nikola tesla was born in which country

Feeling that chastity would help him focus on his career, Tesla never married or had any known romantic relationships. In her 2001 book, “Tesla: Man Out of Time,” biographer Margaret Cheney writes that Tesla felt himself to be unworthy of women, considering them to be superior to him in every way. Later in life, however, he publicly expressed strong dislike what he called the “new woman,” women he felt were abandoning their femininity in an attempt to dominate men.

Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison

In 1884 Tesla arrived in the United States with little more than the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction to famed inventor and business mogul Thomas Edison, whose DC-based electrical works were fast becoming the standard in the country.

Edison hired Tesla, and the two men were soon working tirelessly alongside each other, making improvements to Edison’s inventions.

Several months later, the two parted ways due to a conflicting business-scientific relationship, attributed by historians to their incredibly different personalities: While Edison was a power figure who focused on marketing and financial success, Tesla was commercially out-of-touch and somewhat vulnerable.

Nikola Tesla and Westinghouse

After an unsuccessful attempt to start his own Tesla Electric Light Company and a stint digging ditches for $2 a day, Tesla found backers to support his research into alternating current. In 1887 and 1888 he was granted more than 30 patents for his inventions and invited to address the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on his work. His lecture caught the attention of George Westinghouse, the inventor who had launched the first AC power system near Boston and was Edison’s major competitor in the “Battle of the Currents.”

Westinghouse hired Tesla, licensed the patents for his AC motor and gave him his own lab. In 1890 Edison arranged for a convicted New York murderer to be put to death in an AC-powered electric chair—a stunt designed to show how dangerous the Westinghouse standard could be.

Buoyed by Westinghouse’s royalties, Tesla struck out on his own again. But Westinghouse was soon forced by his backers to renegotiate their contract, with Tesla relinquishing his royalty rights.

In the 1890s Tesla invented electric oscillators, meters, improved lights and the high-voltage transformer known as the Tesla coil. He also experimented with X-rays, gave short-range demonstrations of radio communication two years before Guglielmo Marconi and piloted a radio-controlled boat around a pool in Madison Square Garden. Together, Tesla and Westinghouse lit the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and partnered with General Electric to install AC generators at Niagara Falls, creating the first modern power station.

Many of Tesla’s inventions were classified.

When Tesla died in 1943, during World War II, the Office of Alien Property took his belongings, Alcorn said. Most of his things were later released to his family, and many ended up in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which opened in the 1950s. But some of Tesla’s papers are still classified by the U.S. government.

“I know people have requested things through the Freedom of Information Act, and they are released heavily redacted,” said Alcorn.

As a result of the years of secrecy, many people have speculated about what fantastic inventions might have been suppressed, perhaps to keep them out of enemy hands or, more darkly, to perpetuate the status quo. Perhaps supporting the former theory, Tesla had spoken publically about working on a “death beam.” Those who fear the latter theory often point to his work on harvesting the energy in the forces of nature as something that would upset powerful oil companies.

For her part, Alcorn said she is inspired by both the genius and the perseverance of Tesla. “He taught us that when you believe in yourself, work on your goals, and follow through, a lot is possible,” she said.

Nikola Tesla Threw Away a Billion Dollar Fortune

Nikola Tesla was commonly referred to by many names like “electrical genius”.

He is best known for contributing to the design and implementation of the A.C (alternating current) electricity supply system.

He was the one who left us all wondering if anyone could bring lightning down.

Tesla got 300 patents and royalty payments for his A.C. current patent. This gave him fame and a promise of a lifetime fortune.

His net worth was once equivalent to hundreds of millions of dollars in today’s currency.

These royalties were so valuable that he easily should have become the world’s first billionaire and richest person. But none of it happened as Tesla spent all of his fortunes on failed projects.

He also threw away one of his most valuable patents. Therefore, he missed out on the chance to become a billionaire.

Later Life and Death

In 1922, Tesla, deeply in debt from his failed wireless power project,

was forced to leave the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City where he had been living since 1900,

and move into the more-affordable St. Regis Hotel. While living at the St. Regis,

Tesla took to feeding pigeons on the windowsill of his room,

often bringing weak or injured birds into his room to nurse them back to health.

Of his love for one particular injured pigeon, Tesla would write,

“I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”

By late 1923, the St. Regis evicted Tesla because of unpaid bills and complaints about the smell from keeping pigeons in his room. For the next decade, he would live in a series of hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills at each. Finally, in 1934, his former employer, Westinghouse Electric Company, began paying Tesla $125 per month as a “consulting fee,” as well as paying his rent at the Hotel New Yorker.

In 1937, at age 81, Tesla was knocked to the ground by a taxicab while crossing a street a few blocks from the New Yorker. Though he suffered a severely wrenched back and broken ribs, Tesla characteristically refused extended medical attention. While he survived the incident, the full extent of his injuries, from which he never fully recovered, was never known.

Death

On January 7, 1943, Tesla died alone in his room at the New Yorker Hotel at the age of 86. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as coronary thrombosis, a heart attack.

On January 10, 1943,

New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia delivered a eulogy to Tesla broadcast live over WNYC radio. On January 12, over 2,000 people attended Tesla’s funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Following the funeral, Tesla’s body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York.

With the United States then fully engaged in World War II.,

fears that the Austrian-born inventor might have been in possession of devices or designs helpful to Nazi Germany,

drove the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seize Tesla’s possessions after his death. However,

the FBI reported finding nothing of interest,

concluding that since about 1928, Tesla’s work had been “primarily of a speculative,

philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power;

but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”

In his 1944 book, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla, journalist, and historian John Joseph O’Neill wrote that Tesla claimed to have never slept more than two hours per night, “dozing” during the day instead to “recharge his batteries.” He was reported to have once spent 84 straight hours without sleep working in his laboratory.