The biographers who were his contemporaries saw Tesla as a man who “invented the 20th century” and “the patron saint” of modern electricity. Along with Leonardo da Vinci, he is considered one of the two geniuses of world history. Tesla discovered alternate current, wireless power transmission, was the first one to elaborate the principles of remote control, laid the bases of high frequency current treatment, constructed the transformer, created the first electric clock and many other things. He obtained 300 patents in different countries for his inventions. He invented the radio before Marconi and Popov, generated three-phase current before Dolivo-Dobrovolsky. The whole contemporary electric power engineering would be impossible without his discoveries. So where did this genius come from?
From Austro-Hungary: now, part of it became a separate state, Croatia. Nikola Tesla was born in the village of Smiljan in a family of a Serbian Orthodox priest. He was not an ordinary boy: he read lots and lots of books and dreamed of becoming an engineer. And his dream came true: his father had to put up with him going to the Imperial-Royal Technical College in Graz. Later, he went to Karl-Ferdinand university in Prague, worked to earn his living and eve decided to go to St. Petersburg that was the center of electric power engineering development at that time. But in the end, Tesla crossed the Altantic to discuss ideas with the great Thomas Edison, however, they did not get along well. He did get along with George Westinghouse: in 1888, this entrepreneur and engineer bought over 40 of his patents and paid him over a million dollars. However, Tesla could not work for Westinghouse: the everyday routine work prevented him from making new discoveries. Therefore, he organized his own laboratory, and then another one. Besides that, Tesla spoke eight languages and wrote poems. His friend, Mark Twain, called him “lord of the lightning.” It seems that Tesla was far ahead of his time, and some of his inventions and discoveries were not duly appreciated by his contemporaries.
