Tesla the maverick

Tesla the maverick

July 2014 

This July marks the 158th birth anniversary of the famous physicist Nikola Tesla, perhaps the greatest scientist the world has ever seen. Telsa invented the alternating current which is what is lighting up the planet. His inventions and discoveries are incredibly versatile. They include radar, X-rays, much of the research behind the invention of radio, the remote control, neon lighting, modern electric motor and wireless communication. Best of all, Tesla built a tower in New York that would give the world free energy. Unfortunately, his financier backed away when he found that he would get no money for it.

Tesla had an eidetic or photographic memory which enabled him to remember complex research diagrams for years together, without reproducing them on paper. This also enabled him to read books and periodicals while simultaneously committing them to memory and using the acquired information as an internal library, available at his beck and call. He was also a hyper polyglot and was proficient in eight languages. Also, like a maverick, he would shun the company of humans but would beam with joy in the company of his feathered friends.

Popular stories about him bringing injured birds to his hotel room and nurturing them to health were vouched by many. Another facet of his extraordinary mind was the regular visions, or flashes of light as he would describe them, he had. Often, the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; at other times they would provide the solution to a particular problem he had encountered. It is well known that Tesla’s conception of his AC motor came to him during one of his visions. In his own words, “the idea came like a flash of lightening 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. The images were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal.”

All these traits made him a figure of intrigue for the public, especially those who believe in the power of mind that goes beyond the human brain’s capacity to reason. However, a staunch believer of science and reasoning, Tesla always maintained that his preternatural knowledge was evident to all but the ignorant mind. Nikola Tesla died a lonely death in New York, in a hotel room he had inhabited for the last 10 years of his life, having exhausted all the money that he made from his inventions.

Tesla is enjoying a remarkable revival of late. As the implications of his remarkable discoveries unfold, the world is recognizing quite what it owed to this genius.