Nikola Tesla was a genius who spoke eight languages, had over 300 patents, and whose work fundamentally changed the nature of technological society. He also died alone and penniless in a New York hotel room. While this blog post can’t possibly explain how his story ended up this way, we can take a brief look at some of the more formative events of this extraordinary man’s life.
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljin, a tiny village in what was then the Croatian Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire (present-day Croatia). His father was a Serbian Orthodox priest, and his mother an illiterate (although educated) homemaker. The fourth of five children, the Teslas moved to nearby Gospić in 1862. Nikola attended the Gymnasium Karlovac from 1870 to 1873, becoming enamored with mechanical and electrical engineering and graduating a year early.
Tesla attended both the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875) and the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1880), but left both institutions without a degree. In 1880, he moved to Budapest to work for the National Telephone Company. While there, he made a number of improvements in the telephone’s mechanical systems including repeaters, amplifiers, and possibly the world’s first loudspeaker.
