This week, for no particular reason, I’ve decided to provide you with a brief biographical sketch of Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 - 7 January 1943). Please to enjoy this harrowing tale of the life and work of a flashy ethnic Serb. Proving, once again, that Serbs are a flashy people.
Nikola Tesla was a brilliant inventor, with almost 300 patents to his name, and is credited with discovering the alternating current, perhaps the most important technological advance of the 20th century.
But, despite his contributions to science and technology, Tesla often goes uncredited and under-appreciated next to celebrated dickwads like Marconi and Edison.
Happily, he has finally received the credit he is due, joining the elite fraternity of historical figures who have been portrayed on the big screen by David Bowie. In 2006’s The Prestige, the role of Tesla was played by Ziggy Stardust himself, an honor afforded to only a few great, but under-appreciated men before him. Andy Warhol, in Basquiat. Pontius Pilate, in The Last Temptation of Christ. Jareth, the Goblin King, in Labyrinth. And, of course, Bowie himself, in Zoolander.
Born in 1856, in an unpronounceable region of what is now Croatia, Tesla came to the United States early in life, in order to fulfill his dream of getting royally screwed over by Thomas Alva Edison. It didn’t take long, as Edison quickly hired the young prodigy, and then just as quickly bilked him out of $50,000 he had promised him. Edison claimed that the promise was, quote, “American humor.” Referring, of course, to that uniquely American brand of humor on display every time Mark Twain lit a hobo on fire, or Will Rogers ran over someone in his car and then drove off without stopping.
Edison was always more of a marketer and a self-promoter than an inventor. In being dicked over by him, Tesla was in good company, along with the guy who actually invented the phonograph, the guy who actually invented the light bulb, the guy who actually invented the movie projector. Not to mention the original “Wizard of Menlo Park,” a kindly old sorcerer whom Edison had burned at the stake.
After leaving Edison’s employ, Tesla became famous in his own right, for his important, and often startling, inventions, but also for his flashy demonstrations. Part mystic, part carnie barker, the moustachioed marvel wowed audiences around the country with his bright, dangerous-looking displays, his natural showmanship, and his half-pig, half-woman sideshow attraction: “Pig-bekah, The Pig Girl.”
And then, it was time for Edison to try to fuck him over again. Despite Alternating Current’s (AC) obvious advantages—most notably, its improved ability to not electrocute people will-nilly—Edison used his vast influence to push his own patent, the Direct Current, for municipal use. AC eventually won out over DC, but the long fight is still known as “The Current War,” and the struggle is memorialized in the name of Australia’s most popular non-Xanadu-starring-in musical act.
Today, the so-called-by-nobody “Croatian Sensation” is most famous for his Tesla Coils, which are displayed in museums and Sharper Images everywhere. (Or is it “Sharpers Image”? Stupid William Safire.) But during his lifetime, one of Tesla’s greatest passions was the “Tesla Effect,” the transmission of electricity without wires. Unfortunately, this technology never became practical to use, and so ended the inventor’s short-lived bid to become a supervillain.
After spending most of his life in the service of science, Nikola Tesla died, like most truly great men, penniless and alone. Tesla will be remembered, by those who know, as the father of modern electricity, the man who gave us the radio, and the world’s first guy-who’s-way-too-into-Tesla-Coils.
