Nikola Tesla
Alternating current + wireless dreams
Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer (1856-1943).
Allegedly visualized complete machines in his head and built them with no drawings. Emigrated to New York with four cents, fell out with Edison over AC vs DC current, then won the War of the Currents by powering the 1893 World's Fair. Died broke in a hotel room, feeding pigeons he called his closest friends.
Famous for
- AC induction motor + power system
- Tesla coil
- Radio (before Marconi, per the US Supreme Court 1943)
- Wireless power experiments at Wardenclyffe
In Rubicon
Nikola Tesla is one of the historical characters you can play as in Rubicon, a trivia game where you answer in your own words and an AI judge reads what you meant. Nikola Tesla is filed under Technology & Engineering, and is strongest at Technology & Engineering and Natural Sciences.
Others in Technology & Engineering
- Alexander Graham Bell — Invented the telephone
- Alan Turing — Father of computer science
- Archimedes of Syracuse — Eureka! + war machines
- Ada Lovelace — First computer programmer
- Hedy Lamarr — Movie star + frequency hopping
- Charles Babbage — Father of the computer