In honour of Nikola's 157th birthday, we have tired to two Tesla experts and historians as to help us compline
a list of intersting facts you might know about the man.
The information comes from W.Bernard Carlson author of "Tesla Inventor of the Electrical Age"
The Tesla Coil
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, his mother replied " No, he will be a child of light".
Most people don't know that Tesla had a good sense of humour, Seifer said. For example, after dining with poet
Rudyard Kipling, he wrote this in a correspondence to a close friend; My dear Mrs Johnson, What is the matter
with inkspiller Kipling? He dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and
cockroaches in the soup.
Yours tuely
N.Tesla
Many have charactised Tesla and inventor Thomas Edison as enemies 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 often on different sides
of the so-called " Current Wars" with Edison pushing for direct current and Telsa for alternating current.
But Carlson considers them the Steve Jobss and Bill Gates of their time: one the brilliant marketer and businessman
and the other a visionary and "tech guy".
Telsa may have a brilliant mind , but he was not good at reducing his ideas to practice, Carlson s aid, in the race to
develop translantic radio, Telsa described to his founder and business partner, J.P. Morgan, a new means of instant
communication that involved gathering stock quotes and telegrams messages, funnelling them to his laboratory,
where he would encode them and assign them each with 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 his ideas, that was the one that stopped him
in his tracks.
One famous legend surrounding the eccentric Tesla was that he had an earthquake machine in his Manhatten lab
that shook his building and nearby brought down the neighbourhoods during experiments.
Telsa'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 blocks to ruins, but it did shake pop out of Mark Twain, Mark 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.
People aren't aware that he was close friends with conversational 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 ran on waterfalls,
which Tesla referred to as "running on the wheel work of nature". Also among his friends , financiers Henry Clay
Frock and Thomas Fortune Ryan, " he lived in the Waldoef Astoria, at the height of the gilded age," Seifer said,
adding that his fame later in life lessened.
Tesla could not stand the sight of 'pearls', to an extent that he refused to speak to women wearing them.
When his secretary wore pearl jewellery, he sent her home for the day. No one knows why he had such an aversion,
but Tesla had a very perculiar sense of style and aesthetic, Carlson. Said, and believed that in order to be successful
one neede to look successful. He wore while gloves to dinner every night and prided himself on being a "dapper
dresser"
Lastly... Tesla had what's know as a photogenic memory. He was known to memorise books and images and stockpile
versions for inventions in his head. He also had a powerful imagination and the ability to visualise in three
dimensions, which he used to control the terrifying vivid nightmares he suffered as a child. It's in part what makes
him such a mystical and eccentric character in popular culture.