Nikola Tesla
genius who invented
20th century.

Nikola Tesla was born at a stroke of midnight during the electrical storm on July 10th, 1856. He was born of Serbian parents, father Milutin Tesla who was a Serbian Orthodox Priest and mother Djuka (Mandic) Tesla who was self-thought inventor of home appliances. To be historically pre-cise, Nikola Tesla was born in the village of Smiljan, Lika a military border part of Austro-Hungarian Empire mainly populated by Serbs. Today, that area belongs to the state of Croatia. Nikola came to the United States of America with an Austrian passport, became a proud citizen, spent whole his life and died in New York City.

Electricity is one of nature's greatest forces and by the end of the 20th Century we have harnessed it to light and power our modern world. Hundreds of years of scientific discoveries and inventions brought us here but it would take the eccentric genius of one man to unlock the full potential of electrical power. In the winter of 1943, Nikola Tesla looked out across Manhattan’s skyline for the very last time. Tesla had been born into the world powered by steam and lit by gas but before his eyes he saw a new world, a world transformed, a world powered by his inventions.

The war of the currents has been won by Westinghouse and Tesla. In 1895, a new power station was completed at Niagara Falls using Westinghouse AC generators to produce Tesla's Polyphase Currents. Finally, huge amounts of power could be transmitted from the falls to nearby Buffalo and then a few years later the Niagara Plant was producing the power to the New York City itself and today almost all the electricity generated in the world is done by using the Tesla Polyphase System.

In June 1943, the US Supreme Court ruled on the controversy of radio patents controversy and the judgement is as follows; Pioneering of radio belongs to Nikola Tesla, improvements of the patents to produce the first commercial radio to Sir Oliver Lodge, and the first trans-Atlantic radio trans-mission to Guglielmo Marconi. To its own request, Marconi filed a lawsuit against US Navy and Government for infringing his patents which led to the thorough investigation ending up in the US Supreme Court decision to deem Marconi’s patents for Radio pioneering invalid. Marconi in-fringed 17 of Tesla patents and Sir Oliver Lodge improvements of the Tesla Patents leading up to the production of the first commercial radio.

As an old man, with over 310 most essential technical patents, Tesla was left almost bankrupt and alone living as a semi recluse in his Hotel. His last years were spent in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, sad, confused, destitute, frail, lonely and still mourning death of one of his beloved pigeons. This extraordinary genius knew that his life's work is done and he laid on his bed to die. His body was found three days later by a hotel maid.

Edison became an American hero and his company would take a part of General Electric, even to-day one of the biggest multinational corporations. In January 1943, the story of Nikola Tesla was coming to an end but looking out across the Manhattan skylines for the very last time he saw a sky lit up by twinkling lights and millions of lives transformed by his genius.