July 10, 1856, the legendary American inventor of Serbian origin Nikola Tesla was born. This is perhaps the most enigmatic scientist of recent centuries. He discovered alternating current, fluorescent light and wireless transmission of energy. Built the first electric clock, a turbine, and a solar-powered engine.
The scientist is credited with paranormal abilities and discoveries, for which his contemporaries allegedly were not ready. You can be skeptical about this, but you can definitely say that Tesla was unlike anyone else in character and lifestyle. Another famous inventor, Thomas Edison, even publicly referred to his rival as a "crazy Serb."
1. Strange phobias, visions and obsessions began in Tesla from the age of five. In a state of excitement, he saw strong flashes of light, quiet rustles seemed to him like peals of thunder. He read a lot, and the heroes of the books, according to his confession, awakened in him the desire to become "a being of the highest order."
“Unusual visions often appeared to me, accompanied by unbearably bright flashes of light. They caused terrible suffering, distorted the appearance of real objects, interfered with thinking and working. To whom I have only turned, but so far none of the psychologists or physiologists have been able to give a satisfactory explanation of these unusual phenomena. I think they are unique. I probably received this gift from birth because my brother experienced the same difficulties."
Tesla in front of the spiral coil of a high frequency transformer.
2. Tesla persistently cultivated willpower in himself, striving to gain complete control over himself.
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“At first I had to suppress my desires, but gradually they began to coincide with what the will dictated. After several years of training, I achieved such complete control of myself that I playfully curbed passions, which ended in disaster for many of the most powerful people."
At first, the inventor allowed himself to become addicted to a bad habit, and then forced himself to give it up. Here's how he describes quitting smoking, coffee and gambling:
“On that day and in that game, I overcame my passion, and so easily that I even regretted that it was not a hundred times stronger. I not only tamed it, but tore it out of my heart so that not even a trace of desire would remain. Since then, any gambling has been as interesting to me as picking my teeth.
There was a period when I became so addicted to smoking that it threatened to undermine my health. But then my will intervened, and I not only stopped, but also suppressed the slightest craving for smoking.
Many years ago my heart began to play pranks, but as soon as I found out that the fault was an innocent cup of coffee in the morning, I immediately refused it, although, I confess, it was not an easy task. In this way, I controlled and tamed other habits and passions, which not only saved my life, but also gave me great satisfaction.
However, for someone it, perhaps, would be a deprivation and a sacrifice."
3. He was energetic and at the same time extravagant - he could suddenly do a somersault while walking.
4. Tesla claims that he easily memorized formulas and whole pages of text, photographing them with a glance. This allowed him to retrieve books from his memory and read them word for word. Once, while walking in the park, he was reading Goethe's Faust by heart, and he found a solution to a problem that worried him.
“When I, immersed in thought, uttered the last words, admiring the expressive power of the poet, the decision came like a flash of lightning. I instantly saw everything at once and drew with a cane in the sand the diagrams later set forth more fully in my principal patents in May 1888."
This famous photo was taken using a double exposure: first the lightning was shot, and then Tesla himself.
5. Tesla every day made many hours of walking and did it alone: he believed that walking stimulates the work of thought, so that no one should interfere with him.
“In continuous solitude, the mind becomes sharper. You don't need a big laboratory to think and invent. Ideas are born in the absence of influence on the mind of external conditions. Be alone, only in it ideas are born. Most people are so absorbed in the outside world that they completely do not notice what is happening inside them."
6. He slept very little, considering it a waste of time. The scientist claimed that he rested only four hours a day, of which two hours spent thinking about ideas.
Tesla monument in Baku.
7. Tesla suffered from a morbid love of cleanliness and misophobia - this is the name of the obsessive fear of germs and infection, the desire to avoid surrounding objects. What such a phobia looks like, you probably saw in the biopic "Aviator", where Leonardo DiCaprio played another brilliant engineer - Howard Hughes.
If a fly landed on Tesla's table in a restaurant, he asked to replace the tablecloth and cutlery. He demanded that all tableware undergo special sterilization in the kitchen, but even after that he wiped everything with napkins, consuming a whole stack. No one else could sit at his table in the restaurant, even in his absence.
He was afraid of catching an infection, so he threw away his gloves, once wearing them. He avoided shaking hands and constantly washed his hands, each time wiping them with a new towel - he needed 18 pieces a day.
However, this phobia can still be explained: Tesla was seriously ill twice and after cholera in adolescence, which almost killed him, became afraid of any infection.
8. Perhaps the desire not to shake hands with anyone is connected not with the desire for purity, but with another reason that could only have occurred to Tesla: “I would not want my electromagnetic field to clog up”.
9. The inventor got up from the table, if women in pearl ornaments were sitting at him, and when Tesla's secretary wore the pearls, the inventor sent her home. Round surfaces disgusted him.
“At that time I acquired many conflicting oddities in tastes and habits; in the appearance of some of them one can trace the influence of external impressions, while others are generally inexplicable.
I had a sharp disgust for women's earrings, and other jewelry, say bracelets, I liked in one way or another, depending on how beautifully they were made. At the sight of the pearls, I was on the verge of a seizure. But I was completely mesmerized by the sparkling of crystals or objects with sharp edges and smooth surfaces.
I would never touch another person's hair, except at gunpoint. I felt a fever when looking at a peach, and if a piece of camphor was lying somewhere in the house, I felt incredible discomfort."
10. Nikola Tesla never married, had no children and never had an intimate relationship. The extreme degree of intrusion into someone else's space for him was a simple contact with someone else's body. Judging by the film "The Secret of Nikola Tesla", he allowed this only when communicating with family and friends after years of acquaintance.
The scientist believed that a woman is “the biggest thief of spiritual energy,” and only writers and musicians need marriage for inspiration. "A scientist, however, must devote all his feelings only to science, because, having divided them, he will not be able to give science everything that is required of him." Tesla died at 86, presumably a virgin.
11. Tesla easily memorized books and images and was able to easily reproduce detailed three-dimensional images of objects seen only once. This ability helped him to control the terrible nightmares that Tesla suffered from childhood, and to conduct thought experiments.
12. The scientist followed a vegetarian diet: he ate milk, bread, vegetables. I drank only filtered water.
“Even now, I care about some of these disturbing influences. When I drop the little squares of paper into the bowl of liquid, I always get an unusual awful taste in my mouth.
I counted how many steps I took while walking, and I calculated in cubic units the volume of a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee or a piece of food, otherwise I did not feel the pleasure of eating."
13. Tesla checked into a hotel only if the number of his apartments was a multiple of three. During his walks, he also walked around his quarter three times.
"The sum of any actions or work steps that I had to perform in some repetitive sequence had to be divisible by three, and if it didn't work out, I started over, even if it took several hours."
14. Tesla did not have his own house, no permanent apartment, no other private property, except laboratories and land. He slept right in the laboratory, and at the end of his life - in the most expensive hotels in New York.
15. It was important for Tesla to look his best. He always dressed up and down and didn’t use a single accessory for over a week and then usually throw them away. The scrupulous attitude towards appearance extended to other people's shortcomings. If he didn’t like the maid’s clothes, he would send her home to change.
Monument to the inventor in the United States.
16. Tesla conducted a high frequency current through himself, but never conducted experiments on other people or animals.
17. The scientist believed that one can learn to control cosmic energy and enter into communication with other worlds. And he claimed that he himself does not invent anything, but only is a conductor of ideas that "ether" sends him.