Here are 20 kickass and interesting facts about Nikola Tesla.
1-5 Kickass and Interesting Facts About Nikola Tesla
1. In 1898 Nikola Tesla once tricked an entire crowd into believing they could control a toy boat by shouting commands – he had in fact invented Radio Control and was piloting the boat himself. – Source
2. Thomas Edison once offered Nikola Tesla $50,000 to improve his DC motor. Upon completion, Edison failed to pay and mocked, “You don’t understand American humor.” – Source
3. Nikola Tesla openly expressed disgust for overweight people. Once, he fired his secretary solely because of her weight. – Source
4. He once paid an overdue hotel bill with a “working model” of his “death beam”. He warned the management never to open it without taking proper precautions to avoid detonation. After his death in 1943, the box was forced open & they found nothing but a bunch of old lab components. – Source
5. He used to feed pigeons, bringing injured ones into his hotel room to nurse back to health and one-time spending over $2,000 to fix a pigeon’s broken wing and leg, including building a device that comfortably supported her, so her bones could heal. – Source
6-10 Kickass And Interesting Facts About Nikola Tesla
6. In Silicon valley, US, there is a crowdfunded statue of Nikola Tesla that provides free wi-fi to nearby people. – Source
7. Nikola Tesla never married because he believed that his chastity played an important role in his scientific abilities. – Source
8. Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla were best friends and mutual fanboys. – Source
9. He used to drink whiskey every day because he thought it would help him to live for 150 years. – Source
10. He was in support of sterilizing criminal, insane people and believed that by 2100 people who aren’t “desirable parents” shouldn’t be able to reproduce. – Source
11-15 Kickass And Interesting Facts About Nikola Tesla
11. There is a group that is trying to save the only remaining laboratory where Nikola Tesla conducted research. – Source
12. He disagreed with the theory of atoms being composed of smaller subatomic particles, stating there was no such thing as an electron creating an electric charge. – Source
13. He was an advocate of forced selective breeding version of eugenics. Eugenics is the belief and practice which aims at improving the genetic quality of the human population. – Source
14. He suffered from extreme OCD and never slept for more than 2 hours. – Source
15. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was rejected by Nikola Tesla on claims of discoveries that he worked out a dynamic theory of gravity which he never published. – Source
16-20 Kickass And Interesting Facts About Nikola Tesla
16. Nikola Tesla planned to secretly experiment on children, lining the walls of schoolrooms with high-voltage lines, believing that exposing them to the energy would make them healthier and smarter, and he believed every home in the future would soon do likewise. – Source
17. He believed that women would become superior to men in future societal standing, and stated that “This struggle of the human female toward sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior”. – Source
18. He would only stay in a hotel room if its number was divisible by 3. – Source
19. Tesla built a tower, “Tower of Power”, with the intention of sucking electricity out of the air. – Source
20. He is the acknowledged inventor of the electronic AND logic gate circuit, a critical element of every digital computer.
Tesla was wrong. The laws of nature state that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Where was all that energy that he was going to send through the air going to come from? He told everyone we would have all this free energy. But he didn’t say who was going to pay for all that energy, it still doesn’t come free regardless if it is delivered by wire or through the air. His numbers just didn’t add up and most people at the time knew that and he was considered a “nut case” Why all of sudden now in the 21st century he’s become such a brilliant scientist?
Humans like any other organisms are multifaceted, he was brilliant in some areas & horribly misconstrued in others.
I’m in total agreement with that.
Steven, don’t take my word for this, what I remember from school is that, that free energy has to do something with the earth having some kind of electro magnetic field around it, or something like that. So, basically, it just needs to be harvested. It would be free as a source, but I guess you’d have to pay for the service. Nobody makes water, but we still pay for it monthly, for the maintenance, system and what not, but it’s super cheap.
I’ll believe that when I see it. I sure won’t be holding my breath.
@steven Lewis. Tesla was not wrong he was simply thwarted. The electricity he was seeking to harness was the electricity that is indeed in the air in the form of negative and positive ions. Think of it this way. Your tesla. Your hanging out with mark twain in your badass laboratory and JP Morgan comes to see what you’ve got. You switch on a vandergraaf generator and millions of volts of electricity are strung through the air. Now you hold onto a fluorescent light bulb and it illuminates as the electricity courses through your body. That was the demonstration he performed and he did establish his towers in Colorado springs and long island which both were able to pull power from the air. Now the problems with this were mostly that it required a giant steel structure and likely required batteries that it would charge. But like solar or wind power this energy wouldn’t be constant. Now if it’s 1905 and you realize that the amount of coal that would need to be burned to create the steel for this free electricity tower is more coal then if you just burned it in the first place to make electricity. And unlike Tesla’s tower it could give electricity at a constant and steady rate. It showed that hydroelectric and coal power were the only economically feasible options. It wasn’t that they hated his idea or that it wadnt possible. It was just more expensive. The same problem we face with modern solar panels and wind energy. It’s expensive and its energy supply is not constant. Electric cars were around during that time as well. But the same obstacle was that it didn’t take you very far and it took a long time to charge. The same exact problems you have today. Back in 1920 an electric car took 8 hours to charge and could travel 20 miles. While a gasoline car could travel as long as it had gas and it’s range was 85 miles on. Tank. And it was cheaper. Fast forward to today and you can buy a Nissan lead. But it only gets about 120 miles and it takes 4 hours to charge. Or you could buy a ford fiesta and it runs as long as it has gas and can go 500 miles on a single tank of gas. 100 years later and we have the exact same dilemma. Also once again the ford is cheaper then the Nissan leaf. This was the problem tesla faced and his idea simply fell into obscurity because it never became reasonable. Even today we have better alternative energy sources then a tower that sucks up a small amount of electricity from the air. Tesla envisioned a world where a 300 foot steel tower would power about 20 homes. What he didn’t realize is that it was impractical to implement. The same way that wind towers while a good idea are very impractical. No one wants a 300 foot windrower in their backyard today just like no one is wanted a 300 foot electric ion tower back then. It may be possible but that doesn’t mean it’s practical. Can we put a Rover on Mars? Yes. Can we put a person there? Not really. Coal power was our version of sending s Mars Rover. It was just a good first step.
As said by Saskia, Humans are multifaceted. Same was the case with Nikola Tesla. He was exceptionally bright in many fields and contrary in few others.
And I’m very sad to read that mostly the bad points about Tesla has been mentioned here.
Please, be more considerate about his contributions to modern science and to our society.
I was only referring his “free energy” theory. I should have made that clearer.