The
jolt of the “AC/DC Wars” initially emerged when Edi
son launched a vicious campaign against
alternating current. Alternating current was endors
ed as a form of capital punishment in New
York State. The intent was to show the public how d
irect current was much safer. It would
ultimately lead to horrifying events. Edison would
make public displays and recordings in
attempts to show how alternating current was not a
good choice. For example, an elephant was
Another one of Edison’s grotesque displays
brutally electrocuted with using alternating curren
t.
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happened
on Aug. 6, 1890 at 6:40 a.m.to a man named William K
emmler, a peddler from
Buffalo, N.Y., who had murdered his mistress with a
n ax. He became the first man to die in the
electric chair in the death chamber of Auburn state
prison and he would be the first to administer
two applications of alternating current. It took 17
seconds using 1,300 volts proving the first
charge insufficient in killing him. After the secon
d charge of 2,000 volts and four minutes, the
smell of burning flesh filled the room as the conde
mned man caught fire. Kemmler was
pronounced dead after his charred body stopped smol
dering (Moran, Richard).
did what he did for the betterment of humanity, to
help people have a better
Nikola Tesla
quality of life. He never seemed to be interested i
n the crooked monopolies of business or in
monetary gain.
He was also known to have a bizarre, despondent, a
nd overambitious personality,
with an evident and mega-egomaniac attitude. With t
hat being said, he would not go down that
easily by Edison. Tesla’s counter attack was with a
demonstration in his laboratory. He would do
this by allowing high voltage at high frequencies o
f AC to pass through his body; By holding
lighted up gas filled lamps, it demonstrated that h
is type of current was just as safe. Likewise, it
showed that high voltage didn’t damage flesh, but t
hat high current did. (Vuckovic, John Ivan).
George Westinghouse Jr. was awarded the contract to
develop a power system for
Niagara Falls on October 17, 1893. And because this
would ultimately desist the battle of the
currents, Edison General Electric was forced to sec
ure license rights of Tesla’s polyphase system.
“It seems that I have always been ahead of my time/
I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara
was harnessed by my system/ Fifteen years before th
e basic inventions for wireless which I gave
to the world in 1893 were applied universally” (Tes
la, Nikola).
15
,000 horsepower generators
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filled the powerhouse and residents in the area wou
ld turned on lights for the first time.
Westinghouse installed 12 more generators bringing
the total generating power to 50,000
horsepower. Subsequently, General Electric installe
d 11 more generators and power reaching
New York City (Vuckovic, John Ivan).
“When I learned that Nikola Tesla invented the radi
o, and not Marconi, I was shocked.
Tesla also invented the electric generator, the ele
ctric motor, fluorescent lighting, alternating
current (AC), and devised the technologies that gen
erate and deliver our electrical power for our
homes, schools and factories. So why didn’t I ever
learn about Tesla in school — the same way I
learned about Thomas Edison, Marconi and Einstein?”
(Valentinuzzi, Max E) It was 1901 when
Marconi demonstrated the first transatlantic radio
transmission, which was only made possible
through the use of no fewer than 17 of Tesla’s pate
nts. A pioneer in radio, Tesla’s first
demonstration was as early as 1893 (Richard B. Gund
erman).
ome of Nikola Tesla’s famous patents included, the
tesla coil, the magnifying
S
transmitter, the tesla turbine, shadowgraphs, neon
lamps, adams power plant transformer, and the
induction motor. He could have amassed hundreds of
millions of dollars, could have become the
richest man in the country, in the world, if he wis
hed for riches. He didn’t. He did not care for
anything but to work on his inventions. He had done
extraordinary astounding, miraculous things
during his life among us. He did them simply to ser
ve mankind and for his services, he did not
want anything. To honor thy self is to honor thy ne
ighbor is the motto he lived by; Money, he
didn’t care for it. That was his attitude. Gratitud
e, he did not expect or demand. Tesla quoted:
What we now want most is closer contact and better
understanding between
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individuals and communities all over the earth and
the elimination of that fanatic
devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and p
ride, which is always prone to
plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife
. (Tesla, Nikola).
One of Tesla’s biggest dreams was to be able to sen
d free wireless electricity to all people on
earth. (Hadzigeorgiou, Yannis).
In conclusion to some of the great things Tesla has
done, he would die a lonely man.
Prior to his death at the age of 87, his only inter
est was feeding and caring for pigeons in his
local park (Vuckovic, John Ivan). So why was he so
much forgotten when he had the fortunate
opportunity to be included within the web of networ
king with some of the most famous people at
the time; Edison, Mark Twain, J.P. Morgan, along wi
th many others. In an article written by Max
E. Valentinuzzi titled, “Nikola Tesla: Why Was He S
o Much Resisted and Forgotten,” writes,
“Perhaps this forgetfulness of scientific history i
s nothing but a manifestation of the obliteration
phenomenon. The said knowledge is so completely a w
ell embedded into a society that there is
no need to recall or to cite the author.” Thus, an
unfortunate forgotten genius. ❤❤❤
