Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
Author of The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla
About the Author
Image credit: George Grantham Bain Collection,
LoC Prints and Photographs Division
(LC-DIG-ggbain-04851)
LoC Prints and Photographs Division
(LC-DIG-ggbain-04851)
Works by Nikola Tesla
La mia vita (Italian Edition) 4 copies
Rare - Inventions Researches Writings Nikola Tesla Illustrated Sealed Leather Hardcover (1777) 3 copies
The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla (Barnes & Noble Leatherbound Classic Collection) by Nikola Tesla (2014-06-07) (2014) 3 copies
Nikola Tesla: Lecture Before the New York Academy of Sciences April 6, 1897: The Streams of Lenard and Roentgen and Nove (1994) 3 copies
TESLA: Inventions, Researches and Writings: Lectures, Studies, Articles on Experiments, Inventions, Patents & Letters with Autobiography (2018) 2 copies
THE PROBLEM OF INCREASING HUMAN ENERGY WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO THE HARNESSING OF THE SUN'S ENERGY (2005) 2 copies
Nikola Tesla’s Patents 2 copies
Els meus invents 2 copies
Collected Tesla Writings; Scientific Papers and Articles by Tesla and Others about Tesla's Work Primarily in the Field of Electrical Engineering (2012) 2 copies
The Inventions Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla[INVENTIONS RESEARCHES & WRITIN][Paperback] (2014) 1 copy
Firmado: Nikola tesla 1 copy
İcatlarım 1 copy
NIKOLA TESLA: Minhas Invenções - Autobiografia (Homens que Mudaram o Mundo) (Portuguese Edition) (2018) 1 copy
Моите изуми 1 copy
Nikola Tesla correspondence 1 copy
NIKOLA TESLA: Minhas Invenções - Autobiografia (Homens que Mudaram o Mundo) (Portuguese Edition) 1 copy
Gesamtausgabe: Seine Werke, 6 Bde., Bd.2, Meine Erfindungen, Das Problem der Steigerung der menschlichen Energie (1997) 1 copy
The Quotable Tesla 1 copy
Vizionarske misli 1 copy
Ma Vie et Ma Recherche, l'Autobiographie de Nikola Tesla: avec une galerie de rares photographies (French Edition) (2018) 1 copy
From Colorado Springs to Long Island: Research Notes (Edition Monographs of the Nikola Tesla Museum) (2008) 1 copy
Nikola Tesla’s Patents book 1 copy
EXPERIMENTS WITH ALTERNATE CURRENTS OF VERY HIGH FREQUENCY AND THEIR APPLICATION TO METHODS OF ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION (2006) 1 copy
Experimente mit Strömen hoher Wechselzahl und Frequenz (German Edition) (2017) — Contributor — 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1856-06-10
- Date of death
- 1943-01-07
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Graz University of Technology
- Occupations
- electrical engineer
inventor
physicist
mechanical engineer
autobiographer - Short biography
- Nikola Tesla, born to Serbian parents in a small village in the Austrian Empire (now Croatia), trained as an electrical engineer and became one of the most important and prolific scientific inventors and innovators of the 19th/20th centuries. He's best known for his groundbreaking contributions to the field of electromagnetism. In 1931, on his 75th birthday, he was on the cover of Time magazine, with the caption, "All the world's his power house," but 12 years later he died impoverished and in debt in New York City. In 1960, the International System of Units designated the term "tesla" for the unit of measurement of magnetic field strength. The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of his birth.
- Nationality
- Austria-Hungary (birth)
USA (naturalized 1891) - Birthplace
- Smiljan, Croatia
- Places of residence
- Graz, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Paris, France
New York, New York, USA
Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA - Place of death
- New York, New York, USA
- Burial location
- Belgrade, Serbia
- Map Location
- Croatia
Members
Reviews
Years ago I read some sort of work about Tesla ....I think it was "Tesla's forgotten inventions" and I formed the view that he was an extraordinary individual who had an almost intuitive understanding of electricity ....rather like Michael Faraday. And this book is actually a very small collection of essays written by him in during 1919 and published in the Electrical Experimenter (which seems to be a precursor to "Popular Mechanics" or "Science and Mechanics" (of which I have a collection show more from around 1950-1960). This short book is an autobiography of sorts and he appears to be extraordinarily open about his background his way of visualising things and his various mental breakdowns. He talks of working from 10.30 am to 5am the next morning for a year without a break (that's 18.5hrs a day...leaving him only 5.5 hrs for sleeping and everything else one needs to do to live.....seems a bit exaggerated to me). But then again he kept having mental breakdowns of sorts whilst simultaneously proclaiming his strength and health. Without having some background in electrical terminology, it's a bit hard to follow his various inventions because they are not necessarily obvious from the way they are named. Most of the inventions seem to be flowing from his fertile mind (and lab) around the turn of the century (1900) but the articles were written much later when he was about 63 years old.
Some interesting extracts follow:
He describes an incident which obviously made a big impression on him.....though sounds like a migraine headache: viz..." I had been long confined to the factory and the fresh air had a wonderfully invigorating effect on me. On my return to the city that night I felt a positive sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as though a small sun was located in it and I past the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head. Finally the flashes diminished in frequency and force but it took more than three weeks before they wholly subsided."
He lived with some elderly relatives for a time but was constantly affected by Malaria......" But I lived in an atmosphere of refinement and artistic taste quite unusual for those times and conditions. The land was low and marshy and malaria fever never left me while there despite of the enormous amounts of quinine I consumed. Occasionally the river would rise and drive an army of rats into the buildings, devouring everything even to the bundles of the fierce paprika." It seems almost inconceivable today how he could be so active and creative when subject to such health privations.
Interesting also that his parents were keen to place him in the clergy: what a loss this might have been to science. See "During all those years my parents never wavered in their resolve to make me embrace the clergy, the mere thought of which filled me with dread. I had become intensely interested in electricity under the stimulating influence of my Professor of Physics, who was an ingenious man and often demonstrated the principles by apparatus of his own invention."
He was quite insistent that wireless was one of the greatest inventions and the Americans (including himself in this instance) were the main contributors. See " There are, however, exceptional reasons why wireless should be given the fullest freedom of development. In the first place it offers prospects immeasurably greater and more vital to betterment of human life than any other invention or discovery in the history of man. Then again, it must be understood that this wonderful art has been, in its entirety, evolved here and can be called "American" with more right and propriety than the telephone, the incandescent lamp or the aeroplane. Enterprising press agents and stock jobbers have been so successful in spreading misinformation that even so excellent a periodical as the Scientific American accords the chief credit to a foreign country, The Germans, of course, gave us the Hertz-waves and the Russian, English, French and Italian experts were quick in using them for signalling purposes."
A surprising amount of the autobiography is devoted to his psychological and spiritual musing.......surprsing for such a scientists but also reflective of the times and the environment in which he was raised (His father was a priest). See "For many years I endeavoured to solve the enigma of death, and watched eagerly for every kind of spiritual indication. But only once in the course of my existence have I had an experience which momentarily impressed me as supernatural. It was at the time of my mother's death. I had become completely exhausted by pain and long vigilance........ When I recovered I sought for a long time the external cause of this strange manifestation and, to my great relief, I succeeded after many months of fruitless effort............I had seen the painting of a celebrated artist, representing allegorically one of the seasons in the form of a cloud with a group of angels which seemed to actually float in the air, and this had struck me forcefully. It was exactly the same that appeared in my dream, with the exception of my mother's likeness.
While I have failed to obtain any evidence in support of the contentions of psychologists and spiritualists, I have proved to my complete satisfaction the automatism of life, not only through continuous observations of individual actions, but even more conclusively through certain generalizations........ We are automata entirely controlled by the forces of the medium being tossed about like corks on the surface of the water, but mistaking the resultant of the impulses from the outside for free will."
And I was greatly impressed by his prescience in anticipating the negative outcomes of the League of nations and the reparations imposed on Germany. Maybe even predicting WWII. See "The proposed League is not a remedy but on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. A city, at any distance whatsoever from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so. If we want to avert an impending calamity and a state of things which may transform this globe into an inferno, we should push the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without an instant's delay and with all the power and resources of the nation."
If you want to try to understand his inventions, this is not the book for that but it's an interesting introspection by an incredible individual. Four stars from me. show less
Some interesting extracts follow:
He describes an incident which obviously made a big impression on him.....though sounds like a migraine headache: viz..." I had been long confined to the factory and the fresh air had a wonderfully invigorating effect on me. On my return to the city that night I felt a positive sensation that my brain had caught fire. I saw a light as though a small sun was located in it and I past the whole night applying cold compressions to my tortured head. Finally the flashes diminished in frequency and force but it took more than three weeks before they wholly subsided."
He lived with some elderly relatives for a time but was constantly affected by Malaria......" But I lived in an atmosphere of refinement and artistic taste quite unusual for those times and conditions. The land was low and marshy and malaria fever never left me while there despite of the enormous amounts of quinine I consumed. Occasionally the river would rise and drive an army of rats into the buildings, devouring everything even to the bundles of the fierce paprika." It seems almost inconceivable today how he could be so active and creative when subject to such health privations.
Interesting also that his parents were keen to place him in the clergy: what a loss this might have been to science. See "During all those years my parents never wavered in their resolve to make me embrace the clergy, the mere thought of which filled me with dread. I had become intensely interested in electricity under the stimulating influence of my Professor of Physics, who was an ingenious man and often demonstrated the principles by apparatus of his own invention."
He was quite insistent that wireless was one of the greatest inventions and the Americans (including himself in this instance) were the main contributors. See " There are, however, exceptional reasons why wireless should be given the fullest freedom of development. In the first place it offers prospects immeasurably greater and more vital to betterment of human life than any other invention or discovery in the history of man. Then again, it must be understood that this wonderful art has been, in its entirety, evolved here and can be called "American" with more right and propriety than the telephone, the incandescent lamp or the aeroplane. Enterprising press agents and stock jobbers have been so successful in spreading misinformation that even so excellent a periodical as the Scientific American accords the chief credit to a foreign country, The Germans, of course, gave us the Hertz-waves and the Russian, English, French and Italian experts were quick in using them for signalling purposes."
A surprising amount of the autobiography is devoted to his psychological and spiritual musing.......surprsing for such a scientists but also reflective of the times and the environment in which he was raised (His father was a priest). See "For many years I endeavoured to solve the enigma of death, and watched eagerly for every kind of spiritual indication. But only once in the course of my existence have I had an experience which momentarily impressed me as supernatural. It was at the time of my mother's death. I had become completely exhausted by pain and long vigilance........ When I recovered I sought for a long time the external cause of this strange manifestation and, to my great relief, I succeeded after many months of fruitless effort............I had seen the painting of a celebrated artist, representing allegorically one of the seasons in the form of a cloud with a group of angels which seemed to actually float in the air, and this had struck me forcefully. It was exactly the same that appeared in my dream, with the exception of my mother's likeness.
While I have failed to obtain any evidence in support of the contentions of psychologists and spiritualists, I have proved to my complete satisfaction the automatism of life, not only through continuous observations of individual actions, but even more conclusively through certain generalizations........ We are automata entirely controlled by the forces of the medium being tossed about like corks on the surface of the water, but mistaking the resultant of the impulses from the outside for free will."
And I was greatly impressed by his prescience in anticipating the negative outcomes of the League of nations and the reparations imposed on Germany. Maybe even predicting WWII. See "The proposed League is not a remedy but on the contrary, in the opinion of a number of competent men, may bring about results just the opposite. It is particularly regrettable that a punitive policy was adopted in framing the terms of peace, because a few years hence it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships or guns, by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit. A city, at any distance whatsoever from the enemy, can be destroyed by him and no power on earth can stop him from doing so. If we want to avert an impending calamity and a state of things which may transform this globe into an inferno, we should push the development of flying machines and wireless transmission of energy without an instant's delay and with all the power and resources of the nation."
If you want to try to understand his inventions, this is not the book for that but it's an interesting introspection by an incredible individual. Four stars from me. show less
This is not a traditional autobiography. Much of it is culled from separate articles that Tesla wrote more to feed the publicity machine of the time than as considered self assessments. There is not much historical context, plotting a life in the usual ABC fashion or weighing of fact vs. fiction that gives traditional biographies their heft. What is left in this slim volume is more of a mold than a statue—the assumed perception of his own greatness vs. building a case brick by brick of show more proving it. Instead he concentrates more on the process of how he approached his work. How his strict religious upbringing instilled a love of learning and the discipline to pursue it even though that learning did not lead to a life in the clergy that his parents had hoped for. This love and discipline plus feeling the need to succeed on behalf of a brother who died young, created the drive to work through the problems that challenged him. The one thing he wanted said of himself in the end was that he worked harder than anyone else.
While the most pivotal inventor of the 20th century, Tesla lacked Edison’s business acumen and knack for self promotion. So despite surpassing Edison in genius, he lost the race for fame, financing and fortune. While his name remains cool and does have some cachet, his business impact can be felt mostly through a little company called Westinghouse. A young company when Tesla was in his prime, they recognized his genius and gave a home to his most valuable patents. He countered Edison’s volatile Direct Current with his safer Alternating Current (AC). (For interesting reading, look for anything about the battle between AC & DC to decide which would be lighting the homes of the world—and the lengths Edison was willing to go to win that battle. I will just say that his afterlife will not be lit by electricity but rather by the fires of some very southern location.)
Ultimately Tesla’s genius would be squandered on projects that would either lead nowhere or were as in the case of his grandest effort, wirelessly transmitting electricity—still ahead of their time. (What company is going to support research on a method to provide free energy to the world?) MY INVENTIONS is a very interesting look at the mindset and process of inventing but shirks much discussion of his shortcomings or discussing what might have been. Even though you feel the electricity without seeing the light here, it is a very tasty teaser for checking out a longer biographical work.
Some other area impacted by Tesla:
--> Created the first flourescent lights
--> Greatly influenced how X-Rays were used
--> His Tesla Coil drew electricity from the earth's magnetism
--> Invented the radio years before Marconi
--> Invented radio remote control
--> Invented the electric motor (does not require ignition)
--> Invented the Ruby Laser.
And more... show less
While the most pivotal inventor of the 20th century, Tesla lacked Edison’s business acumen and knack for self promotion. So despite surpassing Edison in genius, he lost the race for fame, financing and fortune. While his name remains cool and does have some cachet, his business impact can be felt mostly through a little company called Westinghouse. A young company when Tesla was in his prime, they recognized his genius and gave a home to his most valuable patents. He countered Edison’s volatile Direct Current with his safer Alternating Current (AC). (For interesting reading, look for anything about the battle between AC & DC to decide which would be lighting the homes of the world—and the lengths Edison was willing to go to win that battle. I will just say that his afterlife will not be lit by electricity but rather by the fires of some very southern location.)
Ultimately Tesla’s genius would be squandered on projects that would either lead nowhere or were as in the case of his grandest effort, wirelessly transmitting electricity—still ahead of their time. (What company is going to support research on a method to provide free energy to the world?) MY INVENTIONS is a very interesting look at the mindset and process of inventing but shirks much discussion of his shortcomings or discussing what might have been. Even though you feel the electricity without seeing the light here, it is a very tasty teaser for checking out a longer biographical work.
Some other area impacted by Tesla:
--> Created the first flourescent lights
--> Greatly influenced how X-Rays were used
--> His Tesla Coil drew electricity from the earth's magnetism
--> Invented the radio years before Marconi
--> Invented radio remote control
--> Invented the electric motor (does not require ignition)
--> Invented the Ruby Laser.
And more... show less
A great look into the psyche of Telsa. In the modern day, we may call him potentially Autistic, hyperphantasic or at the very least neurodivergent but I don't think these are sufficient descriptors for the genius of Telsa and how innovative a man he was, not just in mechanics and engineering but in terms of his health, wisdom, open-mindedness, dedication or love for his craft and what impressed me the most- his ability to question.
I think my key takeaways from his writings are to embrace show more the things in you which people consider flaws for these are your advantages, be in connection with your inward self for you have much more to give and understand than you think, and to make your own path. Thank you Tesla, I'll most certainly reread this again and make sure my children read it too! show less
I think my key takeaways from his writings are to embrace show more the things in you which people consider flaws for these are your advantages, be in connection with your inward self for you have much more to give and understand than you think, and to make your own path. Thank you Tesla, I'll most certainly reread this again and make sure my children read it too! show less
Luckily for society, Tesla devoted his life to inventing vs. writing. Maybe because his original manuscript was written almost a hundred years ago, I found the style of the text somewhat dry, disorganized, and disjointed. It's a shame, because he was a brilliant man and visionary inventor.
I think Tesla gave his future readers too much credit for being able to clearly understand and envision just what he was talking about when describing some of his work and inventions. There were many show more opportunities to explain more, to describe the conditions and work that went into his ideas, etc., but those opportunities weren't always taken. That may have been because the book is so short.
For a better story about Tesla and Westinghouse and Edison and the era of electricity innovations and development, I actually preferred Graham Moore's "The Last Days of Night". Even though that was a fictionalized account of their actions, disagreements, and progress, you get the idea of just what Tesla was like, and what he was able to accomplish. show less
I think Tesla gave his future readers too much credit for being able to clearly understand and envision just what he was talking about when describing some of his work and inventions. There were many show more opportunities to explain more, to describe the conditions and work that went into his ideas, etc., but those opportunities weren't always taken. That may have been because the book is so short.
For a better story about Tesla and Westinghouse and Edison and the era of electricity innovations and development, I actually preferred Graham Moore's "The Last Days of Night". Even though that was a fictionalized account of their actions, disagreements, and progress, you get the idea of just what Tesla was like, and what he was able to accomplish. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 107
- Also by
- 1
- Members
- 2,266
- Popularity
- #11,329
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 20
- ISBNs
- 329
- Languages
- 16
- Favorited
- 8
