The guy was totally out of place in a world where it was all about “results over the process,” and pretty much everything he came up with got snatched and patented by Thomas Edison. Edison treated him like trash, jacked his ideas, and embarrassed him in front of everyone to make it look like Tesla’s inventions were old news or even dangerous… even though Tesla is behind so many game-changing things we have today. Take electricity powering the whole freakin’ world, for example.

You know, the brilliance of Nikola Tesla is kind of wild. It’s like he just woke up one day and had this complete grasp on alternating current, even though nobody else had even thought about it yet! There was no research, no talk about it— it just didn’t exist. He just got up and started jotting down everything you’d ever want to know about alternating electromagnetic fields, transformers, and AC motors. It’s honestly mind-blowing to think that so much of what we understand about electricity today all came from this one guy in just a single moment!

So, it looks like he kinda did this to himself. He went from being a total genius to just plain nuts. Or who knows, maybe nobody even gets what he was up to in those last days.

His ending was super sad. He lived in this tiny, beat-up apartment, just munching on crackers and milk, and the closest thing he had to a buddy were the pigeons he tossed crumbs to every day. I never actually met the guy (obviously), but his story is kind of inspiring and genius, even though it’s totally heartbreaking. I’d chill with him for hours, sipping tea, chatting about all sorts of random stuff, and I couldn’t help but be blown away by how smart he was.