Nikola Tesla
Tesla was an engineer, inventor, visionary, and showman who when Thomas Edison died was one of the few persons not to find something good to say about his one-time employer. Tesla is regarded both as a genius and as a mad scientist, and many of his ideas regarding energy have been adopted by New Thought philosophers as being in agreement with their postulations regarding thought as energy. Towards the end of his life he made numerous claims of being on the verge of new discoveries, including new forms of energy and new superweapons.
Nikola Tesla valued privacy, never marrying and preferring to work alone. Despite his withdrawn nature, he enjoyed fine food and wine, to the point of being considered an expert on both. He also enjoyed music and language, read philosophy, and on those occasions when he did socialize was reported to be a gentleman of great refinement, an excellent conversationalist, and an enjoyable companion. Despite his evident lack of interest in women, or perhaps because of it, there were several women who sought his company, but there is no evidence of any relationships beyond casual acquaintances in Tesla’s life.
He may have suffered from the mental disorder known today as obsessive-compulsive disorder. He tried to avoid shaking hands by clasping his hands behind his back when introduced, and shunned touching hair and fur. He developed a compulsion over the number 3, which drove him to walk completely around a building, or the city block on which it was situated, three times before he would enter. He also obsessively polished the flatware, glasses, and other pieces of the table setting before dining. Tesla performed this ritual whether dining in a restaurant or as a guest at a private home.
He was impeccable in his dress, often changing several times a day, and was known to send employees and fellow workers home to change when he disapproved of what they were wearing. He loathed those who were overweight and maintained himself rail thin. He exercised through walking up to ten miles each day, and he exercised his feet by flexing his toes one hundred times per foot each night. Typically he slept as little as two hours each night, refreshing himself with brief naps over the course of the day.
The diverse nature of his friends reflects the unusual personality of Nikola Tesla. He was a close friend of Stanford White, a noted architect, as well as of Samuel Clemens, who was a frequent visitor to Tesla’s working spaces and occasionally dined with him in New York. Much of Tesla’s work and theories – he believed that the atom could not be split, for instance – has been proven erroneous, but he continues to undergo a resurgence in supporters today.
