10th July: Nikola Tesla

1856 Nikola Tesla, Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) Electricity supply system.

1. He had an eidetic memory and could perform integral calculus in his head, which led to his teachers thinking he was cheating at school. Tesla's mother had never had an education, but she was able to memorise epic poems, and Tesla believed he got his amazing memory from her. He spoke eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.
2. At  18, Tesla avoided being drafted into the army by running away and living in the wilderness for a few months, exploring and reading. He claimed this experience made him stronger and that he'd found Mark Twain's books particularly beneficial. Mark Twain was to become a close friend of his in later life in America.
3. At  19, Tesla enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria on a scholarship. In his first year, he never missed a lecture, got top grades in everything and passed nearly twice as many exams as he needed to. He even found the time to form a Serb culture club. The Dean of his faculty described him as "a star of first rank." His father, however, made light of his academic achievements, much to Tesla's disappointment. Later, after his father's death, Tesla learned from reading his father's letters, that he'd actually been concerned his son was working himself to death.
4. Things started to go wrong in his second year. He lost his scholarship and became addicted to gambling. He didn't prepare for his final exams, and, having been denied extra time to study, dropped out of school. Not wanting his family to know this, he cut off all contact with them.
5. After working as an engineer in Budapest and making improvements to equipment at the Budapest Telephone Exchange, he emigrated to America at the age of 28 and worked for Thomas Edison, but didn't like him much. Edison once said he'd give Tesla fifty thousand dollars if he could re-design Edison's inefficient motor and generators. Tesla did it, but when he asked Edison about his fifty thousand dollars, Edison said he had been joking about that and offered him a pay rise instead. Tesla resigned. When Edison died, Tesla's tribute was the only one to say negative things about Edison.
6. Tesla was a lifelong workaholic. He worked every day from 9:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. and never took a day off. He had dinner at exactly 8.10pm every evening and then went back to work, often until 3.00am. He claimed never to sleep for more than two hours a night. At times, he didn't sleep at all for as long as 84 hours. He never married or even had a relationship - because it would have distracted him from his work. Tesla walked between 8 and 10 miles per day, and did toe exercises, a hundred per foot every night as he believed doing that stimulated his Brain.
7. He did have friends, though, and would occasionally give a dinner party, and people at the time spoke well of him. However, he could be harsh with his staff. He fired one for being fat and made another go home and change because he didn't like what she wore to work.
8. In later life, Tesla became a vegetarian and only ate Milk, Bread, Honey, and vegetable juices. At this time, too, he would collect injured Pigeons during his walks in the park and nurse them back to health. He spent over $2,000 on one bird, building her a device to support her while her broken bones healed.
9. In his lifetime, Tesla filed nearly 300 patents, mostly for devices for generating and distributing electricity but also a speedometer, a ship's log for automatically recording speed, a fountain, an apparatus for producing ozone and a weapon, which the press dubbed a "peace ray" or death ray. He may have inadvertently discovered X Rays a few weeks before Wilhelm Röntgen announced his discovery. Sadly, most of Tesla's work on this was lost in a Fire. His final patent was for a biplane capable of taking off vertically.
10. Things named after Tesla include: The Nikola Tesla Award, an American rock band, an American electric car manufacturer, Nikola Tesla Day in Croatia and Niagara Falls (10 July), a unit of magnetic flux density, Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport, the largest power plant in Serbia, 128 streets in Croatia, a minor planet and a crater on the Moon.