DARE TO DREAM BIG!: From Penniless Immigrant to Scientific Genius Who "Lit the World"

Imagine This: You’re twenty-eight years old, and you have just arrived in the United States with four cents in your pocket. You’re fortunate to be interviewed by Thomas Edison himself, but when you try to explain your invention of the induction motor which uses alternating current (AC) to Mr. Edison, he calls it “nonsense” and “dangerous.” He tells you that he and all Americans are quite satisfied with direct current (DC) and plan to use no other system. Mr. Edison hires you, but he wants to hear no more nonsense about alternating current.

 You’re born in Croatia in 1856 during a fierce thunderstorm, and during the precise moment of your birth, the sky lights up with a huge bolt of lightning. The midwife who has just delivered you, calls you “a child of the storm,” but your mother calls you “a child of the light.”

 Later on, you attribute all of your inventive instincts to your mother who comes from a family of inventors and who herself invents household appliances to help with all the jobs around the home and the farm.

 Even as a young boy, you are very aware of the tremendous power of nature and your boyhood dream is to one day come to America to harness the power of Niagara Falls in New York.

 After completing your higher education at the University of Prague, you work for the Edison Company in Paris before emigrating to the United States in 1884 with only four cents in your pocket.

 You’re hired by Edison to work at his Menlo Park research laboratory in New Jersey, but differences in your beliefs lead you to leave a year later.

 You believe that alternating current is vastly superior to Edison’s direct current because it can be altered or converted to suit a variety of situations.

 You establish your own laboratory where you give dramatic demonstrations, hoping to allay fears about alternating current. You even light lamps without wires by allowing electricity to flow through your body.

 By the time you become a United States citizen in 1891, you are at the peak of your creative powers. You have developed the induction motor, new types of generators and transformers, a system of alternating-current power transmission, fluorescent lights, and a new type of steam turbine.

 Although your inventions receive many awards, you always consider your United States citizenship more important than any of the scientific awards you receive.

 You are a visionary genius who discovers the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. You also introduce us to the fundamentals of robotics, remote control, radar, computer science, and missile science and expand our knowledge of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics.

 You are considered the father of our modern technological age but also one of the most mysterious and controversial scientists in history. You lay the foundation for modern wireless communication and energy research and although you’re one of the twentieth century’s greatest scientists and inventors, you don’t always get the credit you deserve.

 Although it was you who harnessed the alternating electrical current we use today and which fundamentally changed the world, you are frequently included only as a footnote to the stories of the more renowned inventors and industrialists of your day such as Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

 At the time of your death in 1943 at age eighty-six, you hold over seven hundred patents, but you die nearly penniless because of serious financial setbacks.

“Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.”

                                                   Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

 Excerpted from They Stood Alone!: 25 Men and Women Who Made a Difference by Sandra McLeod Humphrey

 For More about

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GT2ZAyuEyDE

 Giving Back: Nikola Tesla’s dream was to harness the tremendous power of nature for the good of humanity, and everything he invented was for the benefit of mankind.

 Did You Know that even today, many still credit Guglielmo Marconi with the invention of the radio despite the 1943 Supreme Court decision that overruled the Marconi patent and awarded it to Tesla?

 Something to Think about: Why do you think Nikola Tesla never received the recognition he deserved?

 Willoughby and I hope you enjoyed this week’s true story and will be back next week for another story to inspire you to DARE TO DREAM BIG!