Nicola Tesla Bio
When we see the name “Tesla” in the world today, we normally think of the car, rather than the man for which it’s named. Here’s a short but interesting biography of Nicola Tesla, the Serbian-born electrical engineering genius.
My take-away was that, during his life, Tesla suffered from a combination of a faulty sense of business and simple bad luck. His relationships with Edison and Westinghouse were largely exploitative, and his most important invention, the radio, was wrongly accredited to Marconi.
I hope you’ll take a second and check out the story of the enigmatic, eccentric, and star-crossed mastermind.
I understand that he was a genius, but that doesn’t mean he can call Thomas Edison stupid. That is like an abnormally tall man calling someone who is above average short.
Craig,
The article you have chosen is poorly researched and inaccurate.
The first practical radio devices were designed and constructed by Marquis Guglielmo Marconi. As early as Marconi winning the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun for “contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy”.
The question of who “invented ” radio remains controversial.
In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision on Marconi’s radio patents restoring some of the prior patents of Oliver Lodge, John Stone Stone, and Nikola Tesla.
The Courts decision was made during the height of WW2 at a time when Marconi could not defend himself as he was living in and enemy state, Italy and was an active enemy of the US.
It’s also an error to assume the Court’s decision was about Marconi’s original radio patents or Marconi’s claim as the first to achieve radio transmission, the court did not rule against Marconi’s claims in that respect, instead the court only ruled Marconi’s claim to certain patents were questionable, and he could not claim infringement on some patents the US had failed to pay license fees on during WW1.
Tesla had many failings including mental instability, delusions, fraudulent claims, outright deceptions and lies.
Often overlooked is Nicola Tesla’s virulent antisemitism and racism. Tesla remained a life long friend and supporter of the leading American Nazi sympathizer and propagandist, the mystic George Sylvester Viereck. Telsa was an ardent admirer and supporter of Henry Ford’s antisemitic activity. although many modern Tesla fan excuse this behaviour as simply Tesla trying to gain Henry Ford’s backing. (as if hypocrisy was a defense).
Tesla never married, in his later years he complained bitterly about the behaviour of modern women and their desire for education and interest in “unfeminine” activities.
His prejudices extended to a hatred of fat people, against whom he also actively discriminated.
Tesla was a proponent of State imposed “eugenic” selective breeding, praising states with laws prohibiting “Miscegenation”. In a letter to a friend he wrote of his horror at the discovery he had in his employ a person of mixed race, including Chinese, Negro, Amerindian (sic) and Irish ancestry. He expressed his approbation that such a “wretched creature” was not destroyed at birth by “descent minded people”.
In Tesla’s opinion human “pity” had come to interfere with the natural “ruthless workings of nature.”
In his old age Tesla would have lived in poverty but for the kindness of the Westinghouse Corporation who took pity on Tesla and paid him a modest, but adequate, ex-gratis pension.
The popularity of Tesla’s current reputation can be explained by his erroneous “anti-establishment” image as a misunderstood genius exploited by greedy businessmen.
Tesla is often featured in fiction as having created many fantastic inventions that would benefit mankind, all of which are suppressed by governments or evil corporations. He makes a perfect sort of anti-establishment figure for conspiracy theorists and popular fiction.
Any examination of the real man behind the Tesla image, gives proof to the adage, “Never meet your heroes” !