13 ms·

The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

222 points by Hooke 9y ago

rwmj 9y ago
BBC radio programme about Tesla: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv
lerie82 9y ago
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 9y ago
  I recommend his autobiography, My Inventions, it is very excellent. Apart from everything else, the man has a way with words.
  - pcf 9y ago
    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
cairo_x 9y ago
Never fails to make me quite emotional reading about his story.
mindcrime 9y ago
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
WalterBright 9y ago
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.
- j45 9y ago
  It's ironic this comment is attempting to eliminate comparisons between the two, when it was actually fashionable to let Tesla's story languish in obscurity for nearly 70 years while beautifying Edison towards some sainthood. As a kid really into science I was a little appaled when I learned how little Tesla was included in curriculum, despite his enormous impact on today's age. The recent attention on Tesla barely existed 10-12 years ago. I remember reading random websites wondering why he wasn't better known. Beginning to give him his due has nothing to do with Edison for me, only that Tesla easily has a place right next to Edison and anyone else, which he was denied at the cost of folks like Edison. In the eyes of some, part of the smell test Edison didn't pass was Tesla appeared genuinely an order of magnitude higher in some cases in innovating entirely new areas and received very little long term recognition for it. Tesla's didn't just make AC, he invented radio, xrays, transmitting electricity wirelessly, and using the ionosphere in new ways. It was straight up mad science perhaps a little like Einstein or Da Vinci. Edison was a great business man. He did appear to take a prolific spitball approach to innovation in the eyes of some. Edisons treatment of his contemporaries, can't be explained away when it wasn't held against him ultimately. It's fine to defend one's self, if one is that talented.. why proactively trash others? It didn't seem the same about Tesla, maybe because he wasn't American? I don't know how Edison's top 10 inventions might compare to Tesla's top 10 innovations. This is about giving Tesla his due for a society that was focused instead on a cult of personality towards others instead of recognizing things on their merit.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  Fair enough. One can respect both of them without denigrating either. I'm something of a Tesla fan-boy, but I have no problem saying that Edison was a great inventor who did a lot to make the world a better place.
leggomylibro 9y ago
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 9y ago
  Now I know that there needs to be a survival horror game where Nikola Tesla fights eldritch abominations in Gilded Age New York.
  - triplesec 9y ago
    Using mathematics... See the Laundry series by Charles Stross.
- Johnythree 9y ago
  See "William Crookes and the Commercialisation of Science" by William H. Brock Crooks is an interesting character. He was one of the few who witnessed the "lost" experiments of David Huges so he had a preview of what was coming in radio technology. see page 263 at goo.gl/J1fiSA and https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2008/06/nparticle.2008-06-18.html https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/20... and https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22/ubi-crookes-ibi-lux/ https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22...
hinkley 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
- klum 9y ago
  It was a nice result, but I think the one-sided view that comic painted of Tesla as a misunderstood saint and of Edison as an evil thief (and that the internet largely went along with) is far removed from reality. It's easier to put a narrative together if you choose to view the world in black and white.
LearnerHerzog 9y ago
the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas Interesting
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- LearnerHerzog 9y ago
  May I ask why this comment gets downvoted... without getting downvoted?
  - grzm 9y ago
    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).
acqq 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
senatorobama 9y ago
Too bad he died alone and poor. Would he have given up some if his intellectual ability for companionship?
- tamriel 9y ago
  No, he would not. As mentioned in the article he was reputedly celibate by choice for this reason.
joering2 9y ago
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.
- obscurantist 9y ago
  There are maybe four people alive I would class alongside Einstein and Tesla in terms of sheer cognitive power: Murray Gell-Mann Grigori Perelman Ed Witten Saul Kripke
- thedoctor79 9y ago
  Oh but we have them. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were such people.
- smallstepforman 9y ago
  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 9y ago
    The clear solutions to these problems then, are to become wealthy, and remain celibate.
trodemode 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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.
  - dsego 9y ago
    Facts are not politics.
    - andai 9y ago
      Truth can be (often is) politically incorrect.
      - dsego 9y ago
        That doesn't make any sense. Edit: Serious question, is that rhetoric, platitude, bromide, something else?
        vinceguidry 9y ago
        Truth isn't just fact, it's also narrative. Trying to separate the two is impossible, therefore truth can often be political.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - bkovacev 9y ago
45lifdluycas 9y ago
amazing thanks for sharing
lanbanger 9y ago
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.
- Sone7 9y ago
  Tesla was lazy? Can you call a man lazy, as an extreme example, who slept 16 hours a day and output half of what Tesla did? Da Vinci did the same shit with tangents/investors, and slept multiple times a day. Was he lazy too?
- klum 9y ago
  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!
mcnamaratw 9y ago
Enough with Tesla already. Jesus Christ.
madengr 9y ago
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.
kashyapc 9y ago
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/9780743215367 http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tesla/Margaret-Cheney/... (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.)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
s-c-h 9y ago
How do you explain the boom of the scientist/inventor/businessman profile in that period? Are there any references on the subject?

222 points by Hooke 9y ago

rwmj 9y ago

BBC radio programme about Tesla: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09kplfv

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 9y ago
I recommend his autobiography, My Inventions, it is very excellent. Apart from everything else, the man has a way with words.
- pcf 9y ago
  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

cairo_x 9y ago

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

mindcrime 9y ago

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

WalterBright 9y ago

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.

j45 9y ago
It's ironic this comment is attempting to eliminate comparisons between the two, when it was actually fashionable to let Tesla's story languish in obscurity for nearly 70 years while beautifying Edison towards some sainthood. As a kid really into science I was a little appaled when I learned how little Tesla was included in curriculum, despite his enormous impact on today's age. The recent attention on Tesla barely existed 10-12 years ago. I remember reading random websites wondering why he wasn't better known. Beginning to give him his due has nothing to do with Edison for me, only that Tesla easily has a place right next to Edison and anyone else, which he was denied at the cost of folks like Edison. In the eyes of some, part of the smell test Edison didn't pass was Tesla appeared genuinely an order of magnitude higher in some cases in innovating entirely new areas and received very little long term recognition for it. Tesla's didn't just make AC, he invented radio, xrays, transmitting electricity wirelessly, and using the ionosphere in new ways. It was straight up mad science perhaps a little like Einstein or Da Vinci. Edison was a great business man. He did appear to take a prolific spitball approach to innovation in the eyes of some. Edisons treatment of his contemporaries, can't be explained away when it wasn't held against him ultimately. It's fine to defend one's self, if one is that talented.. why proactively trash others? It didn't seem the same about Tesla, maybe because he wasn't American? I don't know how Edison's top 10 inventions might compare to Tesla's top 10 innovations. This is about giving Tesla his due for a society that was focused instead on a cult of personality towards others instead of recognizing things on their merit.
mindcrime 9y ago
Fair enough. One can respect both of them without denigrating either. I'm something of a Tesla fan-boy, but I have no problem saying that Edison was a great inventor who did a lot to make the world a better place.

leggomylibro 9y ago

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 9y ago
Now I know that there needs to be a survival horror game where Nikola Tesla fights eldritch abominations in Gilded Age New York.
- triplesec 9y ago
  Using mathematics... See the Laundry series by Charles Stross.
Johnythree 9y ago
See "William Crookes and the Commercialisation of Science" by William H. Brock Crooks is an interesting character. He was one of the few who witnessed the "lost" experiments of David Huges so he had a preview of what was coming in radio technology. see page 263 at goo.gl/J1fiSA and https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/2000-2009/2008/06/nparticle.2008-06-18.html https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/20... and https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22/ubi-crookes-ibi-lux/ https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22...

hinkley 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
klum 9y ago
It was a nice result, but I think the one-sided view that comic painted of Tesla as a misunderstood saint and of Edison as an evil thief (and that the internet largely went along with) is far removed from reality. It's easier to put a narrative together if you choose to view the world in black and white.

LearnerHerzog 9y ago

the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas Interesting

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
LearnerHerzog 9y ago
May I ask why this comment gets downvoted... without getting downvoted?
- grzm 9y ago
  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).

acqq 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.

senatorobama 9y ago

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

tamriel 9y ago
No, he would not. As mentioned in the article he was reputedly celibate by choice for this reason.

joering2 9y ago

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.

obscurantist 9y ago
There are maybe four people alive I would class alongside Einstein and Tesla in terms of sheer cognitive power: Murray Gell-Mann Grigori Perelman Ed Witten Saul Kripke
thedoctor79 9y ago
Oh but we have them. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were such people.
smallstepforman 9y ago
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 9y ago
  The clear solutions to these problems then, are to become wealthy, and remain celibate.

trodemode 9y ago

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 9y ago
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.
- dsego 9y ago
  Facts are not politics.
  - andai 9y ago
    Truth can be (often is) politically incorrect.
    - dsego 9y ago
      That doesn't make any sense. Edit: Serious question, is that rhetoric, platitude, bromide, something else?
      - vinceguidry 9y ago
        Truth isn't just fact, it's also narrative. Trying to separate the two is impossible, therefore truth can often be political.
        deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - bkovacev 9y ago

45lifdluycas 9y ago

amazing thanks for sharing

lanbanger 9y ago

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.

Sone7 9y ago
Tesla was lazy? Can you call a man lazy, as an extreme example, who slept 16 hours a day and output half of what Tesla did? Da Vinci did the same shit with tangents/investors, and slept multiple times a day. Was he lazy too?
klum 9y ago
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!

mcnamaratw 9y ago

Enough with Tesla already. Jesus Christ.

madengr 9y ago

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.

kashyapc 9y ago

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

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

s-c-h 9y ago

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