Why Nikola Tesla was the coolest scientist ever
Tristram Fane Saunders on the eccentric inventor who is revered by Elon Musk and US rock bands alike
There’s a scene in the new film The Current War (see feature above) where we find Nikola Tesla at his lowest ebb. It’s 1886, and the inventor’s Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing company has dropped both his name and the man himself, leaving him penniless.
In a contemptuous southern drawl, one investor tells him: “Ain’t never gonna be anything named ‘Tesla’ ever again.”
At an early screening, the line prompted a few laughs. From Elon Musk’s $30billion electric car business to the US rock band Tesla (15million albums sold), the eccentric Serbian inventor continues to cast a long shadow.
Tesla played the deciding role in the tussle between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison’s preferred system of low voltage direct current (DC) could power both lights
and motors, but petered out over long distances. Westinghouse’s high voltage alternating current (AC) could span the miles, but couldn’t be used for much other than lighting. It was Tesla’s greatest invention – the induction motor – that boosted AC’S capabilities, allowing it to be used to power everything from trams to sewing machines, and laying the foundations for today’s National Grid.
A lifelong bachelor who probably suffered from OCD, Tesla cut a curious figure. Germaphobic, 6ft 2in and pencil-thin, he dressed fastidiously in formalwear, and felt everyone should take the same care over their appearance. (He once sacked a secretary for being fat.) He loved literature, music, fine food and billiards, and was a bit of a showman; at public demonstrations, he used to make bulbs light up by holding them while running an electric current through his body.
Tesla’s scathing comments about
Edison shortly after his death reveal their differences: “He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene.”
Tesla didn’t have Westinghouse’s business acumen, or Edison’s ability to see ideas through to the end. What he did have was a quality that no scientific instrument can measure: he was cool. It’s telling that, until The Current War (where he is played by Nicholas Hoult), the inventor’s best-known film portrayal came from an other-worldly David Bowie in The Prestige.
An aura of mystique hangs around Tesla’s life, making him an irresistible figure to a certain type of left-field artist. “He’s more of an artist than a scientist, in some strange way,” says Terry Gilliam in Mechanical Figures, a film about the scientist currently being shown at a Tesla exhibition in Zagreb.
“Tesla is always on the border of magic,” artist Marina Abramović enthuses. “One of the things that took me off my feet was this ability of his [to] see his inventions like threedimensional images.”
It’s an ability highlighted in The Current War, when Hoult’s Tesla gives a lecture on the AC motor – which, lacking money and resources, he hasn’t actually built. Nor does he see why he should have to build one just to satisfy the sceptics. “I have built it in my imagination,” he tuts. “It’s perfect.”
Aside from the motor, Tesla, who died in 1943, made improvements to radio technology (devoted fans think he deserves more credit than Marconi for this), invented a new type of arc lamp and may have taken the first X-ray image. With Westinghouse, he built the world’s first hydroelectric power plant.
“Tesla gave us so much, and nobody knows,” Gilliam says. “Suddenly there’s a crack, and people fall through.”
This idea that his genius is largely unacknowledged also makes him attractive to dreamers and cranks. In his later years, Tesla displayed similar oddball qualities, working on neverrealised plans for an electric “deathray” and a system of worldwide wireless electricity. A bemused Telegraph article from 1901 reported on Tesla’s attempts to communicate with Mars. “I already have an instrument of sufficient delicacy to receive their messages,” he boasted.
But, for all his quirks, Tesla’s earlier achievements make him an inspirational figure. Westinghouse may have been the “winner” in the war of the currents, but there won’t be many rock bands named after him.