Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer with a passion for electricity and ambitious ideas about the future. He envisioned a time when people around the world could communicate instantaneously, and even see and hear each other as they spoke. Of course, he was right.
Tesla pioneered much of modern electricity, especially the alternating current, which allows for electricity to travel over great distances.
Tragically, however, despite his ideas proving more impactful in the long term, Tesla lost a feud with Thomas Edison and passed away while struggling with mental illness without much notoriety to his name.
Tesla was as close as the world will ever come to a mad scientist, and despite working during the early days of photography, there are many spectacular images of his work to help restore his legacy.
Here are 22 photos of Tesla looking like an awesome mad scientist.
1
Nikola Tesla describing a cell phone from the future, 1926.
2
X-ray of Nikola Tesla's foot taken using machine he designed in 1896.
3
Part of the laboratory, with a disconnected resonating coil supported on an insulating stand.
4
Experiment showing a coil energized by the waves of a distant oscillator.
5
Nikola Tesla sitting in his Colorado Springs laboratory next to his magnifying transmitter high voltage generator while it produced bolts of electricity. December 1899.
6
Spring 1894, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka. Mark Twain, stands in Tesla’s laboratory. The two were friends.
7
Nikola Tesla, with Rudjer Boscovich's book, "Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis," in front of the spiral coil of his high-voltage Tesla coil transformer at his East Houston St., New York, laboratory, May 1896.
8
Nikola Tesla's laboratory and Wardenclyffe Tower, 1904.
10
Nikola Tesla sends 500,000 volts of electricity through his body to light a simple lightbulb as he spins it around above his head. 1898.
11
Nikola Tesla, wireless electricity in the early 1900s.
12
A rare color photo of Nikola Tesla, 1928.
13
Nikola Tesla relaxing in his lab, 1890s.
15
Nikola Tesla in his NY office, 1916.
16
Nikola Tesla looking out of his Colorado Springs lab in 1899. The sign reads, "Great danger, keep out.”
17
Twain and Tesla together in the lab, 1894.
18
John T. Morris, Victor Beam and Tesla pose with an alternator.
19
Lighting a disconnected vacuum bulb.
20
A few lower quality images.
