Nikola Tesla



"Genius, scientist, inventor, penniless at death, yet ignored. Nikola Tesla, who remembers?"

- Joy Electric, "Nikola Tesla"

"Tesla was the electric Jesus."

- Drunk History

Nikola Tesla: electrical genius, brilliant engineer, Mad Scientist, possibly asexual (or just celibate), pigeon-loving weirdo, poor businessman. Born in the village of Smiljan from Serbian parents (Austrian Empire at the time, Croatia today) and immigrant to the United States, Tesla is best known for his eponymous electrical transformer, the Tesla Coil, closely followed by his development of the first feasible alternating current power generator, ultimately built at Niagara Falls. Other patents of his include the equipment for radio, vertical take-off and landing, and fluorescent light bulbs. (X-rays and quasars? Possibly.) However, a combination of poor business decisions, economic trouble, and pressures from archrival Thomas Edison eventually led to the end of his good fortunes, and he acquired obsessive/compulsive tendencies and other eccentricities. He ultimately died alone in a hotel room after failing to sell a giant Death Ray to the US government. It is safe to say that without this man, the 21st century would not exist as we know it. And hardly anyone knows him.

This essay lists 4 reasons for Tesla's lack of public recognition:
 * 1. Tesla lacked marketing ability and business knowledge. He concentrated on science and ignored the need to build a network of contacts.
 * 2. Thomas Edison had such ability and knowledge; he also made political connections and promoted his public image.
 * 3. The corporate leaders of the time were scared of Telsa’s objective to invent free energy and took advantage of his business naiveté.
 * 4. The United States government covered up his inventions during World War One and World War II since they were scared that the German Empire or the Nazis would develop a superweapon from his designs.

These are the facts. Everything else is very, very much up for grabs. Artificial lightning? Never left home without it! (In fact, one of the highlights of any of his demonstrations was shooting lightning from his fingertips.) Earthquake machine? Probably not. Faked his death and escaped to Soviet Russia? Doubtful. Assisted by a league of assassins as old as time itself? No. Caused The Tunguska Event with the help of Marconi while testing an experimental antigravity teleportation engine? ...You're just messing with us now, right?

Conjecture and conspiracy aside, some of the things that we do know Tesla was either working on or had plans for are quite terrifying. Aside from the above mentioned Artificial Lightning, Earthquake Machine, and the Death Ray (a particle beam weapon, to be precise) he tried to sell to the Government, Tesla had plans (whether or not any were close to functional is of course entirely up for debate) for Force Shields, Gravity Manipulation, Wall Phasing and Teleportation. You know what they say about 'genius and madness'!

Because of both his behavioral and intellectual eccentricities, Tesla is both the Ur Example of the Real Life Mad Scientist (literally, in some cases - some of the first depictions of the trope in film came from Thomas Edison's studios) and the fictional person to go to for all technological arcana and fringe science. The tesla, the S.I. unit of magnetic field strength (defined as a field that applies a one-newton force to a one-coulomb charge moving orthogonally at one meter per second), takes its name from him.

For examples relating to his most famous invention, see Shock and Awe.

Anime and Manga

 * Chronicles of the Bizarre and Eccentric: Nikola Tesla (1989) by Hirohiko Araki of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.

Comic Books

 * Atomic Robo, Tesla built the title character. In his earlier days (Volume 3, Atomic Robo and the Shadow From Beyond Time), he also stopped a Cosmic Horror with Charles Fort and H.P. Lovecraft's father by using a death-ray. It doesn't work out as well as they had planned.
 * A brief note in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen implies that in that world, Tesla and Edison merged their electric companies, contributing to the Steampunk-ishness of the series' Britain.
 * The Five Fists of Science features Tesla and Mark Twain teaming up to fight Thomas Edison. With a Steampunk giant robot. After Edison summoned cosmic horrors. Also Tesla was trying to become a superhero. It's pretty much as awesome as it sounds.
 * Tesla is a significant character in the DC Comics Elseworld JLA: Age of Wonder, in which he quits Edison Machine Works at the same time as Lex Luthor and Clark Kent. The combination of wacked-out science ability, ruthless business savvy and superpowers changes the world, until Luthor remembers he's a Super Villain and asks Tesla to take out those Death Ray plans again.
 * As part of IDW's "Infestation 2" event, and a sequel to Transformers: Hearts of Steel, which took place in the Industrial Revolution, Nikola Tesla fought Cthulhu-powered Decepticons alongside Optimus Prime. Just go ahead and bask in that sentence for a bit.

Film

 * In the film adaptation of The Prestige, Tesla is played by, of all people, David Bowie.
 * The Secret of Nikola Tesla by the Croatian director Krsto Papić, done in 1980.
 * In the film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the main character - then a well-intentioned grade-school Mad Scientist - has a poster of Tesla which proclaims him a "Rockstar Scientist." He's air-guitaring a lightning bolt.
 * The animated movie War of the Worlds: Goliath includes Tesla as part of the research and development staff for the Earth forces preparing for a renewed Martian invasion. He shows up in the first trailer, alongside Theodore Roosevelt, briefing troops on the expected attack and Earth's new equipment.

Literature

 * Tesla plays a brief but important role in The Prestige.
 * Tesla is a character in Spider Robinson's extended universe of Callahans Crosstime Saloon books.
 * In The Witches Of Chiswick, it's revealed that in the ideal timeline, Nikola Tesla was respected and befriended several other scientists - particularly Charles Babbage. Which led to him perfecting his inventions and bringing about the space age (plus broadcasted electricity and androids) in the Victorian era. This is screwed up when time-traveling witches pollute the time line which leads to a dystopic time line. This is patched up and we end with the current timeline we all live in.
 * As an ironic historical note, had Tesla beat Edison at the whole electricity business and broadcast electricity become the dominant business model, modern electronics would have to have evolved in a radically different direction, since shooting loads of high frequency alternating current through the air is seriously bad news for transistors.
 * However, even his innovative genius would have hit a wall, as he completely rejected atomic theory, instead choosing to see electricity as a kind of ethereal fluid. The fact that many of his energy-directing schemes were also complete nonsense, they would have strangled transistor technologies in the crib, and his notes turned out to be completely useless mean we would have ended up scrapping the whole infrastructure and starting from scratch.
 * His inventions are a center point to the plot of an early Repairman Jack novel.
 * Tesla is the replacement/rival for Santa Claus in the short story As Dry Leaves Before The Wild Hurricane Fly.
 * He's not exactly a character in the novel Crazy For Cornelia, but Cornelia, a big ol' fan of lightning, is an obsessive fan of him.
 * Flaming's The Kingdom of Ohio features the rivalry between Tesla and Thomas Edison, Tesla being the good guy of course.
 * Tesla is a character in the Worldweavers books, where he also has elemental powers.
 * He appears in the Alternate History novel New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear, where he has fled to France from Russia's encroaching imperialism and the French government has hired him to build his broadcast energy system for Paris. His death ray, a concentrated form of his broadcast energy, also makes an appearance but is ineffective,
 * Tesla is a central character in Samantha Hunt's novel The Invention of Everything Else, which fictionalizes his last years of life. You know that page quote above about everything being "very, very much up for grabs?" The book is that trope in spades.
 * In Behemoth, the sequel to Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, the Steam/Dieselpunks that make up the Central Powers have 'Tesla Cannons,' which are, predictably, lightning generators. In the third book in the trilogy, Goliath, Tesla becomes a major character. He is a great deal more unstable than in real life.
 * Some researchers have suggested that the character of Nyarlathotep was inspired by Tesla.
 * Tesla is a Posthumous Character in The Grimnoir Chronicles and his inventions are vital to the plot of the first book. Thomas Edison takes the role in the second book Spellbound.
 * Tesla was featured quite prominently in the Titanic themed novel Distant Waves

Live Action TV

 * Myth Busters tested Tesla's earthquake machine. While there were some surprisingly large vibrations, the idea that it could take out a building without external power was quite busted.
 * The bridge these guys were using their Tesla inspired device on was relatively modern, meaning that it had been built to withstand mechanical resonance. This theory has already been proven by incidents such as that of the Angers Bridge in 1850 (with the vibration of soldiers marching in step dislodging the bridge) and of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940 (with the wind happening to have a frequency that matched the structural frequency of the bridge) This could potentially work, but that would depend on whether or not the building or bridge had been fortified against such frequencies.
 * Sanctuary recently took Tesla and  He's one of the most popular characters on the show.
 * Eureka gave someone else credit for Tesla's Death Ray. But hey, at least they named the local school Tesla (High) School. Which has got to count for something, right?
 * Croatian mini-series Nikola Tesla
 * Canadian period drama Murdoch Mysteries has Tesla show up in the first episode, partly to fight it out with another business over whether Toronto is lit by alternating or direct current and partly so that Murdoch can fanboy him.
 * Warehouse 13 has a handgun shaped and sized machine made by Tesla that shoots electricity and causes short term memory loss. He and Edison also apparently stopped their war long enough for both of them to create the warehouse's electrical system. The designing of the actual warehouse, however, was done by M. C. Escher, which is enough to give anybody Nightmare Fuel...
 * An episode of Team Knight Rider revealed that in his childhood, Trek had managed to design a fully functional version of Tesla's earthquake machine, which was being used by a renegade priest to do "God's work" by destroying Las Vegas.

Music

 * Tesla (Band)
 * The band 8in8 (Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Damian Kulash, and Neil Gaiman) opened their album Nighty Night with a pun-laden love song to a time-traveling Tesla.
 * Joy Electric, the Christian Electronica band, has a rather odd song dedicated to Tesla (as noted in the page quote).
 * Jay Electronica, no connection to the above, used a photo of Tesla as the cover to his set of E Ps, "Exhibit A" and "Exhibit C." Seen here and here. Electronica also name drops Tesla in a verse of "Exhibit C."

Tabletop Games

 * The GURPS Infinite Worlds setting includes among its many Alternate Earths one codenamed "Gernsback", in which the marriage of Nikola Tesla to the daughter of J.P. Morgan is the key divergence point which produces a late 20th Century Earth almost identical to the future as envisioned by Golden Age Science Fiction.

Theatre

 * Tesla - Lightning in His Hands is an opera based on the life of Tesla.

Video Games

 * Tesla: The Weather Man has an AU version of Tesla wielding a gauntlet that controls the weather against Edison and his robot army. Yes.
 * Zen Pinball has a pinball table themed around him, and it's easily the most popular table.
 * Tomb Raider: Legend had an entire level set in a secret Siberian lab that belonged to Tesla.
 * Command & Conquer: Red Alert gives his Tesla Coil technology to the Russians (in the real world Tesla coils do not work that way, but Red Alert has always preferred Rule of Cool to realism.)
 * Fallout 3 has higher-level Enclave soldiers decked out in Tesla Armor, which has giant glowing electric coils on the back, and gives the wearer a better handling of energy weapons.
 * Books entitled "Nikola Tesla And You" add +1 to your Energy Weapon Skill.
 * Tesla Armor appeared also in previous installments, but, despite the fact that it was quite fancy-looking, shining item, it was quite useless.
 * In the DLC "Broken Steel", you have to find a Tesla Coil in order to build the Tesla Cannon, a BFG that shoots lightning.
 * It's back in Fallout: New Vegas, and it's even better!
 * Dystopia has a gun called the Tesla Rifle. It's primary fire arcs electricity from the gun to the target, and the secondary fire launches a shiny, slow-moving ball that discharges electricity as it flies through the air.
 * In Arcanum you can lay your hands on Tesla Guns and other Tesla-as-adjective weapons, provided you play a technological character. As it seems, every 'verse has a Tesla to develop electric technologies.
 * In Assassin's Creed 2, it's revealed that Tesla had an ancient artifact, called a "Piece of Eden", apparently loaned by the secretive Templar order, from which he reverse-engineered all of his inventions. He wanted to take it many steps farther and start the Internet decades early while providing the world with free electricity; Thomas Edison, a Templar, notes in a letter that this would be easy. As it would also completely reshape the world away from what the Templars want it to be, they engineer his downfall, only for the Templars' rivals, the Assassin order, to recruit him so he can use science to destroy a Piece of Eden for them. Naturally, the result of that is the The Tunguska Event.
 * In the Ratchet and Clank series, there are a number of weapons named after Tesla, such as the Tesla Claw, a lightning gun of sorts, and the Tesla Barrier, an upgraded shield that arcs electricity at nearby enemies.
 * He also pops up in the Backstory to Resistance, where he's credited with the invention of VTOL aircraft akin to the modern V-22 Osprey in the early 1930s.
 * Dark Void features an alternate dimension where the main character, his ex-girlfriend, and Tesla all end up. Tesla ends up outfitting the player with jetpacks to battle the game's villains.
 * Team Fortress 2 has Tesla as the Engineer's 1800s predecessor.
 * Silent Hill Origins has a secret alien "gift" known as the tesla rifle. It is a rifle that can electrocute every monster near!
 * Megaman Battle Network 5: Team Protoman features Ms. Tesla Magnus, operator of Magnetman, the electric Navi of the installment.
 * Return to Castle Wolfenstein has another Tesla gun.

Web Comics

 * Tesla appears early in Dresden Codak as one of the residents of Atheist Heaven. (Tesla was actually Christian, but it works for the jokes.)
 * Tesla is the star of one of Kate Beaton's most famous comics. Also extrapolated upon in this one right here.
 * Tesla invented Little Miss Mechanical, The Intrepid Girlbot's oldest ancestor.
 * Tesla appears in Thinkin' Lincoln, where he exists as an omnipresent being of pure energy.
 * A recent plot line in The New Adventures of Queen Victoria concerns the consequences of Tesla turning Queen Victoria's broken watch into a Time Machine.
 * Tesla makes a brief appearance in Geist-Panik in which he builds the Teslamp, "A beam weapon that can tear reality asunder" concealed in a flashlight.
 * A recent edition of The Oatmeal entitled "Why Nikola Tesla Was the Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived" went to great lengths to make the case for Tesla being one of History's most unsung heroes. It goes to just as much trouble to illustrate why Tesla's classic rival Thomas Edison was a "douche."

Web Original

 * Both Cracked.com and Badass of the Week have entire pages devoted to proving to the world how much an underestimated genius Tesla was. Cracked in particular likes to remind us of Edison's utter douchery in regards to Tesla.
 * In the Chinese webfic Time to Shoot Down the Moon (written by a troper called T*sl*shark), the NATO extends Tesla's research and built "Coil Antennas" in Alaska and on the Moon to serve as a mean of long-range communication and detection, also generators of weaponized plasma lightning. The AI overseeing the Coil Antennas on the Moon is named Nick for some obvious reason, and many of the staff there belong to the Scientist's Vigilante, a secret organization founded by Tesla.
 * The mad scientist’s time in Colorado Springs plays a vital role in the blog novel Flyover City!

Tabletop Games

 * Tesla is an important figure in the "Ravaged Earth" setting of the Savage Worlds RPG. In that timeline, following the Martian Invasion of 1898, a.k.a. the "Red War", Tesla used scavenged pieces of Martian technology to invent a whole host of new inventions, becoming incredibly rich when he sold them to Edison. In that world's setting of 1936, he is the head of a major scientific research institution.
 * In an early edition of the GURPS supplement Alternate Earths, Telsa's one date with the niece of JP Morgan did not go disastrously bad (in real life, he freaked at her pearl earrings... a phobia to round objects). With Morgan's financing and her calming influence, he was able to set the world into a version similar to H. G. Wells' Things to Come.
 * In the Old World of Darkness game Mage: The Ascension, Nikola Tesla was a Son of Ether, a Tradition of Mad Scientist mages. His Arch Enemy Thomas Edison was either a rival in the Technocratic Union or a pawn of the Technocracy, depending on who you asked.
 * He's been merged into Genius: The Transgression; this time he's a Etherite, putting him as one of the villains. Then again Etherites are often considered to be the least nasty of the villians, more interested in their crazy theories and experiencing the wonders of science than hurting anyone. They just tend to have a mental breakdown when someone disagrees with them, and have easy access to rayguns.
 * In the Euro Game Through The Ages: A Story Of Civilization, one of the six Modern Era leaders available for your civilization is Tesla (at least, in the more recent editions - the original version of the game had Bill Gates filling the same role).

Western Animation
"Man: Mr. Edison we're going to use your invention to power the world. And Mr. Tesla we're going to use yours in the background of Frankenstein movies. Thomas Edison: Aw, I wanted that one!"
 * The character Nikolai Technus from Danny Phantom is named after Tesla.
 * On Clone High, the words "Tesla rules" are perpetually visible on the blackboard in Mr. Sheepman's classroom. Tesla himself never appears.
 * One episode of Histeria!! talked about Tesla's work and character in surprising detail, even noting his questionable sanity and his rivalry with Thomas Edison. (It's noteworthy that Tesla here is portrayed as Christopher Walken. Crazy Awesome indeed!)
 * On Family Guy Peter tries to console his sister-in-law and tells her she wasn't the only one to get a bum deal, then they cutway to a turn of the century boardroom:

Real Life

 * Tesla was featured as a character in Real Life, believe it or not.
 * Tesla Motors, which builds high-performance electric vehicles, is named in tribute to him.
 * The Tesla Roadster aka The Tesla Dark Star - a sports car that gets an average of 240 miles on a 4-hour charge (the record is over 300 miles) and goes from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds.
 * The Tesla Model S aka The Tesla White Star? due for production next year, a family/executive sedan with a 300-mile battery pack and 17-inch touchscreen controls.
 * Tesla Blue Star
 * Zomg Smells makes a scent as a tribute to Nikola Tesla entitled The Melancholy Death of Nikola Tesla.