Nikola Tesla is the brilliant scientist, the father of alternating current standing at the origins of wireless technologies. For the life it registered more than 300 various patents, in its works the anticipation of many modern inventions is visible. Mysterious and excentric, it left behind a trace not only in science, but also pop culture. Not all related riddles are solved, but there are no doubts that he was an outstanding and unusual person.
Tesla was born in thunderstorm time
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the small village of Smilyan which was then a part of the Austrian empire, and now belonging to Croatia. It Serbian. At night when the kid was born, the terrible thunderstorm stormed. The birth of the baby was marked by the lightning which lit the half-sky. The superstitious midwife, wringing hands, said that this evil omen. "This child – Orphan", - she appealed. "No, - happy mother told. – This child of light". Knowing Tesla's fate, one may say, that is rare when the universe gives in every sense so clear signs.
Mother Tesly was an inventor
Tesla was the fourth of five children Milyutin and Luka Tesla. He had three sisters and one brother. The father of future scientist was an orthodox parson, and mother was engaged not only a household, but also constructed various mechanical devices and improved tools for knitting. She came from the family Mandich which became famous for inventions for house and agriculture, both her father, and the grandfather were recognized rationalizers and innovators. Tesla wrote in the autobiography – "my mother was an inventor on calling and would reach bigger recognition if lived in other time".
However to tell that inherited the abilities and Nicol's tendencies only from mother, it would be incorrect. The boy's father Milyutin Tesla was a person erudite, the scientist, the poet, the writer and also had infallible memory. He since childhood was engaged with children, thinking out for them special various exercises on development of logical and critical thinking, memory improvements.
The Tesla had a brother, more gifted, than the genius
When Tesla was five years old, his elder twelve-year-old brother died as a result of accident with a horse. Dane Tesla since childhood showed promises, he possessed, on Nikola's glories, "unique mental capacities, attempts to explain which in biological researches were unsuccessful". The tragedy which witness was little Tesla affected all his further life. Parents did not recover after death of the firstborn and all progress of Tesla perceived through a prism of genius of Dane. Because of this Nicol never felt as the true talent – "all my efforts grow dull in comparison with achievements of the brother".
It had eydetichesky memory and could visualize the inventions mentally
Unique memory of Tesla allowed it to keep in mind the whole scientific treatises, tables seen by it at least once images. Being engaged in the inventions it to the last did without drawings, drawings and models. Tesla made all experiments in mind, materializing for itself concepts and designs, their work and interaction. Tesla considered waste of money, time and energy the embodiment of inventions without preliminary stage of intensive intellectual visualization.
Tesla suffered from a number of nervous breakdowns
Since childhood Tesla nightmares tormented. His ingenious brain sated bright images designed from them the real attraction of horrors. It is no wonder that the inventor suffered from insomnia. After all, he accustomed itself to sleep not longer than two hours a day, and sometimes could and up to several days does without dream.
The ingenious scientist and from OCF (obessivno-compulsive frustration), interfaced to fear of microbes suffered. He wiped each tableware before a meal, using exactly 18 napkins. Tesla always sat down at a table in white gloves, it started a dinner exactly at 20:10. He was obsessed with number three and tried to perform all operations either three times or so many time that the final number was multiple to three.
From strangenesses of the great scientist also the trikhofobiya is mentioned – fear to touch others hair, the fact that they can get to food, on clothes, on a body, and still fear of pearls. He could not talk to ladies in pearls and even is if the girl in pearl earrings sat at a table. Tesla in general had disgust for objects with a smooth round surface, but sometimes could cope with it. So, for example, it played billiards, but to reconcile to need to use spheres, it needed time.
Edison deceived Tesla
In June, 1884 Tesla emigrated to the USA and began to work in Thomas Edison's company. The relations of these greatest minds developed very strange. History when Edison promised Tesla a large monetary bonus is known if that manages to improve its dynamo car. After redesign of the generator was made and Nikola came for the relying bonus, Edison told: "The boy, it was the joke. You do not understand our American humour at all". Tesla left the company and was engaged in own inventions.
However on it history did not end. Tesla and Edison's opposition began, and the dispute over an occasion of advantages of alternating current before constant is more right. Edison was afraid for the economic party of a question, for the income and took great pain to convince public that alternating current is unsafe. For the sake of it he staged spectacular demonstrations and even invented an electric chair, the patent for which immediately and sold to the government. Edison claimed that the chair can work only at alternating current as it "dangerous", holding back that it is all about current. In front of the shaken public he "executed" dogs, and once even designed an electric chair for an elephant cow of Topsi, though the guilty of death of three people, but not deserving such death. And still, despite all black PR, "war of currents" eventually won Tesla.
It is necessary to tell that a divergence between two scientists were much deeper, than the question, whose current are better. Edison represented that type of inventors to whom the science for the sake of science is alien, it invested only that research and development at the end of which commercially favorable patent "loomed". Tesla considered that "the true scientist does not strive for immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be easily accepted. Its work is similar to work of the planter - on the future. Its duty is to lay the foundation for those who have to come and specify by it a way".
Tesla it was pleasant to women
Though the Tesla is often described as the typical madman scientific, excentric and unsociable, despite all the strangenesses, he was pleasant to people. Among his friends there was a famous writer Mark Twain, the defender of the nature John Myyuir, financiers Henry Clay and Thomas Ryan, musicians Ignatsy Padarevsky and Antonin Dvorak.
Long time Tesla regularly gave lunches in Uoldorf-Astoria hotel to which it invited friends and acquaintances, friends and casual interlocutors. At a table scientists, musicians, writers, artists, business people and women of fashion met. Lunches of Tesla had reputation refined, intellectual, full of graceful wit.
The scientist not only had pleasant appearance, but also in every possible way watched an impression which he makes on people. High, harmonious, with blue hypnotic eyes, Tesla considered himself the dandy and followed the fashion. Though, having gone to work, the inventor became a hermit, in society he could be the charming interlocutor. It is not surprising that Tesla it was pleasant to ladies and even rumors went that some "were madly in love with it". There is a legend that Tesla gave the heart to Catharina Johnson, the wife of his close friend. But it is, of course, only about secret Platonic love.
The Tesla had a good sense of humour
Nikola Tesla not only was able to express gracefully the thoughts, but also had soft and aphoristic sense of humour. It possesses a phrase – "the last 29 days of month the heaviest!". He spoke – "modern scientists think deeply, and it is necessary to think clearly. To think clearly, it is necessary to have bright mind, and it is deeply possible to think and being absolutely mad.
Tesla was an ecologist and the humanist
Tesla it was deeply concerned by the fact that people thoughtlessly consume terrestrial resources, without thinking that they are ischerpayema. He looked for alternative renewable sources, investigated methods of use of energy of water, air, the sun. "Desire by which I am guided in all that I do is desire to use forces of nature for service to mankind", - said Tesla.
Being a humanist, Tesla worried not about own financial benefit, and about improvement of quality of life of people. Here one more quote from the great scientist: "Money is not of such value what people give them. All my money was invested in experiments by means of which I made the new discoveries allowing mankind to facilitate a little life". And Tesla did not dissemble at all. Despite all the inventions, hundreds of patents, he died to the poor. At the same time there is a set of certificates to how Nikola Tesla helped the person in need asking him for the help, during a time of its financial stability. He generously spent what was not absorbed by its laboratory, without postponing for "rainy day".
There is no Tesla, our world would be another
The foundation which was laid by Tesla, the way specified by it the scientist of the future is on what the modern world in many respects is under construction. Mobile phones, fluorescent lighting, x-ray devices, the Internet and many other things became possible, thanks to its experiments. As the speaker told, at a ceremony of delivery of a medal of Edison "It is enough to tell that if we somehow excluded results of work of mister Tesla from our industrial world, wheels of the industry would cease to turn, our cars and trains would stop, our cities would be dark, our plants would be dead and idle". And this speech was delivered at the beginning of the 20th century when still the most part of enlightenments of the ingenious scientist was far from the embodiment.