Nikola Tesla : Pioneer of Modern Electricity

Reading about Nikola Tesla, I’m absolutely fascinated by how he was simultaneously a brilliant genius and a deeply troubled, eccentric figure.

Tesla’s mind seemed to operate on a completely different wavelength than most people. He built an actual earthquake machine in his lab!  In 1898, the Disco Cherry Earthquake machine he created almost collapsed Nikola Tesla’s lab in New York. He tested different versions at scale to see the effects, and apparently from about 5 miles away, buildings were detectable too. Though I’m not sure that’s the best idea…

His hypersensitivity was extreme. It is interesting to know how Tesla could hear a watch ticking from three rooms away, and feel physical pain from the slightest noises – a fly landing on a table or a carriage passing blocks away would cause him actual discomfort. At one point he had to put his bed on rubber cushions because the vibrations were unbearable. I can’t imagine living with senses that heightened.

Tesla also suffered from what sounds like serious mental health issues and possibly neurological conditions. He experienced “flashes of light accompanied by strong flashes of light” which sounds like it might have been temporal lobe epilepsy. Oliver Sacks wrote about similar symptoms. Tesla also had obsessive-compulsive tendencies – he was terrified of germs, staying at the Waldorf-Hotel and using precisely 24 linen napkins per meal, calculating the cubic volume of his food, and washing his silverware extensively. He reminded a lot of the  detective Monk  character in the TV. He kept pigeons in his hotel room! That’s both sad and strangely endearing. 

What really struck me was Tesla’s philosophical and spiritual side. He believed all perceptible matter comes from “Akasa or luminiferous ether” acted upon by “Prana or creative force.” This sounds almost like Eastern mysticism. He even came to see himself as something divine – “a demiurge of love that annihilates time and space… to whom the Sun itself is an obedient toiling slave.” That’s a pretty grandiose self-image!

I also found it interesting how Tesla’s vision of wireless technology was so much broader than what we’ve implemented. Today we think of wireless as mainly for communications, but Tesla envisioned wirelessly powering homes, vehicles, and even fertilizing land! 

Then there’s the strange “purple plates” attributed to Tesla – anodized aluminum discs that supposedly have healing properties and can purify food and water. They sell for about $100 for an 8-by-10-inch plate!

What’s sad is that despite Tesla’s amazing brilliance and world-changing inventions, he was financially betrayed multiple times. J.P. Morgan apparently cut off funding for Tesla’s wireless tower under the condition that Tesla would sell him all patent rights, then backed out once he had control. The Westinghouse patent deal cost Tesla an estimated $17 million (about $400 million today).

Tesla is such a paradox – a man whose mind operated on a completely different level, who gave us so much of our modern electrical world, yet was ultimately unable to function normally in society. His story makes me wonder how many other brilliant minds throughout history might have been dismissed as eccentric or crazy, when they were actually just seeing possibilities the rest of us couldn’t yet imagine.