The unknown genius

Tesla died moneyless and broke.

The year was 1882; Nikola Tesla strolled through a park in Budapest, Hungary, completely unaware of the fact that he was about to alter the course of history with his inventions. Tesla was admiring the prismatic sunset when a vision struck him — a motor that worked using rotating magnetic field energy, which alternated the direction of the current many times per second. Wealthy businessmen of the time could not understand the device and the system was, thus, rejected for having no commercial value. But Tesla was fearless and decided to show the motor to the greatest electrical engineer alive at the time, Thomas Edison.

Two years earlier, Thomas Edison had discovered an electricity distribution system using direct current generators — a marvel, but with serious limitations. Edison’s system was not capable of powering anything beyond a two-mile radius. So, when Tesla explained to Edison that alternating current could be the future of electricity, Edison dismissed the idea as fanciful and unnecessary. Direct current was barely a decade old and was getting the job done — all the while making Edison and his financier, JP Morgan, tonnes of money. For Edison, Tesla’s approach was a threat.

In 1887, Tesla, after struggling for years, filed patents for the distribution system he had created. With Tesla’s electrical revolution poised to redefine the world’s industrial development, Edison and JP Morgan launched a full-scale propaganda assault on him. They declared publicly that alternating current delivered to any home would kill the customer within six months, due to electrocution. Undaunted, Tesla continued his work and went on to prove that energy could be transmitted through air, by wirelessly lighting lamps. Tesla was the one who powered the first city in the world — Buffalo, in the US — using a power station that generated alternate current 22 miles away. This was something Edison’s direct current would never have achieved.

JP Morgan, not pleased with Tesla, spread rumours that the investor was bankrupt, which halted all of Tesla’s technological advancements and left him penniless.

On January 5, 1943, Tesla placed a ‘do not disturb’ sign outside his door, in the New Yorker Hotel. Two days later, the maid entered the room and found him dead. He was 86 years old. He died moneyless and broke. When his body was found, all his papers, notebooks and his treasured black journal — which had all his technical research notes — were gone.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 15^th, 2013.