The tormented genius who electrified the scientific world

Written by Callum McKelvie

Illustration by: Joe Cummings

EXPERT BIOS

W BERNARD CARLSON

Professor at the University of Virginia, Carlson specialises in the history of technology. He is the author of Tesla: Inventor Of The Electrical Age, available now from Princeton University Press.

MARC SEIFER

Seifer is an author who has published a number of books on many subjects. He is the author of Wizard: The Life & Times Of Nikola Tesla and ​Tesla: Wizard At War, both available now. Learn more at: www.marcseifer.com

You might drive one of the cars, maybe you’ve heard of the coil, but just how much do you really know about the late 19th century inventor and technological wizard Nikola Tesla? Mostly remembered for being part of an epic struggle against the American inventor of the light bulb, Thomas Edison, that tale is largely exaggerated as are many connected to the life of the Serbian-American genius. He spoke of creating wireless power, death rays and even flying machines, yet Nikola Tesla was no crank. Certainly a one-of-akind mind, he was the creator of the AC power, induction motor and hydroelectric power systems, inventions that helped shape the world as we know it.

Nikola Tesla was born at midnight between 9 and 10 July 1856 in Smiljan in the Austrian Empire, in what today is Croatia. Part of a large family, he was one of five children. However, tragedy struck when his older brother Dané was killed while Tesla was just a child. This incident turned out to have a profound effect on the young Tesla. “Dané sadly died quite young in a horse riding accident and his parents were absolutely devastated,” begins historian W Bernard Carlson, author of Tesla: Inventor Of The Electrical Age. “But young Nikola was traumatised. He had an eidetic memory. For example, if you told him to think about a juicy apple, he could visualise that apple in front of him. So after his brother died, his mind was flooded with horrific images and he would get terrible nightmares that overwhelmed him.” Tragedy aside, however, Tesla’s imagination – once he had learned to control it – would soon become one of the inventor’s greatest gifts.

“ĐUKA TESLA WAS SOMETHING OF A TINKERER HERSELF, CREATING NUMEROUS DEVICES TO HELP AROUND THE FAMILY HOME”

But where did Tesla’s love for electronic innovation and invention come from? Partially it was from his mother. Đuka Tesla (born Đuka Mandić) was something of a tinkerer herself and created numerous devices to help around the family home. Purportedly she once even constructed a mechanical eggbeater. Secondly, it came from his previously mentioned imagination and a young boy’s desire to fly. “When Tesla was about 11 or 12 years old he decided that he wanted to build a flying machine,” Carlson explains. “We don’t have any sketches but the description sounds like a helicopter backpack. To power the backpack, Tesla designed some sort of vacuum pump and although it didn’t produce enough power to take off – the blades did move. This convinced him that if you could imagine it, then there was a possibility it could be built and set him on the path to being an inventor.”

Upon completing his secondary school education, the young Tesla returned to his family home in Gospic where he caught a nearly deadly bout of cholera. When it seemed the young man was on his deathbed, his grief stricken father was prepared to agree to anything. “His father says ‘I’ll do anything, anything! If you’ll get better’,” says Carlson. “So Nikola states that what he really wants is to study mathematics and science. So when his health does improve his father arranges for him to go to the Graz University of Technology [previously known as the Polytechnic School] in Austria, where he has a scholarship.”