Nicola Tesla

The human mind is truly an incredible thing, capable of speech, thought, critical thinking and imagination. when we think of the great legendary minds of this world, we think of the brilliance of people like Einstein. He taught us many things about the low-level rules that govern our universe, fundamental things like time, space and matter. but in terms of practical discoveries that offers the basis for the technologies we use each and every day it was Nikola Tesla. He was the brilliant of all. He had a mind of the rarest kind. He can memorize entire books and visualize inventions with pinpoint accuracy. Once he had the concept of an invention fully visualized, he then undertook the hard work at bring it to reality.

In comparison, most of the scientist and engineers are unwittingly narrow-minded in their thinking. How is it that such a man exists vaguely in the public consciousness only as a fuzzy haze of distinct knowledge?

Tesla of Serbian heritage was born in 1856 in a small village within the Austrian Empire or modern-day Croatia. Tesla's birth was during a particularly violent lightning storm. Reading this as a bad omen. the midwife said to tesla's mother that would a child of darkness. Tesla's mom immediately replied "No, he will be a child of light".

From an early age it was clear that Tesla was a remarkable kid. While in high school he had the ability to perform integral calculus in his head. it was so unusual that his teachers thought he was cheating. Tesla also possessed an eidetic memory which means he could recall entire books and images in great detail. A gift which he attributes to his mother. He allegedly used his potent imagination to temper visions and vivid nightmares that he had as a child. Surprisingly Tesla finished high school early.

At age 17, Tesla had a brush with death after contracting cholera in which he pleaded he might live if his father let him study engineering instead of the planned path of a priest or a career in the army. Tesla's father agreed, despite being bedridden and incredibly ill at the time to the astonishment of his family, he miraculously recovered. Keeping true to his agreement Tesla's father allowed the teenager to study engineering at university and the course of history would be changed forever at that moment. During university in Austria at age 21, Tesla got the highest grades possible, was able to speak 8 languages and was called "star student" of the first rank by the university's dean. Tesla claim to work from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily and because of this, professors wrote a letter to Tesla's father stating that his son may be killed due to overwork.

At the end of his second year, things took a turn. Tesla lost his scholarship and became addicting to gambling. And by his third year, Tesla had gambled away his entire loans and tuition money. He did however manage to gamble back the loses and return the balance back to his family but the damage to his study had been done. When exam time came around Tesla was unprepared and asked for an extension to study but he was denied. He never graduated from the university and didn't received grades for his last semester.

in December of 1878, to hide the fact that he had dropped out of university, Tesla cut out all ties with his family. It was so sudden that his friend thought he had drowned in a river in north Croatia. In 1880 moved to Budapest and then finally to America with just 4 cents in his pocket. After taking up few odd jobs here and there, Tesla began his work for Thomas Edison at Continental Edison company in 1882. Here's a word on Edison many people today consider Thomas Edison as the father of the light bulb but he was more among the lines of the Steve jobs with the light bulb. That is Edison figured out how to sell the light bulb by improving on ideas of 22 other men before him. In 1885 Tesla said that he could redesign Edison's DC motors and generators which were very inefficient at the time and had a tendency to spark and break down.

Edison liked the idea and offered Tesla 1 million dollar in today's currency for the job.

Tesla got to work and did as he was promised, fixing all the problems with the motors. The new motors and generators became simpler, didn't spark and were much more reliable. In fact, Tesla design was so good that is still used today for the motors that power anything from household appliances to water pumps, power tools, disk drives, smartphone haptic feedback systems and of course the Tesla electric car. When Tesla had completed his job and asked for the money, Edison laughed and stated "Mr. Tesla you don't understand our American humor". Tesla had just been ripped off big time and left Edison's company.

Meanwhile, at this time something monumental was happening. The electric revolution was just about to take place. Electricity was the next big thing to change the entire planet. It created an investment startup bubble much greater than the favor that was the .com bubble of the nineteen 90th. Billion dollar industries arose out of nowhere and the American economy was lifted into an enhanced growth period that would last for decades. This was due to sudden quantum leaps in manufacturing, household technology and general efficiency of work, work and life were simply easier. We simply just can't comprehend this change today, why? you might be asking. Because everyone alive today is born with electricity. The sheer magnitude of technological change that resulted from household