In a small village called Smiljan, in the Austrian Empire (now Croatia), a baby was born on a stormy night—July 10, 1856. As lightning flashed across the sky, a midwife gasped, “This child will be a child of darkness!” But his mother, Đuka Tesla, a woman with a brilliant mind, gently replied, “No, he will be a child of light.”
That baby was Nikola Tesla—the man who would one day change the way the world uses electricity.
The Young Dreamer
Tesla grew up in a home filled with curiosity. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest and a writer, while his mother had a natural talent for creating tools and machines. Young Nikola had an incredible memory and could solve difficult math problems in his head. He dreamed of harnessing the forces of nature, but life was not easy.
Tesla studied engineering in the 1870s, first in Graz, Austria, and later in Prague, Czech Republic, but he never finished his degree. Still, his hunger for knowledge was unstoppable.
A Journey to America
In the early 1880s, Tesla worked in the growing world of electricity. He joined Continental Edison, a company inspired by the famous inventor Thomas Edison. There, he worked with direct current (DC) electricity but saw its weaknesses. Tesla had a better idea—alternating current (AC), a system that could carry electricity over long distances.
In 1884, he packed his dreams and sailed to New York City, USA, with just a few coins in his pocket and a letter of recommendation. The letter was for Thomas Edison, and it read, “I know two great men—one is you, and the other is this young man.”
Tesla joined Edison Machine Works, but their ideas clashed. Edison believed in DC power, while Tesla was certain that AC power was the future. Frustrated, Tesla left and struggled to find work. At one point, he dug ditches for survival. But fate had bigger plans.
The War of Currents
In 1888, Tesla met George Westinghouse, a businessman who believed in AC power. Westinghouse bought Tesla’s patents for AC motors and polyphase systems, paying him a fortune. Together, they challenged Edison in what became known as the War of Currents—AC vs. DC.
Tesla’s system proved to be superior. In 1893, at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Tesla and Westinghouse illuminated the entire fair with AC electricity. It was a magical moment—the world saw the future. A few years later, in 1895, Tesla helped build the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls, bringing electricity to thousands of homes.
The Dreamer Who Reached for the Stars
Tesla didn’t stop there. He dreamed of wireless electricity—sending power through the air without wires. He moved to Colorado Springs in 1899, where he built huge coils that created lightning-like bolts of electricity.
But his biggest dream was the Wardenclyffe Tower, a giant tower in New York (1901-1906), meant to send wireless power across the world. Sadly, investors, including J.P. Morgan, pulled out, fearing they couldn’t make money from free energy. The project collapsed, and Tesla was heartbroken.
The Forgotten Genius
In the 1910s and 1920s, Tesla continued inventing, but he had little money. He designed a remote-controlled boat, experimented with X-rays, and even spoke about wireless communication, predicting modern Wi-Fi and smartphones.
By the 1930s, he was alone, living in a small hotel room in New York City, feeding pigeons and dreaming of new ideas. On January 7, 1943, at the age of 86, Nikola Tesla passed away, unnoticed by the world he had transformed.
A Legacy Reborn
For decades, Tesla was forgotten, overshadowed by Edison. But in 1960, the world honored him by naming the unit of magnetic flux density the “tesla” (T). In the 1990s, interest in Tesla’s genius exploded. Today, his name is everywhere—from books to documentaries to Tesla Inc., the electric car company named after him.
Nikola Tesla was not just an inventor. He was a dreamer, a man who saw the future before anyone else. His ideas power our world today, proving that the child born in a storm truly became a child of light.
