It seems his amnesia was not just limited to those months in bed. He had selective amnesia for what seems to be the remainder of his life. He loved his inventions, and the inventing process, so much that he magnified the positive aspects, feeling a swelling of involuntary love, while seeming to completely forget the absolute torment it caused him at times. Nikola Tesla (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died January 7, 1943, New York, New York, U.S.) Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology. Una lettura interessante, comunque, anche se alcune poche pagine si dilungano in particolari tecnici difficilmente comprensibili per i non addetti. Astăzi se împlinesc 166 de ani de la nașterea lui Nikola Tesla (10 iulie 1856), una dintre cele mai interesante și misterioase personalități din lumea științei și a inventicii, un personaj care mă fascinează și pe care îl admir de multă vreme.

Since My Inventions is an autobiography, it is unique in providing a glimpse into Tesla’s mind and his private thoughts. It tells about the man, his motivations and the values that he held. He traveled to America to make the world a better place, but America always makes sure to grind down anyone that cares for the betterment of humanity. The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field "B"), the tesla, was named in his honor (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the Tesla effect of wireless energy transfer to wirelessly power electronic devices which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale (lightbulbs) as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial energy levels in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project. Tesla also suffered from frail health most of his life, having several near death experiences. After one of these, he chronologically recalled in full detail his entire life from the time he was a baby in his mother's arms up to his present over a period of years - as if he was reliving everything. In the last few decades of his life, he ended up living in diminished circumstances as a recluse in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, occasionally making unusual statements to the press.While I’m in awe of Tesla and the things he did, I’m not 100% in agreement with him, particularly on the concept of free will and humans acting as automata. Perhaps I don’t completely understand his points on that, but it’s worth noting. In addition, I admire Tesla for his optimism that war could become obsolete if all humans had access to weapons and machinery of greater destructive ability, but I feel strongly that we as a species are still many decades from behaving in a way that takes the highest good for all into account.

Njan poetry has so distinct a charm that Goethe is said to have learned the musical tongue in which it is written rather than lose any of its native beauty. History does not record, however, any similar instance in which the Servian language, though it be that of Boskovich, expounder of the atomic theory, has been studied for the sake of the scientific secrets that might lurk therein. The vivid imagination and ready fancy of the people have been literary in their manifestation and fruit. A great Slav orator has publicly reproached his one hundred and twenty million fellows in Eastern Europe with their utter inability to invent even a mouse-trap. They were all mere barren idealists. If this were true, to equalize matters, we might perhaps barter without loss some score of ordinary American patentees for a single singer of Illyrian love-songs. But racial conditions are hardly to be offset on any terms that do not leave genius its freedom, and once in a while Nature herself rights things by producing a man whose transcendent merit compensates his nation for the very defects to which it has long been sensitive. It does not follow that such a man shall remain in a confessedly unfavorable environment. Genius is its own passport, and has always been ready to change habitats until the natural one is found. Thus it is, perchance, that while some of our artists are impelled to set up their easels in Paris or Rome, many Europeans of mark in the fields of science and research are no less apt to adopt our nationality, of free choice. They are, indeed, Americans born in exile, and seek this country instinctively as their home, needing in reality no papers of naturalization. It was thus that we welcomed Agassiz, Ericsson, and Graham Bell. In like manner Nikola Tesla, the young Servian inventor with whose work a new age in electricity is beginning, now dwells among us in New York. Mr. Tesla’s career not only touches the two extremes of European civilization, east and west, in a very interesting way, but suggests an inquiry into the essential likeness between poet and inventor. He comes of an old Servian family whose members for centuries have kept watch and ward along the Turkish frontier, and whose blood was freely shed that our western vanguard might gain time for its advance upon these shores. Yet, remote as such people and conditions are to us, it is with apparatus based on ideas and principles originating among them that the energy from Niagara Falls is to be widely distributed by electricity, in the various forms of light, heat, and power. This, in itself, would seem enough to confer fame, but Mr. Tesla has done, and will do, much else. Could he be tamed to habits of moderation in work, it would be difficult to set limit to the solutions he might give us, through ripening years, of many deep problems; but when a man springs from a people who have a hundred words for knife and only one for bread, it is a little unreasonable to urge him to be careful even of his own life. Thirty-six years make a brief span, but when an inventor believes that creative fertility is restricted to the term of youth, it is no wonder that night and day witness his anxious activity, as of a relentless volcano, and that ideas well up like hot lava till the crater be suddenly exhausted and hushed. There are a number of social observations towards the end of the book that are still relevant to our time. Written during the Prohibition (1920-1933), Tesla foresaw a time when entire cities would be destroyed in an instant, and our only hope for peace was a global communication and transport system. Non voglio togliere nulla al genio di questo scienziato eccentrico e controverso e all'importanza delle sue invenzioni. Però la lettura di questa breve autobiografia non me lo ha reso simpatico.

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Publicity photo of Nikola Tesla in his laboratory in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in December 1899. Tesla posed with his “magnifying transmitter,” which was capable of producing millions of volts of electricity. The discharge shown is 6.7 metres (22 feet) in length. (more) I also love the subtle humor in his words. Tesla was a master at languages and was as thoughtful as one can be. He had an old-world way of explaining things that is very enjoyable such as this example about boys fishing for frogs: "When my comrades, who in spite of their fine outfit had caught nothing, came to me they were green with envy. For a long time I kept my secret and enjoyed the monopoly but finally yielded to the spirit of Christmas. Every boy could then do the same and the following summer brought disaster to the frogs." This has been very, very interesting. A book written by an undisputed genius in his very own words. My Inventions is full of fascinating and sometimes bizarre stories. Tesla tells us how he narrowly escaped death on several occasions, traveled the world, rubbed elbows with celebrities, captains of industry and the greatest scientists of his time. In one particularly strange incident, Tesla describes being chased by a frantic mob in a case of mistaken identity. It's difficult to find a more intriguing and strange autobiography.

I did not know many things about him before reading this book like: Tesla was involved in wireless research, Marconi actually stole the Radio idea from Tesla. I always related Tesla with alternating current and did not know that he was into wireless as well. Nikola Tesla was a genius polymath, inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He is frequently cited as one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth," and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. In Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery— terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 41 metres (135 feet). At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals. When he passed, Tesla didn’t leave behind much material for the general public. Also, he didn’t have many close friends who would have had insight into his life sufficient to write about him.In the book, he mostly talked about himself, his family and friends and generally more human topics than scientific ones. He manifested his early sparkles of innovation and described his incentives and aims. He also told us about some of his magnificent inventions in details. He had ideas about future, as well and predicted a good deal of occurrences meticulously. My favorite part of the book was Tesla's ranting about the wireless. Its potential was so clear to him. Freeing ourselves from wires, and harnessing the waves in the air around us, would not only lead to advances in technology that were at that time unimaginable, but for Tesla, wireless meant that we could finally connect everyone in the world. According to Tesla, wires meant we could only connect to our small area (unless we went to great pains to bury wires under the ocean floor, which we did-- and still it had constraints), but wireless means we can connect to anyone, anywhere in the world. If we can connect so readily to other cultures, Tesla reasoned, then we can understand other cultures. Once we understand and stop subscribing to ingroup and outgroup thinking, we can finally attain peace. Tesla suggested, as do many people in our current day, that when anyone in any part of the country can connect to any other part of the country and gain knowledge from that, the weakest groups will gain power and not be dependent on the powerful as much as they are now. He saw not only an end to wires but an end to ignorance and war. Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment and merging of races... There is in fact but one race, of many colors." I was taking electronics engineering classes in college when I first learned about Nikola Tesla. I discovered that Tesla developed several of the most important technologies we use today. I thought it strange that Tesla had contributed so much to the world, yet he's virtually unknown to most people. He's a true unsung hero. I became so interested in Tesla that I eventually built my own Tesla coil, I wrote a Tesla coil design program called TeslaMap and created the Tesla Coil Design, Construction and Operation Guide. But enough about me...

He was way ahead of his time and people did not encourage many of his brilliant ideas, which is really sad. They thought his ideas were too unpractical(he even mentions that people laughed at his ideas). But we now see those ideas were realistic since many of them have been implemented in real life. He predicted a great scientific advance in which some of his inventions will be the basis: The Tesla Transformer, The Magnifying Transmitter, The Tesla Wireless System, The Terrestrial Stationary Waves which will result in many things he predicted amongst which are internet, wireless phones, GPS and many other phenomena so usual for us. He described his works too far ahead of time and thought that the world wasn’t ready for them. I also liked that his main intention for inventing something was not to get applause or make money. He did all the hard work only for the betterment of the society. I admire him for his ideas to unite the world using wireless, using aerial machines as he calls them that revolve around the Earth.

Parecchi aneddoti della giovinezza mi sembrano francamente inverosimili e forse derivano dai problemi nervosi che notoriamente affliggevano Tesla. Jules Breton has spoken of the history of his life as being at the same time the genesis of his art. This is true of Nikola Tesla’s evolution. His bent toward invention we may surely trace to his mother, who, as the wife of an eloquent clergyman in the Greek Church, made looms and churns for a pastoral household while her husband preached. Teslas electrical work started when, as a boy in the Polytechnic School at Gratz, he first saw a direct-current Gramme — machine, and was told that the commutator was a vital and necessary feature in all such apparatus. His intuitive judgment or latent spirit of invention at once challenged the statement of his instructor, and that moment began the process of reasoning and experiment which led him to his discovery of the rotating magnetic field, and to the practical polyphase motors, in which the commutator and brushes, fruitful and endless source of trouble, are absolutely done away with. These perfected inventions did not come at once; they never do. The conditions that surrounded this youth in the airy fastnesses of the Dinaric Alps all made against the hopes he nursed of becoming an electrician ; and not the least impediment was the fond wish of his parents at Siniljan Lika that he should maintain the priestly tradition, and benefit by the preferment likely to come through his uncle, now Metropolitan in Bosnia. But Tesla felt himself destined to serve at other altars than those of his ancient faith, with other means of approach to the invisible and unknown. He persevered in mathematical and mechanical studies, mastered incidentally half a dozen languages, and at last became an assistant in the Government Telegraph Engineering Department at BudaPest. His salary was small enough to please those who hold that the best endowment of genius is poverty, and he would make no appeals to his widowed mother for help. Experimenting, of course, went on all the time at this juncture it was on telephony that he wasted his meager substance in riotous invention. Desirous of going to a fete with some friends, and anxious not to spend on clothes the money that might buy magnets and batteries, the brilliant idea occurred to him to turn his only pair of trousers inside out and to disport in them on the morrow as new. He sat up all night tailoring, but the fete came and went before he could reappear in public. This episode is quite in keeping with his boyish efforts to fly from the steep roof of the house at Smiljan, using an old umbrella as arostat; or with the peculiar tests, stopped by the family doctor before the results could be determined, as to how long he could suspend the beating of his heart by will power. Other parts of the book were more amusing to me than profound. Early in the book I had to laugh hardily because I had just finished reading another author's take on his nervous breakdown and then I read Tesla's own take on it. It seems to me that inventing is similar to childbirth not only in that the inventor brings something new into the world, but also because there can be amnesia for the pain of the birthing process. It is often said, and I believe it to be true, that many women only have more than one child because they selectively forget the negative aspects of pregnancy and child birth and magnify their memories of the positive aspects. Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, Vojna Krajina, in the territory of today's Croatia, he was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1894 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture, but due to his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist. Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.