Nikola Tesla believed strongly in alternating current, but he also loved a challenge. Fifty thousand dollars was nice, too, so he committed himself the same way he had aboard the Oregon and “designed twenty-four different types of standard machines with short cores and of uniform pattern which replaced the old ones.” After several months, he had done it. Tesla had essentially tripled the output of a system he didn’t even believe was as efficient as the one he had designed, and he’d done so for his boss. It was time to collect on the promise Edison had made.
Upon completion of his work, Tesla approached Edison and detailed the work he’d done. Then he inquired about the fifty thousand dollars Edison had promised. Edison shook his head. “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor. When you become a full-fledged American, you will appreciate an American joke.”
Edison was right: Tesla didn’t understand the humor in this supposed joke, and he didn’t understand this man’s method of doing business, either. Moreover, he also didn’t understand why this man was foolish enough to stick with a system of current that was clearly inferior to his.
Tesla had had it. He’d learned a tough lesson about business, about trust, and about Edison. “This gave me a painful shock and I resigned my position.” With no monetary gain realized for his hard work and ingenuity, Tesla’s short tenure with Thomas Edison was over less than a year after it had started.
Just like he had been a year prior when he’d first arrived in America, Nikola Tesla was on his own. Yet in truth, this wasn’t unusual for him. He’d learned early in life that being alone is the price often paid for being unique.
And this man—Nikola Tesla—was nothing if not unique.
6 FLASHES OF LIGHT
Although his birth certificate lists July 10, 1856, as the day Nikola Tesla was introduced to the world, the man himself vehemently claimed he was born on the very moment of transference from one day to the next, at the “stroke of midnight” where July 9 and July 10 intersect.
True, July 10 has been noted as Nikola Tesla’s birthday ever since, but it would only be fitting if Tesla actually was born at the exact moment where two days changed hands. After all, where does one place a man born in between two days? Should the recorded date of birth list two dates? Or does this defy what a birthday actually is? If it were to be decided—by the people who decide such things—that this rare occurrence necessitated two dates to be listed, would the man then have two birthdays and not one? And further, if two dates were to be listed, how could it be explained to people in later times that a man had been born on two different days? These questions and their perplexing, cyclical nature mirror the man who claimed to own the rare birthday. Nikola Tesla simply didn’t fit within the world’s defined parameters, beginning from his earliest moment of existence.
Tesla’s birth wasn’t just odd in terms of the hands’ position on the clock, but in terms of the weather as well, as a raging electrical storm had manifested over Tesla’s family home, located in what is now Smiljan, Croatia. The tempest rained down crackling shafts of light and meteoric drops of water in equal measure. The family’s midwife, noticing the omen of the boy’s birth at midnight, made the assertion that Tesla was a “child of the storm,” meaning he’d be a cursed child “of darkness.” Nikola’s mother, Djuka Mandic, quickly corrected her. “No,” she said flatly. “He will be a child of the light.” She had no way of knowing how accurate that premonition would become.
Nikola’s mother was a descendant of one of the oldest and most traditional Serbian families, a “line of inventors” who had “originated numerous implements for household, agricultural and other uses.” Tesla—called “Niko” as a young boy—recognized from an early age that his mother “worked indefatigably, from break of day till late at night,” and she was “an inventor of the first order,” who “invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread which was spun by her.”
Young Niko’s childhood involved creating devices useful to him at the time. Contraptions like a cornstalk popgun and fishing hooks for catching frogs offered him some entertainment in his early years. A rather clever invention Niko developed as a boy was the four-bladed wooden propeller to whose blades he attached, by way of adhesive or threaded restraints, three or four May-bugs each. These rather bulky, powerful-but-clumsy flying bugs “were remarkably efficient,” according to Tesla, and he noted that “once they were started they had no sense to stop and continued whirling for hours and hours.” It was a source of much amusement for young Niko, until a neighborhood boy decided to put an end to the whirling dervish by eating the bugs. The hideous sight “terminated my endeavors in this promising field and I have never since been able to touch a May-bug or any other insect for that matter.”
While Nikola’s mother supplied him with an inventive and hardworking example, his father, Milutin Tesla, was an Orthodox priest. But Niko didn’t gain a strong sense of faith from his father, as the boy never could devote himself to the spiritual calling he was supposed to follow. Instead, Niko gained other training from his father, who was also a writer. “The training he gave me,” an adult Nikola would later comment, “must have been helpful. It comprised all sorts of exercises—as, guessing one another’s thoughts, discovering the defects of some form or expression, repeating long sentences or performing mental calculations. These daily lessons were intended to strengthen memory and reason and especially to develop the critical sense.” Milutin was not without his peculiar features and mannerisms. The man was prone to talking to himself, often using different tones and accents, which an adult Nikola Tesla would also do later in his own life.
In the time period in which Nikola was born, boys in his country had two options from which to choose as a future: one was the army, and the other was the clergy. Naturally, Nikola was expected to follow his father’s lead. Niko didn’t care for either option but felt compelled to hold the path his father had blazed for him, especially given the fact that the family had experienced tragedy with the loss of Niko’s big brother, Dane, who an older Nikola described as “gifted to an extraordinary degree.” Dane’s death, an accident with the family horse, had left his parents “disconsolate.” After Dane’s death, Niko felt that anything he did “that was creditable merely caused my parents to feel their loss more keenly.” Certainly, he felt the added pressure that he should continue the family legacy and join the clergy.
Niko experienced what some have referred to as “hallucinations” and others as “visions” and still others would claim were “out-of-body experiences.” As Tesla himself described, “I suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, often accompanied by strong flashes of light, which marred the sight of real objects and interfered with my thought and action.” He’d go on to explain that these images were of things he had actually seen, not imagined apparitions, though it became difficult at times to decipher what was real and what was not. To help heal himself, Tesla turned to the power of the mind, fully focusing his train of thought on something else. This often worked, but it wasn’t as effective once he’d exhausted the images he had actually seen. Imagination then intervened and morphed with reality, forcing his mind to focus even harder. In time, his mind would take him on “journeys—see new places, cities and countries—live there, meet people and make friendships and acquaintances and, however unbelievable, it is a fact that they were just as dear to me as those in actual life.”
Niko’s time attending Real Gymnasium—middle school to those in America—was hindered by these flashes, though the boy showed early signs of a brilliant mind. Niko read every book he could find about electricity and “experimented with batteries and induction coils.” Indeed, Niko’s intellect was advanced, further evidenced by the fact that calculus, often seen as a labyrinth to most students, was so simple for Niko that his teachers accused him of cheating.
Social settings and relationships of all kinds were not as simplistic as calculus, and certainly not as app
ealing as learning about electricity. Niko’s labyrinth was dealing with his peers, which is why he often preferred the company of birds and other animals over people.
One experience that perfectly captures Niko’s lack of social tact involved two of his old aunts—both unattractive to the extreme, according to Tesla. After going back and forth about their appearance, the two aunts asked Niko to settle the argument and tell them who the more attractive aunt was. As Tesla explained, “After examining their faces intently, I answered thoughtfully, pointing to one of them, ‘This here is not as ugly as the other.’”
Naturally, childhood was difficult for a boy who suffered from “flashes of light” and social anxiety. He “had many strange likes, dislikes and habits.” One item he held an extreme disdain for was earrings, especially pearls, which would put him into hysterics on sight. Touching another person’s hair caused Nikola to convulse and shake as well. And peaches—nothing disgusted him more than the spherical, fuzzy fruit. Yet shiny objects, like diamonds or crystals, pleased him very much, as did objects with “sharp edges and plane surfaces.” Birds fascinated Niko, to the point where he’d spend hours playing with the local birds on the farm like he was playing with a group of friends. Niko also had to have everything arranged in neat, logical order and sequence, and it was imperative that routines be repeated in exact replication each time. A psychiatrist today might classify this as obsessive-compulsive disorder, but in Tesla’s time he was just labeled “odd,” the same label he’d earned due to his visions.
Much later in his adolescence, when he was seventeen, these flashes became productive. In his mind, seemingly before his eyes, he gained visions of his inventions. A device and its workings would manifest in great detail, making it so the physical creation was all that was left. No theory or tinkering was needed. His mind—these visions—had shown him what to do. “When I get an idea,” Tesla offered, “I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements and operate the device in my mind.… In this way I am able to rapidly develop and perfect a conception without touching anything.”
During his early teen years, one of Tesla’s most detailed visions was of a place he had seen in the books at school: a place called Niagara Falls. These falls, beautifully depicted in illustrations and drawings, along with detailed text descriptions, were a miraculous natural phenomenon to Tesla. As he saw the falls more and more and let the images capture his mind, a flashing vision came to him, one that involved a giant wheel being turned continually by the powerful, roaring waves. Later, he vowed to his uncle that one day he would travel to America and see this scheme realized. This vision of Niagara remained in his consciousness—with as much detail as the day it had appeared—for the rest of his life, calling him toward it on an almost daily basis.
Nikola’s late teen years resulted in vices, including smoking and gambling. To Nikola’s father, a man of little vice and plenty of virtue, this was unacceptable. But to his mother, a woman who had come to understand the nature of man—having surrounded herself with stubborn, willful men earlier in life—it was merely a matter of experimenting, learning, and changing. To this end, she once gave her son a lofty sum of money and told him to go and spend it all. Nikola did just that, and blew through the lot so quickly that he felt guilt and, according to Tesla, “only regretted that [my addiction] had not been a hundred times as strong. I not only vanquished but tore it from my heart so as not to leave even a trace of desire.” Tesla applied his strong mind to fixing his smoking habit and his predilection for drinking too much coffee, and in essence willed his vices away for good.
The charismatic and enigmatic Nikola Tesla
At the age of seventeen, Nikola was set to join the clergy, but not of his own accord. His father, and everyone around him, didn’t entertain any other choice for a future. Then fate intervened in the form of a severe case of cholera, which held Nikola at death’s door. In bed and seemingly ready to die, he said something to his father, musing that if he would be promised the chance to go to school and study electricity, then perhaps he would get better. Upon his father’s vow, Tesla miraculously recovered.
Nikola Tesla’s higher education began in 1877 at the age of twenty-one. He attended Realschule, Karlstadt in Germany, where he dove headfirst—mind first—into the study of electricity. It fascinated Tesla. Everything about it.
Now as a young adult with ample education and a developed mind, these flashes of light turned into flashes of brilliance, both in the form of light and the form of grand schemes. His professors, though, were not appreciative of Tesla’s constant challenging of the curriculum. While they talked about the functionality of direct current and its safe and productive nature, Tesla argued that it was an incredible waste of energy. He believed it to be a system of electricity that would only hit dead ends. To Tesla, alternating current was the answer, one that had no dead ends and only kept going due to its logical scientific principles.
In 1880, Tesla finished his studies by attending lectures at the University of Prague, but he never graduated with a degree. Tesla then transitioned from the classroom to the workplace, taking a position at the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest in January 1881. While in Budapest, alternating current dominated his every thought, and time working on his alternating current motor consumed him. This predisposition to light and electricity can be traced back to two related boyhood experiences, both of which included Niko’s favorite childhood companion, the family cat, Macak.
One dry winter day, Niko brushed his hand along Macak’s back. “I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.” These sparks were the beginning, the heat to start a lifelong blaze in Tesla’s mind. The other experience, not long after the first, happened when Macak sauntered across a cold, dark room in the candlelight. Tesla’s memory held that image for many years. “[Macak] shook his paws as though he were treading on wet ground. I looked at him attentively … surrounded by a halo like … a saint!” These two experiences together kept Nikola Tesla asking every day, “What is electricity?”
When Tesla was twenty-six, a different experience would mix with the two childhood memories with the family cat and serve as a compass to guide the rest of his life. It happened in Budapest, during a walk with his college friend Anthony Szigeti, when a severe vision came to him, one that held great clarity like no previous flash of light. Tesla observed a host of circular objects around him and the vision grew more finite and tangible. His vision was a round object full of energy, reminiscent of the sun. Fixed in four different spots—like the twelve, three, six, and nine on a clock—hard coil wrapped around the edges of the circle. This round orb of energy spun from one station of coil to the next, as if one coil was activating and then deactivating, and then the next, and then next, until the circle was continually pulled around and around without any noticeable end. It was a vision that would change not just more of Tesla’s thoughts but also the history of humankind. Tesla had just “seen” his alternating current motor at work. He had invented an alternating current induction motor.
Schematic of Tesla’s alternating current motor
Of course, now that he’d invented it in his mind, he had to physically construct the motor. So from 1880 to 1884, Nikola Tesla worked on his motor, trying to make it function just as it had when he’d envisioned it. During this time, he desperately tried to get backing to produce his motor in Germany and in France, but he never came close to success in gaining investors.
Then, in 1884, while Edison Electric Light was installing a direct current system in Paris, Nikola Tesla came across a man named Charles Batchelor, who just so happened to be Thomas Edison’s trusty right-hand man. Batchelor was running the Edison plant in Paris while Edison himself was getting things in order back in New York. Tesla’s work attracted Batchelor, who soon offered to write a letter for the Serbian inventor. Later, Edison would
mistakenly refer to Tesla as the “Parisian” because Batchelor had told him they’d met in Paris.
Tesla knew that if anyone could help him develop and produce his alternating current motor, it was the father of invention, Thomas Edison. This was Nikola Tesla’s big break.
A long journey was in store for the twenty-eight-year-old Tesla. The eager inventor boarded a ship and took off on an arduous seafaring adventure. With only four cents in his pocket, he touched American soil in New York City on June 6, 1884, with a recommendation letter in hand from Charles Batchelor addressed to Thomas Edison. Tesla opened the letter again. Like he had many times aboard the ship, he ran his eyes over the part that made him certain this was meant to be. “I know two great men and you are one of them,” Batchelor had written to Edison. “The other is this young man.”
Tesla hurried off to find his destination, a place on Fifth Avenue, where the great Thomas Edison was said to be. As he walked, Tesla’s flashes of light spread before him, all filled with this great man, the one and only Thomas Edison, falling in love with his alternating current motor.
7 WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS
After leaving Edison Electric, Nikola Tesla might have been alone and exposed to the harsh conditions of unemployment—broke and in need of direction—but the Serbian immigrant had learned some valuable lessons during his time under Edison’s umbrella.
First, Tesla learned that his competition, even the vaunted Thomas Edison, was not without vulnerability. The fact that he could improve Edison’s production and machinery showed Tesla he was a step above his competitors when it came to intelligence. Further, the manner in which Edison shunned all discussion of alternating current told Tesla that the master inventor was nervous—afraid someone would come along and best his prized direct current approach. Tesla was certain that his design was more advanced and more practical than direct current.
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