33. The Underappreciated Visionary
In addition to his practical inventions, Nikola Tesla was a visionary who foresaw inventions that were beyond the state of science and engineering in his day, but which he predicted would become a reality someday. He foresaw cell phones, artificial intelligence, lasers, vertical-lift aircraft, the wireless transmission of energy, and radar. Take radar: its inventor Emile Girardeau credited his work to plans drawn by Tesla decades earlier, to transmit radio signals and receive their reflections on a fluorescent screen.
Unfortunately, while a great genius and inventor – vastly superior to the more famous Thomas Edison – Tesla was a poor businessman. An outsider who spoke with an accent, Tesla got taken advantage of repeatedly by shrewder entrepreneurs. So while Edison capitalized on his inventions and those of others to live and die in the lap of luxury, Tesla died in poverty in 1943, flitting between a series of NYC hotels, and leaving behind unpaid bills.
