50 Fun Facts About Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla is best known for his contributions to which electricity supply system?

His polyphase AC patents became the cornerstone of the system Westinghouse marketed.

In which village was Tesla born in 1856?

The village was then in the Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire and is now in Croatia.

Tesla's birthplace lies in which present-day country?

His family were ethnic Serbs living under the Austrian Empire.

What was the profession of Tesla's father, Milutin?

He originally wanted his son to enter the priesthood too.

To whom did Tesla credit his eidetic memory and creativity?

Duka Mandic had a talent for making home craft tools and could memorise Serbian epic poems.

Why did Tesla's teachers suspect him of cheating at school?

He graduated from the Higher Real Gymnasium in Karlovac in 1873, aged 17.

Which disease left the teenage Tesla bedridden and near death in 1873?

His father promised to send him to the best engineering school if he recovered.

Whose books did Tesla say he read while recovering from his illness?

Decades later the two became close friends in New York.

At which city's technical college did Tesla enrol in 1875?

He passed nine exams in his first year but left in 1878 without graduating.

What did classmates rumour had happened to Tesla after he vanished from college?

He was actually working as a draftsman in Maribor for 60 florins a month.

In which city did Tesla become chief electrician of a new telephone exchange in 1881?

He worked under Tivadar Puskas and later claimed to have improved a telephone repeater there.

For which company did Tesla install lighting systems in Paris from 1882?

He worked at its Ivry-sur-Seine division and was soon redesigning dynamos.

In which year did Tesla emigrate to the United States?

Edison manager Charles Batchelor asked that he be brought over to the Edison Machine Works.

Which ocean liner's dynamos did Tesla stay up all night repairing?

Edison reportedly told Batchelor afterwards that this was a damned good man.

How big was the bonus Tesla said the Edison Machine Works promised and never paid?

The sum was odd, since the company did not have that much cash on hand.

In which New Jersey town did Tesla's first company install its arc lighting system?

The investors then dropped him, and he lost control of his own patents.

What manual job did Tesla take for $2 a day during his 1886 hardship?

He wrote that his high education seemed to him like a mockery.

Which two backers formed the Tesla Electric Company with him in 1887?

Profits were split a third each to Tesla, to the backers, and to development.

What did Tesla develop in 1887 that ran on polyphase current and needed no commutator?

Its rotating magnetic field came from polyphase current, an idea Tesla said he had in 1882.

Which company licensed Tesla's polyphase patents in 1888?

The deal was $60,000 in cash and stock plus a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower.

What monthly fee did Westinghouse pay Tesla as a consultant in Pittsburgh?

He found the year frustrating and his motor could not run the city's streetcars.

Which Italian physicist had built a similar rotating-field machine Westinghouse weighed up?

Westinghouse decided Tesla's patent would probably control the market.

For how much did Westinghouse buy Tesla's patent outright in 1897?

It was part of a patent-sharing agreement with the newly formed General Electric.

What did Tesla call the device later known as the Tesla coil?

It used an air gap instead of insulation between the windings and produced high-voltage, high-frequency AC.

Which 1893 fair did Westinghouse light with AC, with Tesla demonstrating at its exhibit?

Tesla spent a week in Chicago showing wireless lighting in a darkened room.

Which power system did Tesla recommend for Niagara Falls?

Westinghouse won the generating contract and General Electric built the distribution system.

What destroyed Tesla's South Fifth Avenue laboratory in March 1895?

Early notes, models and exhibits from the Columbian Exposition were lost.

Whom was Tesla trying to photograph when he may have captured an early X-ray image?

The only thing captured was the metal locking screw of the camera lens.

What did Tesla demonstrate at Madison Square Garden in 1898?

He called it a telautomaton and tried to sell the idea to the military as a torpedo.

Where did Tesla set up his high-altitude experimental station in 1899?

The El Paso Electric Light Company supplied his power free of charge.

Who invested $100,000 to fund Tesla's Colorado experiments?

He became majority shareholder of the Nikola Tesla Company.

How long were the artificial lightning discharges Tesla produced in Colorado?

He once burned out the local generator and blacked out the town.

From which planet did newspapers say Tesla's strange 1899 signals came?

His 1901 Collier's Weekly article was titled Talking With Planets.

Who gave Tesla $150,000 in 1901 for a 51% share of his wireless patents?

The money went into the Wardenclyffe Tower at Shoreham on Long Island.

In which Long Island community was Wardenclyffe Tower built?

It stood about 100 miles east of New York City on the North Shore.

Who beat Tesla to a transatlantic wireless transmission in December 1901?

The letter S was sent from England to Newfoundland.

What did Tesla demonstrate on his 50th birthday in 1906?

The 200-horsepower machine ran at 16,000 rpm; the idea later found use in car speedometers.

Which creatures did Tesla feed daily and nurse in his hotel room?

He spent over $2,000 caring for one injured white bird.

Where was Tesla living when he died in 1943?

Westinghouse paid him $125 a month plus rent there from 1934.

Which magazine put Tesla on its cover for his 75th birthday in 1931?

The caption read All the world's his power house.

What name did Tesla give his claimed superweapon at his 1940 birthday meeting?

Papers had called it the death beam or death ray since 1934.

Which MIT professor examined Tesla's papers for the government after his death?

In a box said to hold part of the death ray he found a 45-year-old resistance box.

What was ruled the cause of Tesla's death?

A maid found him after ignoring a do-not-disturb sign that had hung for three days.

Who read the eulogy at Tesla's funeral?

The New York mayor spoke at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on 10 January 1943.

In which year was the SI unit of magnetic flux density named the tesla?

His work had fallen into relative obscurity after his death until then.

Where are Tesla's ashes displayed in a gold-plated sphere?

His estate went there in 80 trunks marked N.T. in 1952; the ashes followed in 1957.

Roughly how many patents did Tesla obtain worldwide?

At least 278 are known, issued in 26 countries.

Which young journalist organised Tesla's 75th birthday celebration in 1931?

The party went so well that Tesla made it an annual press event.

Which honour did the Czechoslovak ambassador present to Tesla in 1937?

The other three on the list all came from Montenegro or Yugoslavia.

What did Tesla claim his oscillator had caused in Lower Manhattan in 1898?

He also said it could bring down the Empire State Building with five pounds of air pressure.