
The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla - Hooke
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/extraordinary-life-nikola-tesla-180967758/?no-ist
======
WalterBright
These days it's fashionable to venerate Tesla and denigrate Edison. Tesla's
contributions to AC motors and power are great and beyond dispute. The others,
not so much.

For those who like to denigrate Edison by comparison, I challenge to read
"Edison" by Josephson and maintain that opinion.

I.e. Tesla transformed AC power, Edison transformed multiple foundational
industries.

~~~
hyperpallium
funfact: though Elon Musk has a company named after Tesla, in an interview, he
has said Edison is the better role model.

e.g. It's not that Edison invented a light bulb - he created the first power
grid. It's like inventing an internet client, and the internet.

~~~
WalterBright
It's also popular to say Edison did not invent the light bulb. It is correct
that he was not the first to invent a glowing wire. Edison's key innovation
was the thin, high resistance filament which used high voltage and low
current. That design was said to be impossible by all the experts of the time,
but it is what made the light bulb practical and useful.

Edison's light bulb was attacked on all fronts in patent court for years, and
he beat them all.

He invented the light bulb.

Ironically for Elon Musk, early electric cars mostly used Edison batteries.

~~~
UncleSlacky
You're forgetting Joseph Swan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan#Electric_light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan#Electric_light)

~~~
WalterBright
No I didn't. From the article you cited:

"Swan's carbon rod lamp and carbon filament lamp, while functional, were still
relatively impractical due to low resistance (needing very expensive thick
copper wiring) and short running life."

It also mentions the high current.

As I remarked, Edison's breakthrough was the thin-filament high voltage, low
current lamp, which made it practical.

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leggomylibro
I have a genuine question about Tesla. I've read some of his
speeches/presentations, and he has credited his interest in inductors and
electrical fields to, among other things, papers or texts written by William
Crookes.

I can't find which texts, though. Does anyone know?

See, the thing about Crookes is, he seems to have veered towards paranormal
stuff towards the end of his career and a lot of the literature surrounding
him has to do with that. Somewhat ironically, the Crookes Tube was featured in
one of H.P. Lovecraft's stories during an attempt to exorcise an eldritch
monstrosity of fungal horror.

~~~
krapp
Now I know that there _needs_ to be a survival horror game where Nikola Tesla
fights eldritch abominations in Gilded Age New York.

~~~
triplesec
Using mathematics... See the Laundry series by Charles Stross.

------
mindcrime
Of all of the pop culture tributes / references to Tesla, probably my favorite
is the band Tesla[1] and their album The Great Radio Controversy[2]. And, of
course, the song Edison's Medicine[3] on the Psychotic Supper album.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(band)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_\(band\))

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Radio_Controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Radio_Controversy)

[3]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2zwBRa0YhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2zwBRa0YhA)

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hinkley
I still think my favorite development in the Tesla saga was when a cartoonist
(The Oatmeal) got the Internet and then Elon Musk to help him save Wardenclyff
from the dozers.

~~~
fecak
I live only a few miles from the site and drive past it regularly. It's been
interesting to watch the progress from an abandoned and overgrown property
entirely unrecognizable as the site of anything of interest morphing into a
recognition of Tesla. It's not there yet, but it's a work n progress and
definitely easy to see the progress.

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acqq
Something most authors don’t mention, but I’ve read in the book by Andy
Kessler: (1):

Apparently Tesla not only invented the first electronical wirelessly
controlled battery powered device, he also invented the first electronic
ligical circuit then, the author claimed, all in year 1899.

1) “How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets”

~~~
8bitsrule
For more information on that 'device', look hard at the tech used in his 1898
demo of his remote-controlled boat at an expo in Madison Square Garden. The
boat and remote combined several amazing innovations. Technically it's on the
same level as Englebart's demo.

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kashyapc
Some of you here must surely be familiar -- one of the most engaging
biographies of Tesla was written by Margaret Cheney: _Man Out of Time_ :

[http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tesla/Margaret-
Cheney/...](http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tesla/Margaret-
Cheney/9780743215367)

(The title might sound a tad clickbait-y, but deservedly so. Also remember
that it was written in 2001, about six years before HN was created.)

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trodemode
There is a factual inaccuracy in the article. Although an ethnic Serb, Tesla
was not born in Serbia. He was born in Croatia that was at that time part of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

~~~
bkovacev
Why does it always have to be someone that involves politics into this? Tesla
during his life said he is of Serbian origin and thinks of himself as a
Serbian, even though he was born in Croatia. Don't steer it up in here too,
I'd like HN to remain what it is.

~~~
acqq
In fact, born in the territories that are currently inside of the borders of
the country now called Croatia which at that time didn’t exist as the
independent country, especially not there. As far as I understand, he was born
in the “Military Frontier” lands of Austro-Hungarian monarchy (Wikipedia:
“Born 10 July 1856 Smiljan, Austrian Empire”), and went to Polytechnic school
in Graz, today Austria:

[https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-
tesla/timeline/1875-tesla-a...](https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-
tesla/timeline/1875-tesla-attends-college-graz)

Present Croatia exists for less than 30 years, it’s important not being
anachronistic in historical statements. At the time Tesla was born his
birthplace was not even administratively “Croatia”:

“By the Basic Law of the Frontier from 1850, the administration of Military
Frontier was split and the land started to look like a state. The Main Command
had its headquarters in Zagreb, but remained directly subordinate to the
Ministry of War in Vienna.”

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Frontier](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Frontier)

~~~
donretag
Even if Croatia did not exist at the time of Tesla's birth, it does not change
the fact that he was not born in Serbia.

~~~
acqq
I never claimed he was. ‘trodemode’s claim was Croatia, and that’s what isn’t
historical.

However if you’d actually want to visit Tesla’s birthplace, you would need to
buy a ticket to Croatia. The place is in Croatia _now._

Ethnically Tesla was a Serb, his birthplace was then Austrian Military
Frontier and now in Croatia, that’s the background to different attempts of
ignoring the history.

------
lerie82
Perhaps one of my favorite people of all time, you can find some decent
documentaries on YouTube as well. It's hard to sum him up in an article so if
you're interested in any of the things he accomplished, check out some videos
and books about him, truly an extraordinary man that had so much taken from
him with no credit given.

~~~
andai
I recommend his autobiography, _My Inventions,_ it is very excellent. Apart
from everything else, the man has a way with words.

~~~
pcf
A short title, freely available here: *
[http://www.teslasautobiography.com](http://www.teslasautobiography.com) *
[https://freeditorial.com/en/books/my-inventions--
2](https://freeditorial.com/en/books/my-inventions--2)

------
lanbanger
Tesla had many great ideas, but was lazy and had a bad habit of disappearing
off down on a tangent that his investors had not been told about, and had not
agreed to invest in.

I recommend this book
([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/494.Wizard](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/494.Wizard))
to anyone who wants to know the full story.

~~~
klum
I read that book as well... one of the tangents was (paraphrasing from memory)
when he secured financing from J. P. Morgan for a proof-of-concept wireless
transmission tower (the Wardenclyffe tower). He then dramatically scaled up
his plans without consulting with Morgan and tried to motivate this by
picturing the project as a reflection of Morgans position in society -- surely
you can see that only the best will do! After running out of money, he kept
asking J. P. Morgan for more money for the rest of Morgan's life... and a
large part of Morgan's sons life!

------
rwmj
BBC radio programme about Tesla:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv)

------
madengr
His Colorado Springs lab notes are a good read. One of the things he struggled
with was RF detection (rectification). Don’t think he figured it out, but
tried many experiments.

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s-c-h
How do you explain the boom of the scientist/inventor/businessman profile in
that period? Are there any references on the subject?

------
senatorobama
Too bad he died alone and poor. Would he have given up some if his
intellectual ability for companionship?

~~~
tamriel
No, he would not. As mentioned in the article he was reputedly celibate by
choice for this reason.

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45lifdluycas
amazing thanks for sharing

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cairo_x
Never fails to make me quite emotional reading about his story.

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LearnerHerzog
_the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas_

Interesting

~~~
LearnerHerzog
May I ask why this comment gets downvoted... without getting downvoted?

~~~
grzm
Speculation, but likely because it doesn't add much to the conversation. For
questions like this, it's useful to review other comments that have been
downvoted and appraise them with the guidelines at hand. It won't be perfect,
as members may downvote for any number of reasons not mentioned in the
guidelines (or for no reason at all).

------
mcnamaratw
Enough with Tesla already. Jesus Christ.

------
joering2
My tinfoil hat tells me that either neither Tesla nor Einstein were humans, OR
both were in some sort of communication with aliens.

I know on its face it sounds like horseshit... but with over 100 billion
people ever lived on earth... how come we have so few geniuses that truly push
the whole human kind forward 10x faster than all people combined thru a
previous ten centuries?

Even more - if we assume its just a coincident or that they had such good DNA,
or their parents were geniuses before... then how come it doesn't happen
again? How come we don't have such huge brains like Tesla or Einstein today?
Sure there are many super smart humans among us... but not a single one sticks
out like Tesla or Einstein did in their old days.

~~~
smallstepforman
There are probably many geniouses that came and went through the ages, the
problem is that of “financial stability / partnerships”. If I’m too busy
making Widgets for a company in order to feed my family, I dont have any
energy left to do Creative stuff. Isaac Newton was wealthy so could devote
time to pursue the sciences, the rest of us are preparing TPG reports for the
bean counters. The person who can cure cancer is too busy taking his kids to
KungFu/Soccer practice, hogged by a demanding socialite wife who doesn’t allow
him to steal time from domestic chores.

~~~
andai
The clear solutions to these problems then, are to become wealthy, and remain
celibate.

~~~
dsego
MGTOW
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way)

