Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!

Nikola Tesla was born in what is now Croatia on July 10, 1856, which is 155 years ago today. It's a good day to take a little time and find out more about this extraordinary man.
Few inventors contributed more to advances in science and engineering in the early 20th century than Nikola Tesla. As one of the Fathers of Electricity, Tesla did groundbreaking work on alternating current (AC) power system, electromagnetism, hydroelectric power, radio, and radar to name a few. Many of his inventions (Tesla obtained some 300 patents in his lifetime) became the stuff we take for granted today: when we flip a switch to turn on the light, we owe a lot of that electrical magic to Tesla.

As fate would have it, Tesla, one of the world’s greatest inventors, died penniless and in obscurity. Even today, many people mistakenly attribute many of his inventions to others (Edison, for example, is in the name of many power companies in the United States – ironically, they use the AC system devised by Tesla rather than the more inefficient direct current or DC system espoused by Thomas Edison; Tesla also invented the fundamentals of radio transmissions before Gugliegmo Marconi).

Today, there’s quite a bit of resurgence in Tesla’s popularity, which is helped in part by his mystique as a "mad scientist." Amongst his more outlandish ideas, Tesla worked on death rays to knock out enemy airplanes out of the skies, pocket-sized resonance machine that could topple buildings, ways to send electricity through the upper atmosphere, force-fields to protect cities, and so on.

Read the story of Tesla's life and inventions, along with plenty of photographs, in an excerpt from the book Tesla: Master of Lightning by Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth. Link

Tesla, Bucky Fuller, Wilhelm Reich...others, these are the folks who saw God and tried to communicate it to the world:
-Babylon won, and now we live in ugly houses, pay out the ass for fuel and electricity, eat sheit food, and have collective spiritual lives akin to a soiled couch in a crack den....
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
He was a Serb born in Croatia. Yes, Serbs lived in Croatia until the mid 90s when they were expelled by the Croatians (which involved many deaths).
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
The guys in my Ham radio club are constantly amused by those who think Edison invented electrical lighting and distribution systems. It was Tesla, working for Westinghouse who did ALL that and more. Same with Marconi inventing the radio. Didn't happen! Our modern electrical world owes much to Tesla, I'm glad to see him getting some much deserved recognition. A very smart man.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
@choggie

I was going to say; you hear a lot about Tesla these days, but not so much Willhelm Reich.

“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.” - Willhelm Reich
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
My coworker was headed into priesthood before he went to become an engineer and he likes to compare himself to Tesla whose father was a serbian orthodox priest and was also headed to priesthood.`
Now all he needs is a touch of genius!.

Actually KD is right, Tesla was a serb but he was part of the austro-hungarian empire and not a croat since that country didnt exist independently until the Nazi supported 1941 regime.
So NO, he was NOT born in Croatia.
At best you can say he was a serb born in what is present day Croatia.
We do it for jews who lived and died in Poland and Poland has been a country and nation for centuries.

The serbs who fled the Turkish invasion in the 13-14th century fled west and served as the defenders-buffers for the austro-hungarian empire for the next 500-600 years and were rewarded with land (sure, well give you land but you have to protect it from the hundreds of thousands of turks. Heck of a proposition.).
Like many groups in that region, they might have been of different ethnic makeup but they were subjects of the A-H empire (which was infinitely better than being subjects-slaves in the Turkish cruel regimes).
Actually, many from the balkan regions under Ottoman rule were educated in Vienna and served as a 2nd home for many in that region.
You want to settle this?
When Tesla travelled, what did his papers say?

Austrian empire subject and the american citizen.

Please dont rewrite history, intentionally or not.
Abusive comment hidden. (Show it anyway.)
Login to comment.
Click here to access all of this post's 8 comments




Email This Post to a Friend
"Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla!"

Separate multiple emails with a comma. Limit 5.

 

Success! Your email has been sent!

close window
X

This website uses cookies.

This website uses cookies to improve user experience. By using this website you consent to all cookies in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

I agree
 
Learn More