This gentleman is Nicola Tesla. Many wise people term him ‘the best Electrical Engineer’ of all time. Now there might be a question as to, if he really is the best-ever Electrical Engineer, why isn’t he that famous now-a-days? Many people who are interested in science and technology haven’t heard his name at all. Even some people who may have heard his name are unaware of what activities Tesla really did or what inventions he had made. Some people believe that he worked on electromagnetic waves, but it is difficult to find someone who would be able to say what those works exactly were. Even people who graduated on Electrical Engineering or had a diploma on that subject, they too consider Tesla as an average-scaled scientist. They are totally unaware that Nicola Tesla was basically a scientist of high stature same as Einstein and also the greatest Electrical Engineer of all time.
The reason behind his becoming NOT so famous is that he was born in a region under Soviet Union’s regime which is currently known as Croatia. When he finished his graduation studies on Electrical Engineering, he migrated to USA and spent most of his life there. The most valuable inventions after the discovery of electricity like AC generator, AC motor, transformer, transmission line, transmission of radio signal etc. were all his contributions (Tesla’s patent on radio signal transmission system was illegally used by Marconi. Although an american court gave its first verdict on behalf of Marconi, but later they withdrew it and declared Testla as the genuine and original inventor of radio signal transmission system once and for all). Even the ‘Strategic Defense Initiative’ system used by many countries now-a-days to stop enemy missiles carrying ‘Atom bombs’ was originally envisioned by Nicola Tesla (rumor has it that after Tesla’s death in New York, american government illegally photographed his papers and thus started to build that system. Later Tesla’s nephew and only heir to his legacy came to New York to collect his papers and he then transferred those to Soviet Union’s authority and thus they too were able to build that system).
Although Tesla had all these achievements and success in his career, he couldn’t come into limelight after his death. The reason behind this is that since he was a soviet citizen by birth, the western media, specially american media didn’t want to focus on his name that much. There is another reason behind this, let’s explain the details of that. Tesla was once offered the Nobel prize for physics, in 1910; but he had to share this with his nemesis Thomas Alva Edison, the so-called american patriot scientist. Tesla really had a beef with this guy. The enmity originated when Tesla worked in Edison’s company. Edison assigned him with the development of performance of his DC motor. When Tesla completed his assignment he demanded for his promised remuneration ($50,000), but Edison simply laughed at him saying that ‘You really don’t understand our american sense of humor, do you Mr. Tesla?’ and offered him an amount much less than the promised one. Tesla flew into a rage upon hearing that, he had enough and left that job. He really had to pay a lot for his audacity. The following one year he had to dig canals for Edison’s company.
But Tesla was finally able to overcome all those obstacles and establish himself as a successful scientist. Then he had to cross path with Edison again. This time it was a fight between Tesla’s AC currents vs. Edison’s DC currents. Tesla was a supporter of AC currents because he realized that AC currents could perform the jobs that DC currents couldn’t, like sending electricity to a distance. So after all these conflicts between the two scientists, Tesla couldn’t possibly share the Noble Prize with his nemesis, Edison and he directly declared about that. Even Edison did the same. But the thing is that Edison was an american citizen by birth and Tesla was an american citizen by migration, so naturally american media as well as western media always supported and rooted for Edison, overlooking Tesla’s genius and successes.
In the first paragraph of this article, Tesla has been termed as a scientist with a high stature same as Einstein, there is actually enough bases for this declaration. Both these scientists had almost the same level of intelligence and talent. Out of these two, Tesla was a practical scientist (i.e. he worked on the material world) and Einstein was a theoretical scientist. Although Einstein liked Tesla a lot and always praised him, but it was not certain whether Tesla liked him the same. Because once Tesla mocked Einstein by saying that ‘Theoretical scientists now-a-days, they surely think deep, but I’m not sure whether they think straight and clear.’ This comment of Tesla had a basis though. After a long time of coming up with the theory of ‘Special Relativity’, Einstein again checked all the calculations of his theory and then found a ‘major’ mistake in those. There you have it, no matter how famous and well-established a theory might be, it may still inherit a ‘grave’ mistake since its inception.
However, let us now talk about Tesla’s lifetime activities. He was born in 1856 and died in 1943. He earned a lot of money in his lifetime, but he spent all of it in scientific activities and hardly saved any money in bank. As a consequence of that, he really had to endure a hard time in his old age; even he had to take monetary help from those companies that he once worked for at his young age. Those companies too, were liberal to do him this monetary help at his old age, considering the contributions that Tesla once had for them.
Nicola Tesla lived up to 87 years of age, he might have lived longer. But when he was 83 years old, he was hit by a taxi on a road of New York. A few years after this incident, he finally died suffering from multiple diseases and illness. He was a christian indeed, but we could still pray for the redemption of his soul, no matter what religion and origin we individually are from, considering all his contributions for the betterment of humanity.
