are a few names that come to   mind. Henry Ford. The Wright brothers. Thomas Edison.  But there’s one name that is not as recognizable.   When you plug your phone in, turn on the  lights, or use the refrigerator, you have   Nikola Tesla to thank. This is the story of the  forgotten genius and the story Begins. begins at the end. On January 7, 1943 a maid working at the New  Yorker Hotel walked into room 3327, where she   Found. found the body of an 86yearold man who  called the hotel home for the past decade.   Tesla died alone and broke. He lived off a diet  of warm milk and crackers and was obsessed with   feeding the pigeons Outside.. outside. One of the greatest  inventors of all Time. time faded into obscurity and   died penniless. There is a reason why this  happened which will become clear by the end   of this story. Tesla was Born. born in the town of  Smiljan in presentday Croatia on July 10, 1856.   He was born during a lightning storm. According to  family legend, the midwife said halfway through the   birth: this child will be a Child.

child of darkness to  which his mother replied, no, he will be a child   of light. Little did she know how prophetic those  words would be. When Tesla was five he Witnessed  . witnessed   his older brother fall from a horse and later  die. This would haunt Him. him for the rest of his life.   As a child, he began seeing visions accompanied by  flashes of light, Confusing. confusing what was real and what   was imaginary. This never Went.

went away. The vision  spurred his ability to conceive inventions In  .

in   his head in such detail that he didn’t even Need . need  to draw them out. He explained how the designs   were perfected in his mind in an article in 1919.  “Invariably, my device works as I conceived that   it should and the experiment comes out exactly  as I planned it. In 20 years there has not been  a single exception.” Tesla credits his mom for his  interest in invention. Đuka Mandić.

Mandić invented small   household appliances in her spare time. She had an  eidetic memory the ability to recall an image from   memory with High. high precision and she passed this on  to her son. Tesla’s father was a priest and wanted   him to become One.

one too but Tesla was interested in  engineering. When he contracted cholera as a teen   and Nearly.

nearly died, his father promised to send  him to engineering school if he survived and   miraculously, He. he did. He went to study in Austria  at the Technical College of Graz where he is   said to have worked from 3 am until 11 pm  every day. Professors.

Professors were worried That. that he   would die from exhaustion. Tesla Had. had a beautiful  mind. He could perform calculus in his head and   spoke eight languages. He was a good student  at the start but would not finish school.   He dropped out after becoming addicted to Gambling . gambling  and Cut.

cut ties with his family so they wouldn’t Find