The Serbian-American scientist was a brilliant and eccentric genius whose inventions enabled modern-day power and mass communication systems.
His nemesis and former boss,Thomas Edison, was the iconic American inventor of the light bulb, the phonograph and the moving picture. The two feuding geniuses waged a "War of Currents" in the 1880s over whose electrical system would power the world — Tesla's alternating-current (AC) system or Edison's rival direct-current (DC) electric power.
Amongst science nerds, few debates get more heated than the ones that compare Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. So, who was the better inventor?
"They're different inventors, but you can't really say one is greater, because American society needs some Edisons and it needs some Teslas" said W. Bernard Carlson, the author of "Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age"
Tesla had an eidetic memory, which meant he could very precisely recall images and objects. This enabled him to accurately visualize intricate 3D objects, and as a result, he could build working prototypes using few preliminary drawings.
"He really worked out his inventions in his imagination," Carlson told Live Science.
In contrast, Edison was more of a sketcher and a tinkerer.
"If you were going to [the] laboratory and watch him at work, you'd find he'd have stuff all over the bench: wires and coils and various parts of inventions," Carlson said.
In the end, however, Edison held 1,093 patents, according to the Thomas Edison National Historic Park. Tesla garnered less than 300 worldwide, according to a study published in 2006 at the Sixth International Symposium of Nikola Tesla.
"If Edison hadn't invented those things, other people would have," DeGraaf told Live Science.
In a shortsighted move, Edison dismissed Tesla's "impractical" idea of an alternating-current (AC) system of electric power transmission, instead promoting his simpler, but less efficient, direct-current (DC) system.
By contrast, Tesla's ideas were often more disruptive technologies that didn't have a built-in market demand. And his alternating-current motor and hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls— a first-of-its-kind power plant — truly electrified the world.
Edison's enduring legacy isn't a specific patent or technology, but his invention factories, which divided the innovation process into small tasks that were carried out by legions of workers, DeGraaf said. For instance, Edison got the idea for a moving picture camera, or kinetoscope from a talk by photographer Edward Muybridge, but then left most of the experimentation and prototyping to his assistant William Dickson and others. By having multiple patents and inventions developing in parallel, Edison, in turn, ensured that his assistants had a stable financial situation to continue running experiments and fleshing out more designs.
"He invents modern innovation as we know it," DeGraaf said.
Tesla's inventions are the backbone of modern power and communication systems, but he faded into obscurity later in the 20th century, when most of his inventions were lost to history. And despite his many patents and innovations, Tesla was destitute when he died in 1943.
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