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Today marks the day of my new topical series called Mind Ahead of Time where I will talk about the great minds in history. Mainly I will talk about their life and work and how it coincided with events we all know from history, which surely played some role in how their life and work turned out.

As a physicist I will mainly talk about characters from the field of science I derive inspiration from, because they pushed fields of science beyond understanding at their respective times. To start of my series I will talk about Nikola Tesla, who is one of the most striking personas of the 19th and 20th century and who left deep marks in the field of electro-magnetism.

Early Years

Nikola was born in what is today Croatia to parents of Serbian origin. His father was an orthodox priest named Milutin Tesla who married the daughter of another orthodox priest. Đuka Tesla, his mother gave birth to Nikola in on the 10th of July 1856. He possessed photographic memory which helped him immensely in his studies. He first got excited about science in middle school by a physics teacher, who demonstrated electricity experiments. Tesla noted that these demonstrations of this "mysterious phenomena" made him want "to know more of this wonderful force". He finished school in three years, eventhough the program was four years and moved to Graz to continue with his enginering education.

Despite having almost perfect grades he fell into gambling which led to losing his tuition money which further led to him dropping out of school. Working day to day in many fields connected to enginnering he finnaly caught a break when a job at the Continental Edison Company in Paris was offered to him. He gladly excepted and moved to Paris where he installed lighting in public places. Soon his expertice was noticed by the management and he moved on to designing and imrpoving dynamos and other electrical equipement.

In 1884 he emigrated to the US by the behest of the Edison manager. He worked on the electrical utility of the Manhattan area of New York which was very lack-luster at the time. He worked long hours but his efforts were not recognized so he left.

Going on His Own

Soon after leaving the Edison Company he started his own firm which worked on a different type of lighting which was much more popular then what the Edison companies product was. At first he was vastly succesfull but soon the investors left deciding to forgo Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing and go to simpler and safer ventures. This left Nikola penniless.

In the next few years he patented several inventions, that people now consider everyday, but were way ahead of the time. He invented an induction motor which ran on high voltage AC power. He also prooved the existence of radio waves using his renowned Tesla Coil.

Wireless Power

In the late 19th century he became obsessed with transmiting electricity through the air with the aim of transporting electrical power across the Atlantic using the Earths atmosphere. He also wanted to enable worldwide communications but quickly dissmissed the newly found radio waves as "worthless", as they diminish over distance and go in straight line!

To study the conductivity of low pressure air he set-up laboratories around the US, that we can see in the bottom pictures. They showed little success, so the investors moved on to Marconi, which is the founder of the Radio.

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Later Years

He attempted to market many more products throughout the rest of his life but most of his proposals and inventions fell on deaf ears. He moved from hotel to hotel, being forced to move because of his difficult nature.

On 7 January 1943, at the age of 86, Tesla died alone in the New Yorker Hotel. After his death many of his belongings were sized by the US government despite him being an American citizen. The government scientists hoped to find many wonders in his possessions but found only junk and philosophical ramblings.

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