Nikola Tesla Birthday

Nikola Tesla was born an ethnic Serb in the village Smiljan, Lika county, in the Austrian Empire (present day Croatia), on 10 July 1856. His father, Milutin Tesla (1819–1879), was an Eastern Orthodox priest.

Nikola Tesla Education

In 1861, Tesla attended primary school in Smiljan where he studied German, arithmetic, and religion.

Later in 1870, Tesla moved far north to Karlovac to attend high school at the Higher Real Gymnasium. The classes were held in German, as it was a school within the Austro-Hungarian Military Frontier.

In 1875, Tesla enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria, on a Military Frontier scholarship. During his first year, Tesla never missed a lecture, earned the highest grades possible, passed nine exams (nearly twice as many as required).

After his father’s death in 1879, Tesla found a package of letters from his professors to his father, warning that unless he removed Tesla from the school, Tesla would die through overwork. At the end of his second year, Tesla lost his scholarship and became addicted to gambling.

During his third year, Tesla gambled away his allowance and his tuition money, later gambling back his initial losses and returning the balance to his family.

When examination time came, unprepared Tesla asked for an extension to study, but got denied. He did not receive grades for the last semester of the third year and he never graduated from the university.

Nikola Tesla Inventions

His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company would eventually market.

Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging.

Later he also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.

Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs.

Later Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills.

Nikola Tesla Books

My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla

Problem of Increasing Human Energy by Nikola Tesla

Experiments with alternate currents of high potential and high frequency by Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla Facts

Tesla worked every day from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. or later, with dinner from exactly 8:10 p.m., at Delmonico’s restaurant and later the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Tesla was 6 feet 2 inches (1.88 m) tall and weighed 142 pounds (64 kg), with almost no weight variance from 1888 to about 1926.
He read many works, memorizing complete books, and supposedly possessed a photographic memory.

He was a polyglot, speaking eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
Tesla claimed never to sleep more than two hours per night. However, he did admit to “dozing” from time to time “to recharge his batteries.

Tesla never married, explaining that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities. He once said in earlier years that he felt he could never be worthy enough for a woman, considering women superior in every way.

Later in 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality. He indicated that “Queen Bees” will run humanity’s in future. He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future.

Nikola Tesla Death

Tesla left the Hotel New Yorker to make his regular commute to the cathedral and the library to feed the pigeons. While crossing a street a couple of blocks from the hotel, moving taxicab hit Tesla and knocked him to the ground.

The accident severely wrenched his back and broke three of his ribs. The full extent of his injuries were never known; Tesla refused to consult a doctor, an almost lifelong custom, and never fully recovered.

On 7 January 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel.

Nikola Tesla Quotes

I don’t care that they stole my idea … I care that they don’t have any of their own.

Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.

As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influences that shape our destinies.

Nikola Tesla Wife

Tesla never married, explaining that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.

Nikola Tesla IQ

His estimated IQ scores range from 160 to 310 by different measures.

Nikola Tesla Patents

Tesla’s induction motor invention as “the most valuable patent since the telephone. Tesla obtained around 300 patents worldwide for his inventions.

Some of Tesla’s patents are not accounted for, and various sources have discovered some that have lain hidden in patent archives. There are a minimum of 278 known patents issued to Tesla in 26 countries.

Many of Tesla’s patents were in the United States, Britain, and Canada, but many other patents were approved in countries around the globe. Many inventions developed by Tesla were not put into patent protection.