Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was the mad genius of electricity. Born in Croatia, he emigrated to the U.S. and dazzled the world with inventions — alternating current (AC), radio transmissions, wireless dreams. He envisioned a world lit and powered by invisible forces.
But Tesla was also cursed. He clashed with Edison, lost patents, and was outmaneuvered by businessmen who saw dollar signs where he saw visions. He died poor and alone in a New York hotel room, feeding pigeons and dreaming of death rays and global wireless power grids.
Tesla matters because he embodies the tragic inventor archetype: brilliant, eccentric, exploited, and ahead of his time. The fact that we light our cities with AC today is his victory. The fact that we don’t yet have his wireless utopia? That’s the world still catching up.