Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla

By Afrim Pocesta

Nikola Tesla, scientist, electrical, & mechanical engineer, inventor and a sheer genius was born in what is today Croatia to Serbian parents, but was part of Austo-Hungarian empire in the 19th Century. (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943).

You might ask yourself why would someone write about a Serbian/American scientist in a blog that has a theme about Dibra? here is the simple answer.

For some of us who grew up in the old country (Yugo), and were high school age when we left for USA, we took pride in knowing that we were from the same country as he was. Of course, all this was before we started killing each other, which is another unavoidable topic for the future. Also, in me field of work, some of the fundamental concepts that we use in every project, are Nikola Tesla's.

Nikola Tesla was an unsung hero of his time. His genius was not understood most of the time by many. Those who did understand him, exploited his ideas, robbed him financially, humiliated him publicly. Once it was revealed that Tesla's theories were superior to all his contemporaries. The world famous Thomas Edison had a public smear campaign against Tesla where he would electricute elephants at Coney Island's boardwalk to demonstrate that Tesla's high voltage transmission is very dangerous and it would kill people. Ultimately, Tesla's won the 'Current Wars' , as it was known back then. Tesla's 'AC' or alternating current is still used today to transmit electricity.

Tesla contributed to an array of sciences: electromagnetism, elecromechanical engineering, robotics, remote control, radar, radio, and so many more.

In a classic case of theft of scientific discovery, Guglielmo Marconi and Italian electrical engineer and inventor in 1909 was awarded the Nobel prize for inventing radio, or (wireless telegraph), which Tesla had discovered. Finally, in 1943 The U.S. Supreme Court credited Tesla as being the true inventor of radio transmission.

Some of Tesla's theories are still studied to this day by academics, scientist, and yes, defense departments for military applications. Some scientist think he was 100 years ahead of his time, man of the future as he was sometime called. Tesla was an honorary citizen in many countries. There are streets in many major cities around the world who are named after him, 80's rock band, future electrical cars, newborn babies, companies, hundreds of societies around the world are named in his honor, and probably many other things that i'm not aware of. As recent as few years ago the famous David Bowie portrayed Tesla in the movie The 'Prestige'. The film The film features Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale.

As brilliant Engineer and inventor Tesla was, he was a lousy businessman and was always taken advantage of financially from those around him.

He died alone and broke in January 7th 1943 at the famous Manhattan New Yorker Hotel where he lived for a long time.

Here is a very resourceful web site about the life and work of Nikola Tesla that PBS dedicated in his honor: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/