How His Fiery Determination Helped Shape
The World As You Know

Nikola Tesla

By Adam Shell

Investor's Business Daily

In his own mind, Nikola Tesla had raised the stakes so high he had no choice but to succeed.

"With me it was a sacred vow, a question of life or death," Tesla once said of his commitment to solving complex problems. "I knew that I would perish if I failed."

That drive helped make Tesla (1856-1943) one of the world's greatest electrical engineers. In fact, he's considered by many to be the founding father of modern electrical technology, according to Marc J. Seifer, author of "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla."

Said Swiss engineer Bernard A. Behrend: "Were we to seize and to eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle."

Among Tesla's many developments: The channeling of alternate current and the creation of fluorescent lighting, vacuum tubes and wireless telegraphy.

Tesla was born in Croatia to a family that valued education. His father, Miluin, a Serbian Orthodox priest, instilled in him the importance of developing his mind.

Tesla, who became fluent in nine languages, read books from his dad's library by Goethe, Schiller and other 18th- and 19th-century authors.

The boy developed such a tremendous thirst for knowledge that when his father forbade him to read at night he'd sneak candles into his bedroom and seal the door shut to conceal the rays.

Like Mother, Like Son

His mother, Djouka, provided the inspiration for his intense work ethic and inventive mind. She worked from dawn until close to midnight running the household and overseeing the family farm, inventing kitchen tools and other gadgets to ease the tasks.

By the time he was 8, Nikola had invented a cornstalk popgun, a fishing hook to catch frogs, and a propeller driven by 16 May bugs. His mind worked so quickly that he could instantly figure out problems that stumped adults.

Once during Tesla's youth, the local fire department started a blaze to showcase a new engine. But the hose, which drew water from the river, wouldn't work. Tesla figured out that there had to be a kink in the line, dived into the river, unscrambled the line and came out a hero.

At the Polytechnic School in Graz, Austria, Tesla studied upward or 20 hours a day. He'd often ask the teacher to give him problems to solve.

During his freshman year, he studied so hard that his professors wrote a letter to his father warning that his son's intense work habits were jeopardizing his health.

"I was interested in electricity almost from the beginning of my educational career," Tesla once said. "I read all that I could read on the subject."

While living in Paris, he leveraged his engineering talents by doing the lighting for the opera house and working for Thomas Edison's European unit.

Tesla moved to America in 1884, worked for Edison and began to make a name for himself. Tesla labored on elecrical projects and designed 24 machines for Edison before leaving in the spring of 1885 to form his own company.

Tesla's work ethic was unrivaled.

"Except for occasional dinners with friends or necessary business trips, the inventor spent virtually all of his waking existence at the lab," Seifer wrote.

Tesla's competitive nature was fierce. He made it a practice to keep up with the work of other scientists. The fact that later rivals like Edison, Guglielmo Marconi and others were closing in on him "induced in Tesla a mania to complete as many patents as he could," Seifer wrote.

"Summoning his prodigious powers of self-denial, depriving himself of sleep, and exerting the full potential of his will, Tesla unfurled his creations as fast as he could," he wrote.

Tesla's big dream was the long-distance transmission of electrical power. In fact, as a boy he dreamed of harnessing the power of Niagara Falls.

"I was fascinated by a description of Niagara Falls I had perused, and pictured in my imagination a big wheel

run by the falls," Tesla said. "I told my uncle that I would go to America and carry out this scheme."

For The Long Haul

Thirty years later, in 1896, he made his dream come true. Thanks to patents he sold to the Westinghouse Corp., his power station successfully conveyed electrical power from the falls to Buffalo, N.Y., some 20 miles away.

It was well worth the wait.

"It has cost me years of thought," he said, "to arrive at certain results." Giving up was not an option, though. "I had a veritable mania for finishing whatever I began"—no matter how long it took.

Despite Tesla's burning drive for achievement, he learned to focus on the long term.

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result," Tesla said. "He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and to point the way."

In Tesla's mind, obstacles were just temporary roadblocks. Consider the way he handled the destruction of his lab by fire on March 13, 1895. Did he give up? Not a chance.

"While the ashes of his hopes lay hot, ... Tesla was at work again with clenched determination," wrote T.C. Martin, an editor who worked with the inventor.

Tesla at the SNF

We at the SNF are proud to announce that we received the Anderson-Rice Nikola Tesla Archive Collection.

This collection on Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) has been developing over a period of 45 years. It is without question the largest concentrated collection on the subject in this country. It is a unique source of information for a biographical/technical work about Tesla which has yet to be written. With the exception of the first biography of Tesla by John J. O'Neill, science editor of the New York Herald Tribune, and published in 1944, unfortunately no biographer since has had the necessary scientific/engineering academic credentials to discuss Tesla's work in the various fields.