Nikola Tesla
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
45 free Nikola Tesla trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Nikola Tesla was born during a lightning storm in a Serbian village, did integral calculus in his head, walked out on Thomas Edison, licensed the AC induction motor to Westinghouse, lit bulbs from across a stage without wires, built artificial lightning in Colorado and died broke in a New York hotel room with a white pigeon for a friend. Few lives in science offer so much quiz material, and few are so wrapped in myth. These 45 questions stick to the documented record: the priest father and the mother who built her own tools, the cholera that nearly killed him, the Graz scholarship and the gambling rumours, the Budapest telephone exchange, Continental Edison in Paris, the disputed $50,000 bonus, the ditch-digging year, the 1888 Westinghouse licence and the royalty he tore up, the Columbian Exposition, Niagara, the lab fire, the radio-controlled boat, the Colorado Springs signals he thought came from Mars, J. P. Morgan and Wardenclyffe, the bladeless turbine, the birthday press conferences, the Teleforce weapon, the FBI and John G. Trump, and the SI unit named for him in 1960. The easy tier asks what AC stands for; the expert tier wants the Czech order he received in 1937 and the name of the journalist who started the birthday parties. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for a science night.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nikola Tesla is best known for his contributions to which electricity supply system?
Alternating current
Alternating current was winning out because it suited long-distance, high-voltage transmission, and his patents helped it beat direct current.
Q 02Although his parents were ethnic Serbs, Tesla was born in which present-day country?
Croatia
Croatia: his home village of Smiljan lay within the Austrian Empire when he was born there in 1856.
Q 03Family legend says Tesla was born during what?
Lightning storm
Lightning storm: the midwife called him a child of the storm, only to be told, the story goes, No, of the light.
Q 04To whom did Tesla credit his eidetic memory and creativity?
His mother
His mother never went to school, yet she invented tools and appliances to help with the work of home and farm.
Q 05Why did Tesla's teachers suspect him of cheating at school?
He did integral calculus in his head
He did integral calculus in his head at the gymnasium in Karlovac, where his physics professor's demonstrations first drew him to electricity.
Q 06Which disease left the teenage Tesla bedridden and near death in 1873?
Cholera
Cholera kept him in bed for nine months, and in despair his father promised to send him to engineering school if he recovered.
Q 07Tesla later wrote that as a young man he developed a mania for what, which greatly worried his parents?
Gambling
Gambling: cards were his passion, and his father, who led an exemplary life, could not excuse the waste of time and money.
Q 08At which city's technical college did Tesla enrol in 1875?
Graz
Graz: there a professor's Gramme dynamo, with its sparking commutator, set Tesla on a problem he would chase for years.
Q 09Tesla's professor dismissed his idea for a motor without a commutator as what?
A perpetual motion scheme
A perpetual motion scheme: the professor's verdict only spurred Tesla on, and the problem obsessed him for years until he solved it.
Q 10In which city did Tesla become chief electrician of a new telephone exchange in 1881?
Budapest
Budapest: the exchange wasn't running yet when he arrived, so Tesla first worked as a draftsman in the Central Telegraph Office.
Q 11For which company did Tesla install lighting systems in Paris from 1882?
Continental Edison
Continental Edison soon had him designing improved dynamos, and in 1883 it sent him on assignment to Strasbourg.
Q 12Tesla reached New York carrying plans for what?
A flying machine
A flying machine: he landed with four cents in his pocket, and 44 years later he patented an aircraft designed to rise vertically.
Q 13Soon after reaching New York, Tesla repaired, overnight, the dynamos of what?
An ocean liner
An ocean liner: the SS Oregon, the fastest passenger steamer of its day, couldn't sail until he got both lighting machines running.
Q 21Which 1893 fair did Westinghouse light, with Tesla demonstrating at its exhibit?
World's Columbian Exposition
World's Columbian Exposition: Westinghouse won the Chicago contract by substantially underbidding General Electric.
Q 22As a boy, Tesla told his uncle he would one day go to America and harness which natural wonder?
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls: thirty years later the dream came true, when power from the new plant there, built on Tesla's system, reached Buffalo.
Q 23What destroyed Tesla's South Fifth Avenue laboratory in March 1895?
A fire
A fire: it destroyed years' worth of notes and equipment and set back his ongoing projects.
Q 14When investors abandoned Tesla's first company, what was he left holding?
Worthless stock
Worthless stock: his arc lighting system was installed and running, yet the investors kept the earnings and he lost control of his patents.
Q 15What manual job did Tesla take for $2 a day during his 1886 hardship?
Ditch digger
Ditch digger: within months a Western Union superintendent agreed to back his new inventions.
Q 16The Pittsburgh industrialist who bought rights to Tesla's patents in 1888 had earlier invented what?
Railway air brakes
Railway air brakes: George Westinghouse saw Tesla's patents as the missing link for sending power over long distances, and he hired Tesla too.
Q 17What did Tesla develop in 1887 that ran on polyphase current and needed no commutator?
An induction motor
An induction motor: Tesla said the motors he built then were exactly as he had imagined them, and he made no attempt to improve the design.
Q 18In 1891, the same year he invented his famous coil, Tesla became what?
A US citizen
A US citizen: the young immigrant had once judged America to be a century behind Europe in civilization.
Q 19What did Tesla give up when Westinghouse's company ran short of money?
His royalties
His royalties: Westinghouse's backers had forced a renegotiation of their contract.
Q 20Tesla's high-frequency work produced early forms of which lighting?
Neon
Neon: he astonished lecture audiences by lighting glass tubes with no wires attached at all.
Q 24Whom did Tesla photograph in his lab in one of the first pictures ever lit by phosphorescent light?
Mark Twain
Mark Twain: the writer often visited Tesla's lab, where he took part in experiments himself.
Q 25What did Tesla demonstrate at Madison Square Garden in 1898?
A radio-controlled boat
A radio-controlled boat: Tesla showed it before a crowd, calling the model a teleautomaton. Patent examiners had doubted it could work until they saw it run.
Q 26Where did Tesla set up his high-altitude experimental station in 1899?
Colorado Springs
Colorado Springs: Tesla had concluded that the thinner air at high altitude would conduct electrical power better.
Q 27Which millionaire's investment helped fund Tesla's 1899 experimental station?
John Jacob Astor IV
John Jacob Astor IV: with that backing, Tesla headed west and told reporters he would send a signal from Pikes Peak to Paris.
Q 28At his 1899 station, Tesla concluded that what could be used to conduct electricity?
The Earth
The Earth: he went back to New York convinced he could send power around the world without wires, and began his giant tower on Long Island.
Q 29Where did Tesla believe his strange 1899 radio signals came from?
Another planet
Another planet: he announced it to the press, and the claim was met with ridicule in scientific journals.
Q 30Who gave Tesla $150,000 in 1901 for a 51% share of his wireless patents?
J. P. Morgan
J. P. Morgan: the financier later withdrew his support, and Tesla's tower project was abandoned.