| Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a highly intuitive scientist/inventor whose achievements made him world-famous in his lifetime. Acknowledged as the actual inventor of radio, he made possible the worldwide electric grid with his alternating-current dynamo. Among Tesla's more than 700 patents, there are even several basic patents for computer circuitry – dating before 1900. Tesla seemed so intimately attuned to the visible and invisible frequencies of electromagnetism, it was as if he swam through it in a dream state akin to Einstein's "thought experiments." You could say his life's work was to invent the future. Born on a farm in Smiljan, Croatia of Serbian parents, he immigrated to the US as a young man and became a US citizen, but his visions were for the whole world.
Even as a child, Tesla had an intense visual imagination, often seeing his thoughts as waking hallucinations. As an adult, Tesla's inventions came to him in visions. His first great invention, for the alternating-current dynamo, appeared to him fully formed, superimposed on the sunset sky over the Danube River. He never used drawings, instead testing his inventions by "running" them in his mind. A charismatic and mysterious figure, he moved through New York's high society, but lived and died alone.
|
|
|
