Today, the name Tesla is synonymous with cars and Elon Musk’s company. Older readers may remember all the Tesla coils from video games and cheap sci-fi and horror films. For me, the name Tesla came to me via a rock band from the late 80s of the same name. It’s a long story. I’m old.
Recently I wanted to find out a bit more about the real man, so I picked up this work by Marc J. Seifer, on Audible. It refers to itself as a ’life and times’ work so it’s not quite a biography as such, but it does give a decent amount of detail about the man, from humble beginnings in Serbia, through his inquiring mind and work in Europe, to his move to New York, and becoming an American citizen.
The book covers his complete genious in some areas, but also his paranoia and obsessions in others. As an inventor, a researcher, he absolutely was a great man, but like so many genius level people, his ability to bring things to market was lacking, way behind his peers. His preference for AC electric over DC was a huge strategic success in power distribution for example.
He had quite a few run-ins on a personal level which mean’t some of his peers simply removed his name from their talks and books, and hence he quickly slipped from the collective memory quite a few times. He also had constant funding issues, through the highs of being favoured by JP Morgan, through the lows of asking modest friends for small amounts which barely covered some of his rather large expenses (e.g. for many years he preferred to live in hotels despite owing most of them money.)
The book gently touches on his sexuality, his lack of wife or kids, some rumours of both straight and gay relationships and ultimately, I wasn’t really bothered if it didn’t impact his work, and it seemed like it didn’t and perhaps he was bisexual, which is why so many were guessing.
In context it likely wasn’t an issue. Indeed he shared quite a lot of interests which at the time were fairly well supported, but nowadays would be considered downright weird, such as contact with alien species, and talking to the dead.
That era sounded so wild as much of Tesla’s life when not having some amazing ideas, was spent on raising money, getting patents, licensing patents and presenting his ideas. It’s a crazy time when there are patent arguments between companies involving famous people such as Marconi and Edison … and Tesla.
Some of his presentations sounded borderline dangerous, with massive electrical light shows. In this era, that must have been a wild thing for an audience to watch, but it ingratiated him with a lot of people and helped get him into the social circle whose
Ultimately, it was his obsession with wireless power and not monetising his patents sufficiently which were his undoing. He invested so much time and money into persuading people he could power things remotely, or that he could broadcast through the planet - which he couldn’t - which contributed to his decline. That and the cost of building and maintaining a massive tower towards that goal.
Also, later in life he became obsessed with pigeons. I don’t want to end on that note though - it’s a fascinating view into the man and his times, and you leave it feeling he should be far better known than he is today, even with Elon’s help.
Format: Audible audio book