Tuesday is for Tesla

During his time, many theorized that Nikola Tesla was stark-raving mad, as his notions, ideas and inventions were often well above and beyond his time. In essence, he is perhaps the picture perfect stereotype of the mad scientist. Not only did he subject himself regularly to many of his own inventions involving dangerous levels of electricity, but he also suffered from visions.

For those of us who do not have visions, we may not think of having them in terms of suffering. We may even remark, “I’d love to have that ability,” but personal accounts from those who endure them often prove that being able to see beyond the scope of reality isn’t always the pleasure we imagine.

Tesla was not the only one in his family to suffer this affliction. In fact, his older brother Daniel often experienced strange, but powerful flashes of light when he became excited, which often impaired his vision. Nikola too experienced these peculiar flashes, and was able to envision projected images in the air before him that were sometimes difficult to distinguish from fantasy. These imaginary visions made young Nikola worry that he was insane.

He visited with doctors and psychiatrists in effort to find out why this happened to him, but they were never able to give him an answers.

In his later years, Nikola determined he was not crazy, noting in his biography the explanation for his visions. “The theory I have formulated is that the images were the result of a reflex action from the brain on the retina under great excitation. They certainly were not hallucinations, for in other respects I was normal and composed.”

An example of his composure during one of his greatest visions took place while he walked in the park one afternoon with a friend, reciting poetry (one of his most-treasured pastimes.) He reminisced over Goethe’s Faust, spilling for lines that set his mind into a frenzy of amazing realization. He described the inspiration occurring “like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram…” That drawing? The outline for the alternating current motor that would revolutionize electricity forever.

The funny thing about all this is Tesla had no patience for those who believed in psychic power and phenomenon. Despite that impatience, he had an almost unsettling belief in extraterrestrial life. Some have even speculated that Tesla’s visions came from alien beings, that he was chosen by some superior race as a receptive medium to their advanced technology, but Tesla himself denied such allegations. He did believe he tuned into voices from outer space through his radio device, but that’s another blog and another story, I think.

Odd when I think about it, but that would almost seem to make sense. Especially when you consider how often we still say today that Nikola Tesla was a man out of time. I have a feeling that somewhere in the great beyond, he’s laughing at us all, because I’ve heard he had a diabolical sense of humor most of us would never understand.