Genius or grifter, collaborator and competitor to the great Edison, the debate on the legacy of Nikola Tesla rages on. Born in 1856 AD in Smiljan in an Austro-Hungarian Empire tottering towards collapse, Nikola was the son of an Orthodox Christian priest and an inventive mother (Djuka invented a number of household appliances). An intelligent youth, in short order Nikola took degrees at the Realschule in Karlstadt, the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, and the University of Prague. Although he excelled in physics and mathematics, he soon became fascinated with electricity.

Tesla began his career as an electrical engineer at the new telephone company in Budapest, where he invented the induction motor. He moved on to the Continental Edison Company in Paris where he designed dynamos. In 1884 he came to the United States to work directly for Edison himself in New York. There he designed electrical equipment, but soon had a falling out with Edison over direct versus alternating current. Tesla was busy creating polyphase AC generators, motors, dynamos and transformers outside of his employment, soon holding forty patents. In July 1888 Tesla was hired by George Westinghouse, Edison’s nemesis; Edison thus fought a losing battle in the “War of the Currents” to protect his investments in DC electricity production and distribution.

Using his newly invented Tesla coil and an AC induction motor, Tesla and Westinghouse astonished the multitude by demonstrating the wonders of alternating current at the World Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Alternating current became the standard for 20th Century civilization. In January 1943 Nikola died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel where he had lived for years (feeding the pigeons but also supposedly inventing a death ray and a means for broadcasting electrical power).