[collage by me]
Many of you may not know that before I joined Steemit, I was a writer for Interesting Engineering. I loved writing for that website. I also created artwork and photo collages for my articles. To be blunt, if I was being paid my worth, I would still be working for them. I negotiated several times and the most they were willing to pay me was $16 per article. I loved the writing and researching so much, though, that I agreed to these paltry sums for about 3 months.
The topic I loved writing about more than any other was Nikola Tesla. The article below has been rearranged and rewritten from my original Interesting Engineering article. To see my original article on the Interesting Engineering website, go here.
Nikola Tesla's autobiography, My Inventions, contains a fascinating array of mind-blowing stories, inventions and illuminating insights into the inner workings of his mind. It is surprisingly easy to read and comprehend. Tesla was a master storyteller as well. Most of the quotes below were derived from his autobiography.
Tesla said,
“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success…..Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”
Tesla attributes his inventive nature to his mother, Duka.
In his own words, “My mother was an inventor of the first order ……she invented and constructed all kinds of tools and devices and wove the finest designs from thread.” His mother descended from a long line of inventors. Tesla describes his mother working from sunrise until late at night, making an innumerable amount of things for their family. He spoke very highly of her and remarked that she possessed rare skill, courage and resilience.
His high frequency oscillator caused Mark Twain to defecate.
Tesla had a high frequency steam-powered oscillator called an “earthquake machine” in his Manhattan laboratory. Steam was forced into the oscillator, pushing a piston up and down that was attached to an armature, which caused it to shake violently up and down at high speed, producing electricity.
Mark Twain was known for having digestive problems, so one evening, Tesla invited Twain over to his laboratory. Tesla instructed Twain to stand on the oscillator platform. After less than two minutes of standing on it, Twain abruptly jumped off the platform and ran for the bathroom, relieving his constipated bowels.
Tesla had a short-lived addiction to gambling in his early years.
Tesla’s father was furious about his gambling obsession, while his mother understood its place in Tesla’s development as a human being. Tesla would frequently lose all of his money to card gambling and one time when Tesla was in a depressive pit, having lost all his money and unable to play cards, his mother gave him a roll of bills to use for gambling. She told him, “Go and enjoy yourself. The sooner you lose all we possess the better it will be. I know that you will get over it.”
It worked. Tesla conquered his gambling compulsion at that moment and never had a single desire to gamble again. Tesla also smoked excessively for a short period of time, which he claims threatened to ruin his health. He quit this as well when he realized it had the potential to destroy him. His dedication to self-mastery is worthy of a deep investigation, in order to help other humans who are keen on destroying themselves and general malaise.
Tesla used an idiosyncratic visualization method to formulate his inventions which started around the time he was 17 years old.
Tesla did not conceive of his inventions using any sort of logical, rote system. Instead, he relied on his deeply imaginative and highly cultivated visualization powers which would sometimes emerge while he was doing an activity not related to problem solving. This type of activity was also experienced by Einstein and is called combinatory play.
In Tesla’s own words,
“I needed no models, drawings or experiments. I could picture them all as real in my mind. Thus I have been led unconsciously to evolve what I consider a new method of materializing inventive concepts and ideas, which is radically opposite to the purely experimental…”
Tesla regarded the mainstream scientific practice of instant experimentation as inferior to the way he created his inventions. He worked, re-worked, fine-tuned, and perfected inventions in his mind, thereby solving the engineering problems well before he ever turned these mental constructs into reality. He believed it was a total waste of time, money and energy to carry out and test a crude idea without first an intense visualization stage.
Nikola Tesla Possessed A Hilarious Sense of Humor
Most people are completely unaware of the fact that Nikola Tesla had an amazing sense of humor. People think of scientists as super dry individuals. But Tesla was an inventor first. Inventors by definition do not follow societal norms and usually have an interesting way of looking at the world. For example, after dining with writer and poet Rudyard Kipling, he wrote this to his close friend named Mrs. Johnson:
April 1, 1901
My dear Mrs. Johnson,
What is the matter with inkspiller Kipling? He actually dared to invite me to dine in an obscure hotel where I would be sure to get hair and cockroaches in the soup.
Yours truly,
N. Tesla
Nikola Tesla had a brother named Dane whom he claimed was more gifted than Tesla himself.
Tesla’s brother was injured one night by a horse which belonged to Tesla’s family. The horse had become frightened by a pack of wolves in the mountains and had thus inflicted injuries on both his brother and father. Tesla’s brother later died from these injuries. In Tesla’s autobiography, Tesla states, “I witnessed the tragic scene and although fifty-six years have elapsed since, my visual impression of it has lost none of its force.”
Tesla was 7 years old when his 12 year-old brother died. After his brother died, Tesla admits feeling unworthy and ashamed of his own abilities. He felt that his brother possessed an intellect far superior to his own.
Tesla believed that women would eventually become intellectually superior to men.
He predicted that in the future, “The struggle of the human female towards sex equality will end in a new sex order, with the female as superior.” He went on to say that women will not shallowly imitate men, but will be awakened intellectually and in so doing, become the dominant force in the world. He believed that the suppression of women throughout history would thereby create a potent and fermented source of energy which will emerge in the future. He said, “for the dormant faculties of her brain will be stimulated to an activity that will be all the more intense and powerful because of centuries of repose. Women will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.”
Tesla’s obsessions and compulsions were numerous and odd.
He had a death-like aversion to human hair and could only touch it “at the point of a revolver.” Pearls were revolting to him while crystals were pleasing. If small squares of paper were dropped in a dish filled with liquid, a horrible taste would fill his mouth.
He had a peculiar love of the number 3 and all numbers that could be divided by 3. His maids would deliver him 18 towels and he chose to stay in hotel room 207, both of which can be divided by 3.
He couldn’t enjoy his meal unless he lifted each napkin and then placed them in a large pile on the table. His visual sensitivities included seeing a luminous trail after someone had walked on a patch of snow.
When his mother died, a temporary white patch of hair appeared on his head.
Towards the end of his life he fell in love with pigeons. His favorite pigeon was a white one with little touches of gray on her wings. He describes his love for the white pigeon, “I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me….As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”
Nikola Tesla is one of my heroes. I aspire to stand upon his shoulders, in fact, my most recent big advance in my theoretical musings, is to adapt the Tesla Coil and the more recently invented Em-Drive into an electrically driven impulse generator machine, and I am quite certain that this design will yield the generalised impulse engine system that will allow humans to finally escape the gravity well.
I also like the fact that Tesla grew up in the general vicinity of where I have chosen to settle myself for this phase of my life. He was born in Serbia, and I am only 70km from the border of this country in Sofia, Bulgaria. He may have had to migrate to the USA to really find the money to do his work, but with the crypto-revolution that is going on, I think that it is going to return to this part of the world, and that there is something in the mindset and culture of this part of the world that will be a big part of how this all advances.
Russia gets all the credit for the bulk of this, but I think that they are the sideshow. I have mingled in the streets and consulted with many individuals I have found in this city, and I can assure you, it is present in equal amount, though less famously, in at least Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovenia. These are just the places I have seen. I have seen too much to think that it is an isolated thing in this part of the world.
My mother also is a wizard with strings and fibres, and she is also very humble and supportive. I have to credit her just as much for who I have become as I think we can say that Tesla also did. Like Nikola (incidentally, one of my very good friends who led, in a big part, to me breaking a 2 year period of homelessness, his name is Nikola), I have a very visual imagination, and I am also, like him, driven by insatiable curiosity, and while I never fell into a gambling addiction, I have had an ongoing issue with drugs, but on the other hand, I have a constellation of health issues that I doubt that he had to contend with.
It is easy to forget, and kinda silly and sad, that people like him are alive today, struggling away, as he was, before he made the big breakthroughs that led to his fame, and not only that, as any Tesla fan knows, his subsequent suppression from education systems. To me, Tesla is a role model, and an inspiration, and I hope that I can achieve at least one big innovation like the constellation he managed. His work lies at the centre of so many modern technologies. He was the inventor of radio, in fact, and he helped build the system of electrical generation and distribution, the latter system would never have happened unless he steadfastly argued and fought against Edison about AC vs DC for long distance transmission.
Tesla will be recognised in the future, just as numerous others, such as Crowley, RA Wilson, McKenna, Leary, and others, were for making this modern world and pointing towards the wonderful future that is really now only less than decades in hence.
"finally escape the gravity well." Can you please explain this in more detail?
Thanks for the description of your life and where you live. In a way, digital currency and decentralization in general is just an extension of Tesla's visions for the future. Wireless transmission of energy, though remains to be harnessed. There are some advancements and even here locally, there are moves to electromagnetically transmit energy to electric vehicles via smart roads.
Completely unrelated, but you gotta see the video at the bottom of this post @stellabelle 8-)
https://steemit.com/funny/@yogi.artist/destiny-creative-reflections-of-first-impressions
OH SHIT!!!! That was hysterical!!!!!!!!
tuck, it's all coming back! You were the one who suggested I watch that insane and graphic film that destroyed my mind!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't remember what the title was, I BLOCKED IT OUT. what was the title?
"A Serbian Film". Even mentioning the name is like showing someone the video from "The Ring". ;)
Tesla is my favorite inventor and scientist. They still teach false information in public school that rightfully should be about him, but is not.
Great article as usual @stellabelle and one dear to my heart. I don't know if this will inspire my alter ego to poem or not yet. We shall see.
It drives me nuts that he is not taught properly in schools and still escapes the mainstream consciousness. It's absurd really. I have aspirations to start my own school that would be loosely based on what Khan Academy is doing.....I had the benefit of being taught by ex-hippies in a private school when I was young, and guess what bird we had in the kitchen? A pet dove! That school introduced to me all kinds of creative ideas, and to this day, I still remember that our lunchroom floor was hand-painted with giant rainbows............I shudder to think about what schools are teaching kids now.
I listen to My Inventions on audiobook, and it has the effect of easing my dumb worries. I've listened to it 4 times and each time I learn something new. Why we don't officially celebrate Tesla is insane actually.
On the inventor side, I worked with an inventor in Cali. Perhaps I will write about that sometime.......he's dead now.
Tesla is a rare person. I was more impressed by him than Einstein (who I also admire) and many others. Edison I didn't respect much as I know he got famous basically by putting his name on other people's work (I know he DID do some of his own too). Yet.... Tesla. If I go back in time perhaps Da Vinci was similar in historical sense. Then to find anyone else I'd have to go way back, and so much of that literature was destroyed by Christians and others burning books and libraries. There are hints that Pythagoras may have been a person of some seriously interesting traits as well.
Both of my parents were hippies. Lot's of sitting around a fire singing songs. We also had pet Doves... I got really good at doing dove calls, and their little sucking in and singing thing they do that sounds kind of like a kazoo.
Schools are not actually teaching kids nowadays, they are just making them act like good and obedient robots that should follow what they are being told. Throwing at them a lot of useless and hard to process information about various things, expecting them to learn... excuse me to remember all that for no apparent reason and for no future use. Just to let them rediscover some of these things later on in life if/when they may actually need them.
Schools nowadays do not promote creativity or thinking for yourself, you just need to learn what you are being told and that should be enough... I said learn again, correction, remember some facts and numbers as well as what goes where, not learn why and how it does it, but just remember the order it happens. Robots and more robots, easy to control and not thinking for themselves, just following what they are being told.
I remember from my school days that there were just two teachers that were different in their approach and I'm grateful to these people that actually helped in shaping me and most importantly my mind and helping me turn to what I have become. It is a shame that they were just two out of many, many that were like robots themselves, not caring much about what they were actually teaching and most importantly how!
Guess why they are not teaching anything about Tesla or other unconventional people in school, because it is not the norm and they just won't deviate from it... otherwise the little robots may decide to revolt and start thinking for themselves.
I had some great teachers too.
An overly conventional teacher cannot get excited about an overly unconventional historical figure. We are not attracting the right people to teaching!!!!!!! I think this is why I should open up a school!!!!!! I'm the most unconventional person I know...
Agree that a conventional teacher can hardly even think about some other unconventional approaches to convey a topic in a more interesting and attractive way to the kids. Even make them really get to learn the specific material by getting them interested in it in some way. So how can then we expect that person to talk about an unconventional figure, then again they may even consider people like that controversial and bad as an example instead of letting the kids decide what might be good and bad for themselves.
As for opening a school, that may not be a bad idea, you have already made something close to that here on Steemit already... so maybe you should think about that one a bit more. ;)
Yes, but we have Atomic Robo, that is there to put Tesla back into public conciousness. As well has a lot of Action! Science! And the eponymous Robo. Which is quite cool.
Of course Tesla the real scientist is cooler than Tesla the cartoon scientist, but the comic is really good.
As a side note Tesla is really well known in Russia. And we have one of largest Tesla coils in the world near Moscow. I suppose some Russian Steemian should go visit it, and write an article with photos about it for some ultra-mega-giga watts, err, I mean bucks! :-D
Tesla was the original "Tortured Genius". He was ridiculed by his contemporaries, especially Edison, and for good reason; they saw him as a threat. Can you imagine where the world would be today without A/C, lasers, and electric motors? In Tesla's time they were considered curiosities at best, but today they are an everyday staple of life that we take for granted. And for THAT, Tesla was truly a a visionary ahead of his time.
exactly
TESLA was concerned about people quickly consuming the Earth’s resources and was an advocate of renewable fuel.
Wow, this was such an informative and entertaining read! I actually laughed out loud imagining Twain running desperately toward the restroom, haha. Tesla was an incredible scientist; you've inspired me to further investigate his personal life and professional achievements.
Tesla is in my opinion the greatest man to ever walk on Earth to this date.
Great job, @stellabelle. I'm a huge Tesla fan. I have a soft spot for people who knew they were right when everyone else thought them wrong and who stuck to their guns nonetheless. That's Tesla for sure.
I have always been fascinated with Tesla. I think part of the reason he is not given the prominence he deserves is due to Edison's jealousy of him. Edison did whatever he could to marginalise and belittle him.
Thankfully in recent years there has been a resurgence and acceptance of the genius of the man. It is also fascinating to ponder what exactly happened to his vast archives and papers after his death.
This was a nice and informative post. Tesla's great, scientific mind was much ahead of his time.
thanks for your comment.
Thanks for this interesting write-up about Tesla. I've always been a fan of his. He worked in and around NYC in Electrical Engineering, and so did I.
Probably no hidden meaning, but 207 / 3 = 69. I like numbers and noticed this.
It's good to see the Tesla name kept in the public conscience by Musk's naming of his electric car company after him. Long Live Tesla!
I was just thinking about that too. We have Musk to thank for bringing Tesla out of the dark and into public consciousness! I shudder to even think where we'd be if Musk wasn't around.....
@stellabelle
Nikola Tesla was well before his time. His ideas are still to be put into existence. A truly remarkable person. I am a big, big admirer of Nikola.
Unfortunately, as it happens with all big personalities who are not rotten enough to survive, he was at mercy of the sharks. FBI included.
His schemes were intently vague and separated because he was in constants fear of what would happen if they end up in wrong hands. Which they did after his death.
With Tesla living in a morally better society (wishful thinking of mine) we would be now skipping the planets and be hailing from distant stars. Our mother planet would be heaven.
You've mentioned his way of imagining design which is similar to Einsteins. This is the alpha way with your brain functioning at approximately 10 Hz. This way you can connect left and right hemisphere and achieve cooperation between imagination and logic. Not everybody can do this :) But you can train and get results. Check out Ultramind method by Jose Silva. It will fascinate you.
That was one lucky pigeon! ;)
I"m really curious why this post is generating flags..................any ideas?
The only thing i can think of is that they dont like you for some reason. However that is not the reason flags were put on #steemit. It seems childish that if people flag for disagreement or dislike. Since you are obviously not spamming or offending anyone with this post! Great article again @stellabelle.
I researched into it and it appears that several accounts were just created, and they are flagging me. They are brand new accounts....
Was wondering the same. Jealousy?
I like your documentary about Tesla. this man is one of the best scientist ever lived...
Thanks for these shocking revelations about Tesla. ;)
my wife has always been more superior.... She tells me that every day. ;)
Happy Anniversary babe.....
I love Tesla @stellabelle. I never knew that about his brother, imagine if he would have survived and they combined their intellectual powers.
Or it was perhaps his brother's death that set Tesla on his path to not let down his parents and live up to the expectations he had developed when comparing himself to his brother? He said that the void left by his brother's death forced him to stretch his mind and aspirations further than normally...
Gracias Por compartir este material. Me gusta Lo que has Publicado Muchas Gracias
Its the sense of humour and the pigeon loving, thats what made this man rawk
very interesting post @stellabelle I like Tesla, he was a very interesting person!
I always like to read the materials about this Great man - Nikola Tesla!
Just upvoted > $16.00. You're welcome...
what was it before you upvoted, out of curiosity?
I think I pushed it past $16.00.
@stellabelle Great article. Thank you for sharing. Have a great love Tesla and his mind and thoughts.
Three, six, and nine; The keys to life, the universe, and everything.
thanks......I have some number preferences, but nothing like Tesla's obsessions. I tend to dislike odd numbers. Corners with no rounding are a particularly horrible thing for me to endure. Whenever i see something made entirely of squares with no rounding, I feel quite ill. Doorways that are rectangular in shape are also hideous. Cubicles, fluorescent lighting, company microwaves, all of these things bring on a violent nausea..............no joke either.
It shows you care. :)
Isnt the most tragical event in ones life always force him to overcome not only his fears but his own self?everything happens for a reason.
David Bowie's last film role. Fitting.
Fantastic post!!!
I often wonder if Henry Ford had befriended Nikola Tesla instead of Thomas Edison, what would the world look like today. I don't believe that Ford had any influence on Edison's genius, but I do believe he influenced his public relations and investors.
Cool stuff! Thanks.
$16/article? That's love...
i know, right......
Getting real writing gigs is a very difficult thing!
Great content!
Very interesting article. Thank you!
Today we use computer simulations for that. He was using his mind, as a computer, that did the simulated trial runs, to avoid the excess cost of experimental runs.
First, way to go on standing up for yourself and your worth. So many of us are quilty of "dealing with it" because we feel we "have to". But once we know and are confident that we are a valuable asset, I think it really opens us up to receive that value.
Also, great article! My answer to those "if you could spend an hour with one person who would it be" is always Tesla. Besides what he did for science, I think his quirks like you mentioned, are really intriguing. I'm sure he would blow all of our minds if ge were alive today.
"His high frequency oscillator caused Mark Twain to defecate." did definitely NOT know that haha! But what a fantastic man it was. Btw, have you heard about the rumors that Tesla was murdered by infamous Nazi (and CIA agent) Otto Skorzeny? Thanks for an interesting article!
I haven't heard about that.
A brilliant man.
i vote are you willing to back my vote bloggers ?
I feel happy if you vote me my work
https://steemit.com/photography/@zein/my-work-together-nikon-d3300-original-photos
Nikola Tesla, with his disregard for money and focus on bettering humanity through invention was a victim of capitalism and cronyism. If he'd promised to charge for the free energy, we'd all be celebrating tesla day. I often wonder what kind of unrealized inventions the govt got when they scooped up his belongings
Great article, thanks for sharing! I posted an article about five lost inventions that could have changed the world too a few minutes ago and of course Tesla´s invention´s are one the most important lost inventions.
Love NT.
He and I share birthdays. :)
Awesome blog post. I love tesla and a few of these things i actually didn't know.