The Tragic Story of Nikola Tesla - Documentary

How did one of the most fantastic geniuses of the modern era, an architect for the age of electricity, Nikola Tesla, die penniless, insane, and alone in the bed of a New York City hotel room? Tesla's inventions would shape the technological revolution at the turn of the 20th century, but Tesla's life was not a story of triumph or glory. It would instead be defined by a constant struggle against adversity that he would never truly overcome. Today, we are uncovering the real story behind the tragic life of Nikola Tesla. On July 9th, 1856, a powerful lightning storm erupted over the remote Croatian village of Smiljan. Under a black midnight sky illuminated by flashes of electric light and surrounded by the low rumbles of thunder, a baby was born. The midwife backed away in fear, warning that the lightning had signaled a bad omen. She declared, this child will be a child of darkness, to which the mother replied, no, he will be a child of light. This is not a fairy tale. This is only the opening chapter to the dramatic story of Nikola Tesla, a mystical figure and eccentric inventor who would go on to harness the power of lightning and illuminate the world with electrical energy. Here in the 21st century, we still rely on the innovations of Nikola Tesla to power our daily lives. The electricity that flows from the wall sockets in your house is there thanks to Tesla's work with alternating current or AC power. The first electrical grid ever established in North America was built on an entirely different system called direct current or DC power. This was a technology championed by none other than the legendary Thomas Edison, the inventor of the electric light bulb and like a hundred other incredibly useful things. Edison's DC current was revolutionary and it replaced people's gas-fired lanterns with the soft glow of incandescent bulbs. But this direct one-way stream of electric current was fundamentally flawed by its inability to be converted to higher or lower voltages. The low voltage current that was needed to power Edison's household electric lights was only able to transmit over relatively short distances and that required a high frequency of generating stations to be built in the middle of urban neighborhoods. The AC current championed by Nikola Tesla had the advantage of being converted from high voltage to low voltage through a transformer. This allowed the long-distance transmission of electricity through high voltage networks which would then be converted at smaller substations to a lower voltage distribution network for home use. We can see this at work in our modern electrical grid. Wooden poles that line the streets carry the lower voltage distribution system while those giant metal structures carry the high voltage transmission lines that connect cities and towns with distant generating stations. Chief among Tesla's inventions was the AC induction motor. He was the first person to convert alternating current electricity into mechanical work by using a rotating magnetic field to spin the drive axle on an electric motor. Tesla's work with AC generators led him to create the giant turbines that harness the power of Niagara Falls and supply clean hydroelectric energy to millions of people. This technology is still widely used to this day. You'll find Tesla's motor in your washing machine, ceiling fan, and hairdryer among countless other tools and appliances. When Elon Musk released his first electric vehicle in 2008, he borrowed the great inventor's name for the title of his company. But Elon also put Tesla's AC induction motor at the heart of every Model S and Model X vehicle. Growing up was not an easy time for Nikola Tesla. He showed signs of his intellectual gift even as a young boy. He could solve complex math problems in his mind so effectively that his teachers assumed he must be cheating. Tesla quickly developed eidetic memory, which basically means he could remember everything that he was ever shown or taught in vivid detail. The young Nikola also benefited from a powerful imagination that brought luminous imagery to his mind's eye. Tesla's fascination with electricity began early in his childhood when he struck sparks of static electricity on the fur of his pet cat. Nikola was desperate to understand how the light and sound was created. However, tragedy would strike early for the Tesla family. In 1863, at the age of 7, Nikola witnessed the violent death of his older brother in a horseback riding accident. Accounts seem to indicate that this trauma probably caused an imbalance in the powerful but developing mind of Nikola Tesla. His vivid imagination would turn hallucinatory and uncontrollable, with the boy sometimes struggling to distinguish imagination from reality. Even more troubling, as he grew older, Tesla quickly developed an unusual string of phobias and fixations. He hated when women wore pearls and was repulsed by hair. Tesla obsessively counted his steps throughout the day and measured the volume of every food that he ate. Against the odds, the young Tesla learned to harness the erratic power of his mind and apply his vibrant imagination to creating new ideas and inventions. Even much later in life, Tesla would hardly ever make drawings or diagrams for his inventions. He was able to engineer, test, and assemble a complex machine all within his own mind. In spite of his natural aptitude for mathematics, physics, and electrical engineering, Nikola's father pushed his son towards studying religious theology with the expectation that he would continue the family legacy of priesthood and service to the church. The turning point for young Nikola Tesla comes at the age of 17. Upon returning home from seminary school, Tesla contracts a serious case of cholera and is bedridden at his parents' home for nine months. Nearing the brink of death, his father desperately promises that if he can recover from the illness, then Nikola will be allowed to study engineering at university. Obviously, Tesla would survive his brush with death and his father would honor their deal to send the teenage Nikola away to the finest technical school in Austria. But there was still one more obstacle to clear. As a young man of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Tesla was compelled to spend three years in the military service. Given his weakened physical health, Nikola's father didn't believe that his son would survive a term in the army, so Nikola was sent away to avoid conscription. He escaped to the rugged mountains of central Croatia. Tesla brought only a hunter's pack and a bundle of books, including his favorite author, Mark Twain. Tesla's own account would say that this connection with nature made him stronger in body and in mind. By 1875, Nikola Tesla had finally made it to the Austrian Polytechnic School to study engineering. In his first year, Tesla never missed a class, made the highest grades possible, and was known to study from 3am to 7pm every day. The school faculty even expressed concerns to Tesla's father that the young man would work himself to death. In addition to his near-constant studying, Tesla also found the time to begin his first experiments with alternating current electricity. He began to conflict with his professors, who did not believe in Tesla's theories of improving the By the end of his second year, Tesla had lost interest in school completely. His grades declined, and he now filled his time with gambling instead of study. By the third year, Tesla had lost his scholarship money, failed his exams, and dropped out of university. Tesla left Austria in defeat and wound up in Maribor, Slovenia, where he spent most of his time indulging his vice at a pub called the Happy Peasant, playing rounds of cards and chess for money. This went on for a year until Tesla was rounded up by police and deported from Slovenia back to Croatia, where he ended up back with his family. Shortly after Nikola's return, his father came down with an unknown illness and died unexpectedly at the age of 60. In a last-ditch effort to save Nikola's potential from being wasted, his uncles provide him the money to leave Croatia once and for all. He travels to Prague and arrives at Carl Ferdinand University. Tesla does not have the qualifications to enroll at the university, but he sits in on lectures and spends his time in the city's libraries and cafes, absorbing as much knowledge as his overactive mind can take. In 1881, Tesla began his early career as the chief electrician at the Budapest Telephone Exchange in Hungary. It's here that Tesla begins to innovate, creating numerous improvements to telecom equipment, and even developing his own signal amplifier device. Even with a successful career in progress, Tesla cannot shake his obsession with alternating current. He dedicates the entirety of his non-working hours to developing the induction motor. The task consumes him to the point where Tesla would suffer a complete mental breakdown in 1882 that would again bring him near death. Again, Tesla would recover and find his strength in nature. On a walk through the city park of Budapest with his close friend Anthony Seghetti, Tesla would suddenly have the design of his induction motor come to him in a vision. Seeing the machine flash into existence before his eyes, Tesla grabbed a stick and drew a diagram of the motor into the sand to show his companion what he had just created. The next year, Tesla and Seghetti would move on to Paris and take jobs with the recently formed Continental Edison Company. Tesla was put to work installing electric lighting systems in the Paris Opera House. Tesla continued his relentless innovation and quickly submitted his own plan for improving Edison's mechanical designs, which is approved by the company. In 1884, Nikola Tesla arrived in America to finally meet Thomas Edison and further his work in the field of electrical energy. Tesla was personally referred to by one of Edison's closest friends, Charles Batchelor, who wrote in Nikola's reference letter, I know two great men. One is you, Thomas Edison, and the other is this young man. In typical fashion, Tesla's journey to America was yet another struggle. Onboard the ship, he was robbed of his money and most of his possessions. Then, in the middle of the Atlantic, a violent mutiny broke out among the crew and Tesla was nearly thrown overboard. He arrived in New York City with the clothes on his back, four cents in his pocket, and a few books of poetry. Still, Nikola was undeterred. He wasted no time and went directly to see Edison the day he arrived in America. Thomas Edison saw the potential in Tesla and hired him on the spot, although he immediately dismissed any of Tesla's theories on alternating current. Tesla immediately went to work fixing broken DC motors and generators. He redesigns 24 different types of machines that become standard and replace the originals created by Thomas Edison himself. Even while working for Edison's DC-powered electrical company, Tesla continued to champion alternating current, and in 1885, he was given the opportunity to start his own operation. The Tesla Electric Light Company was funded by investors who hoped Tesla would develop an improved system for electric arc-street lamps powered by high-voltage AC current in the nearby state of New Jersey. Tesla invented a unique and beautiful new street lamp with automatic adjustment for maximum efficiency. The engineering and design was a resounding success. However, in the first of what would become many examples, Tesla was proven to be a much better scientist than he was a businessman. When Nikola pushed for more money to develop the new AC motors and electrical transmission equipment, the investors turned on Tesla. They pulled their funding and took the patents for the arc lamps with them, leaving Tesla with nothing but worthless stock certificates to show for his work. Having resigned from the Edison company, Tesla was back to another low point in his life. The smartest man in New York spent the winter of 1886 and 87 digging ditches for $2 a day. In the spring of 1887, Nikola Tesla would finally catch a break. After demonstrating his AC induction motor to a pair of wealthy venture capitalists, the Tesla Electric Company was funded and Tesla was given his own laboratory at the corner of Liberty and Broadway in New York City. It was here that Tesla created his first masterwork, a paper titled, A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers. Tesla's plan laid out everything that would become the modern-day electrical grid and he was given the opportunity to present his work to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia University. Following this, Tesla is able to sell patents for his AC system to George Westinghouse for $25,000 in cash, $50,000 in stock, and a royalty of $2.50 per horsepower for every electric motor produced. Westinghouse is impressed by Tesla's innovation and he is the first to truly believe that alternating current will power America. Tesla spends a year in Pittsburgh at the Westinghouse Electric Company headquarters where he finalizes the design for the alternating current motors, transformers, and generators. As Westinghouse spreads AC power across the eastern seaboard, Thomas Edison refuses to let his direct current systems go down without a fight. This era would come to be known as the War of the Currents. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with DC power and it does still have many important applications in the modern world. Batteries produce direct current power and most small electronic devices require AC power to be converted into DC power. Think of anything you plug in that has a plastic brick or a box on the power cable. That is converting AC back to DC. The thing DC does not work for is generating and transmitting electricity. Under Edison's system, there had to be one coal-fired generating station for every two miles of electrical cable. And the low voltage energy delivered to households was only enough to power Edison's light bulb and not much more. Still, in spite of the obvious flaws, Edison defended his position and attempted to sway public opinion away from AC power by pointing out the dangers of high voltage transmission. Which is a fair point. Safety standards were not very high in the late 1800s and people did often get fried by errant power lines. But that high voltage transmission enabled AC power to flow for miles in all directions and power everything from streetcars to bedroom lamps. There are some conflicting reports about Edison conducting a bunch of screwed up experiments where he would electrocute animals with high voltage AC current to prove the danger. It's also possible that Edison championed the introduction of the electric chair as a new form of capital punishment and recommended Westinghouse AC generators be used to deliver the fatal shock, just to drive home the killer potential of AC. In all of this madness, the Edison Manufacturing Company released a documentary film entitled Electrocuting an Elephant, where they, yeah, they actually did that. The high watermark for Nikola Tesla's career would come in the 1890s. Throughout this decade, he would rack up milestone achievements and discoveries, but it would come at a cost. Tesla used his Westinghouse payout to establish a gigantic new laboratory in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York City, occupying an entire floor of a six-story building. It was here that Tesla would make some of his greatest accomplishments. Among them was the fluorescent light bulb and neon light tubes. By using high frequency AC current, Tesla could energize certain gases and bring them to a state of incandescence. Two more of his inventions that are still used widely in the present day. By 1891, Tesla was beginning to experiment with wireless electric lightning. By broadcasting extremely high frequency and high voltage AC current through the air, Tesla could illuminate tubes of phosphorescent gas. So imagine you have a fluorescent light bulb just sitting on a desk. You flick a switch across the room and the bulb lights up all on its own. In order to make this possible, the inventor developed his namesake Tesla coil. We best know these today as lightning machines. You've probably seen one at a science museum, and they've become pretty popular at events like Coachella and Burning Man. Shooting lightning bolts is definitely a cool feature of the Tesla coil, but that's not really what they were designed for. A Tesla coil is an electrical resonant transformer. What it does is generate high voltage, high frequency AC electricity, and it broadcasts it out through low frequency, long wavelength radio. So in a very similar way that we transmit sound through radio waves, Tesla was transmitting electricity. If this idea had panned out, then our lives would be radically different today. Instead of power lines feeding electricity into your house, the neighborhood would just have a gigantic Tesla coil broadcasting out electricity. You would never need to plug things in or even have wires in your house. The electricity would be in the air. Sounds cool, but also kind of terrifying. It's not a surprise that this idea didn't catch on. Tesla did his best to sell the wonders of his wireless electricity. The inventor is best known today for the images of him holding giant bulbs in his hand seemingly lit by magic, and the famous photograph of Tesla just casually chilling and reading a book in a room full of lightning. This era of Nikola Tesla as the master showman is how he is most widely remembered today and was famously portrayed by David Bowie in Christopher Nolan's 2006 film The Prestige. Tesla spent the early 1890s touring the world to give lectures on the potential of alternating current and wireless electricity. This culminated with the Columbian Exposition at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, where Tesla and the Westinghouse Company built an AC power system that generated enough electricity to power the entire city of Chicago three times over. The fairground was so brightly illuminated by Tesla's AC electricity and fluorescent lighting that it became a spectacle unlike anything the world had seen before. This accomplishment secured the victory for AC power in the War of the Currents. By October of that year, Westinghouse was awarded the contract to build a hydroelectric generating station that will harness the power of Niagara Falls using Tesla's alternating current generators. As if that wasn't enough, around this same time Nikola Tesla was accelerating his early work with radio signals. He found that if two of Tesla's coils were tuned to resonate at the same frequency, then they could transmit and receive powerful radio signals. Using this method, Tesla was able to transmit a radio signal over 50 miles from New York City to West Point. Tesla would also be the first to demonstrate radio control on a mechanical vehicle. At the Electrical Exhibition of 1898, Tesla demonstrated a 4-foot-long battery-powered steel motorboat that he could control wirelessly through radio waves. Tesla's remote-controlled boat was so revolutionary that his fellow scientists literally had to see it to even believe such a thing was possible. Tesla is not credited with the invention of the x-ray process, but he would create the first ever x-ray photograph of a human body using his own homemade x-ray tubes. Of course, this is the life of Nikola Tesla we are talking about, so we know there would never be triumph without hardship. In the early 1890s, even as alternating current was gaining momentum and pushing towards a complete takeover of the electrical grid, the Westinghouse company was experiencing financial trouble. George Westinghouse went to Nikola Tesla and basically said, we can't afford to pay your royalties and continue to develop the technology at the same time. Tesla responded immediately by tearing up his Westinghouse contract and forfeiting 100% of his induction motor royalties. A savvy businessman probably would have worked out a more nuanced deal here, maybe reduced royalties, or even suspended payments until Westinghouse can get back on their feet. But remember that this guy was supposed to earn $2.50 for every one horsepower produced under his patent. He would have been set for life, but Tesla gave it all up, every single penny, because he thought that the success of Westinghouse and alternating current was more important than his personal wealth. Unfortunately, karma did not reward Tesla's selflessness. In 1895, his New York City laboratory burned and took most of his early work along with it. Despite this, Tesla would go on to patent his radio wave inventions in 1897. At the same time, a young Guglielmo Marconi was working on solving wireless telegraphy in England. Marconi had his own wireless transmission system, but it could only work over long distances when being amplified by a Tesla oscillator. This is how Marconi made his first broadcast across the English channel. Marconi was an Italian nobleman and had wide support from the British royals and wealthy Americans, including Thomas Edison. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company had massive success on the New York Stock Exchange, moving from $3 per share to $22 in just one year. By December 1901, Marconi made the first radio broadcast across the Atlantic Ocean. Nikola Tesla was unbothered by Marconi's success, knowing that the young inventor was using 17 of Tesla's own patents to enable his long-range transmissions. But Tesla's calm confidence was shattered in 1904 when the U.S. Patent Office suddenly and surprisingly made the decision to grant Guglielmo Marconi with a patent for the invention of radio. It has never been fully explained why Tesla's existing claims on the technology were ignored. The simple answer would probably be that Marconi was surrounded by wealth and royalty, while Tesla chose to reject such things. Marconi would go on to win the Nobel Prize in 1911 for the invention of radio. Tesla was furious. He finally sued the Marconi Company for copyright infringement in 1915, but had no money to back up his case. It was not until 1943, after both Tesla and Marconi were dead, that the U.S. Supreme Court would uphold Tesla's initial radio patent, and they only did that so the U.S. military could weasel out of paying royalties to the Marconi Company for the use of radio technology. The middle period of Tesla's career would be dominated by his folly pursuit of terrestrial stationary waves. This is where things really started to fall apart. His theory was that the Earth itself had a massive potential for conducting electricity, and that by using a giant version of the Tesla coil called a magnifying transmitter, he would harness electromagnetic waves within the surface of the Earth to transmit unlimited amounts of electric current to a receiver on the other side of the globe. Tesla's first small-scale demonstration of this technology was at a facility he constructed in Colorado Springs. Tesla built a coil that was 52 feet in diameter and 9 feet high. It was connected to a giant 142-foot rod with a metal ball on top. The goal was to produce electrical discharges that were on the scale of natural lightning, and it was successful. Tesla harnessed millions of volts of electricity through his creation, generating contained storms of lightning and thunder that electrified the ground. People nearby could strike sparks on their shoes just by walking. Tesla's claim was that the giant coil was able to transmit electricity over 26 miles away to wirelessly light a collection of incandescent bulbs. There's no known evidence that this ever happened, and even if it did, the experiment would demonstrate the inefficiency of ground transmission. 4 million volts at the source, only to light up a few bulbs in the next town over. It's hardly an example of unlimited wireless energy. Still, Tesla was able to secure $150,000 in funding from Mr. J.P. Morgan. In 1901, Tesla used this money to construct his final great invention, the Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island. In his mind, this gargantuan, ultra-high-powered Tesla coil would transmit electricity, messages, sound, and even facsimile images across the ocean using the earth as a conductor. In concept, Tesla had imagined wireless telephones, fax machines, and essentially a Victorian-time internet. In reality, Wardenclyffe never did much of anything, really. Tesla blew all of the money on construction, and when he went back to Morgan for additional funding, he was refused. J.P. Morgan saw more profit investing his money in Marconi's radio. Still, Tesla continued to write Morgan letter after letter, promising more and more grandiose possibilities like unlimited free wireless energy and communications across the entire world. When J.P. eventually died in 1913, Tesla took up writing to his sons in a tireless, desperate effort for more money. Tesla sold off his possessions and took out loans in an effort to complete Wardenclyffe, but he again comes up empty-handed. Tesla loses everything and is forced to abandon his project entirely by 1906. There's no evidence that the giant tower was ever fully operational or that Tesla accomplished anything at all in his research there. The only known sign of activity came one night in 1903 when Nikola Tesla flew into a rage over yet another letter of rejection from J.P. Morgan. Tesla cranked the generators to maximum and Wardenclyffe erupted with gigantic bolts of lightning that flashed over the New York skyline. A decade later, the tower was demolished and sold for scrap. All of the money went to Tesla's creditors. The later period of Tesla's career was marked by a significant decline in his abilities and influence. After 1916, Tesla was liquidated and bankrupt. He'll continue to make some small innovations to measuring devices like speedometers and frequency meters and that will net him enough income to avoid homelessness. Although Tesla never settles into a home of his own anyways. He bounces between New York City hotels, often leaving without paying his full bill. Tesla remains poor through the 1920s, retreating from the professional world and public eye. He spends the majority of his time feeding pigeons in Bryant Park, so much that the city would formally name a section Nikola Tesla Corner. Which is essentially the most clear illustration of the tragedy of Nikola Tesla. There are locations all around New York City where Tesla accomplished amazing, revolutionary things. He had multiple laboratories across lower Manhattan, and yet his name is found over the corner of a park where he slowly went mad feeding the pigeons. Tesla's relationship with the pigeons has a few levels of mythology. Some say he talked to them, which is fairly normal for a lonely old man. Others say he believed the pigeons were talking back to him. Still, others allege that Tesla was in love with a female pigeon and believed that they shared a romantic relationship. The fact that Nikola Tesla suffered from mental illness is not hard to see. He wasn't some prophetic wizard, and he wasn't a lunatic either. Tesla was an incredibly smart, yet naive man, whose extraordinary brain proved to be as much of a curse as it was a blessing. Going back to those stories of Tesla's childhood, the hallucinatory visions, the neurotic fixations, they're pretty clear markers of what likely became obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia as the man aged. Of course, it was the 1920s, so this was never properly diagnosed or treated. Nikola Tesla's swan song came on his 75th birthday in 1931. Tesla's face appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and he received birthday congratulations from the most esteemed scientists of the world, including Albert Einstein. In the final years of his life, Nikola Tesla would hold a yearly press conference on his birthday where he would emerge from his hotel room to inform a collection of reporters about his latest inventions and discoveries. None of these announcements were legitimate, but Tesla seemed to find joy in sharing his thoughts, and the press kept returning every year to listen. Tesla's claims ranged from a motor propelled by cosmic rays and interplanetary communications to the discovery of a brand new, never-before-known source of energy. Tesla promised that he would disprove Einstein's theory of relativity and claimed that splitting the atom would not release energy because Tesla had already split the atom using 15 million volts of electricity, and nothing happened. Most famously of these announcements, Tesla revealed that he had invented a particle beam weapon, or death ray, a device so horrifically powerful that it would end war completely because no one would be able to defend against it. The US military took this seriously enough to confiscate all of Tesla's property and estate after he died, but given that we clearly saw the use of the atomic bomb against the Japanese in 1944 and not a laser death ray, that should be taken as proof that Einstein was in fact correct, and Tesla was not. Tesla also reported that he would wiggle his toes hundreds of times every night before bed and believed this action would tone his body and increase his lifespan to 135 years. He may have been onto something with that one, he didn't make it to 135, but Nikola Tesla lived a long life for his time, finally passing away in 1943 at the age of 86. He was alone in the bed of his hotel room. Nikola Tesla was a man far ahead of his own time, he had the unique vision that could find solutions to problems that were thought unsolvable, and we owe a lot of our modern life to the innovations that Tesla provided. At the same time though, the 20th century world that Tesla helped create would go on to eat him alive. Tesla was too naive for capitalism, not cutthroat enough for competition, his mind was a battleground that even Nikola Tesla could never truly command.