Early Life
“He'll be a child of the storm.” -Comment by midwife who assisted in Tesla’s birth, while lightning was striking during a thunderstorm. His mother replied, "No, of light."
Nikola Tesla was born at the stroke of midnight on July 10th, 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia. The son of the town minister, he was expected to follow his father into the clergy. Tesla, however, convinced his father to let him pursue a career in electrical engineering.1
He attended the prestigious Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria where he was an excellent student who earned high marks. When introduced to the latest Direct Current (DC) dynamo in physics, Tesla proposed improving it by using alternating current (AC).
The professor declared, “Mr. Tesla may accomplish great things, but he certainly will never do this. It would be equivalent to converting a steady pulling force, like that of gravity into a rotary effect. It is a perpetual motion scheme, an impossible idea.”
Tesla would spend the next four years obsessed with proving the professor wrong.2
After graduating, Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary. He started working for the Central Telephone Exchange and at the age of 24 he proved his college professor wrong.3
“One afternoon, which is ever present in my recollection, I was enjoying a walk with my friend in the city park and reciting poetry. At that age I knew entire books by heart, word for word. One of these was Goethe's Faust. The sun was just setting and reminded me of a glorious passage:
The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.”
Tesla had invented the induction motor, a revolutionary device that would change society.4
