For the History Channel, I wrote about some of the lesser-known aspects of Nikola Tesla’s life and work.
The defining event of young Nikola’s childhood was the day he witnessed the death of his older brother Dane in a riding accident. In the years following the tragedy, Tesla (the son and grandson of Serbian Orthodox priests) began seeing visions of the air around him “filled with tongues of living flame.” As an adolescent Tesla learned to exercise his willpower to control the visions, but in later life he would spend much of his time feeding and, he claimed, mystically communicating with New York City’s pigeons.
After graduating from university, Tesla worked for Edison’s electric company in Paris, but traveled to the United States in 1884 in the hopes of working directly for Edison, the leading figure in the race to deliver electric lighting and power to consumers. Tesla quickly gained a job as an engineer at Edison’s headquarters, impressing the “Wizard of Menlo Park” with his hardworking ingenuity. After Edison casually mentioned that he would pay $50,000 for an improved direct current (DC) generator design, Tesla worked nights until he came up with a solution. Edison refused to pay up, claiming he had been joking. Soon after, Tesla quit to form his own electric company. While he searched for backers to support his research into alternating current, Tesla took a job digging ditches for $2 a day to make ends meet.