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Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in a small mountain village in what is now Serbia. He was educated in Europe, but left prematurely because of his father's death. Afterwards, he worked at various electrical-related firms and was eventually hired on by Thomas Edison in New York. By this time, Tesla was convinced of the advantages of AC power for long-range transmission and for power conversion, such as electric motors. But Edison had a large investment in DC, including a large number of DC-related patents, and was adamantly (even blindly) loyal to DC power. Thus, under Edison's overbearing stubbornness, Tesla's remarkable ideas were stifled. After only a year, Tesla parted from Edison and began evangelizing AC power and applying for many patents for AC devices. This caught the eye of industrialist George Westinghouse, who quickly purchased rights to the patents and supported Tesla. Eventually, Tesla beat Edison by building the first large-scale generator at Niagara Falls (AC, of course). In commemoration, there now stands a statue of Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls. Thus, this is how the world came to be powered largely by AC electricity, rather than DC. But this is a rather common tale; and like most common tales, some details have been left untold, and some of the peculiarities of the story left out.

For instance, Tesla eventually left Edison because of a disagreement over not AC, but money. Tesla suggested to Edison that he could improve the efficiency of some of Edison's electrical machinery and save him a lot of money. Edison thought this was intriguing and offered Tesla $50,000 if he could do it. After slaving for months, hardly sleeping, and eventually redesigning and installing automatic controls, he asked Edison for his reward. But he simply replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American Humor." Though money was far from being dear to Tesla's heart, he considered this the final insult.

As Tesla's reputation grew, so did public preference for AC power. Startled by this and desperate, Edison began electrocuting animals in an attempt to scare people away from AC. He paid schoolboys to steal pets from neighbors, which were electrocuted and publicly displayed. He also sent an assistant on a road show that electrocuted calves and dogs. Edison simply said that he was "Westinghousing" the animals.

However, in a peculiar side note, DC had quite a different effect on New York's first man condemned to death by electrocution. Due to a miscalculation by one of Edison's engineers, the current was too week, and the condemned man was only 'half-killed.'

Nikola Tesla never married. Indeed he was against the notion of a married inventor. He remarked, "an inventor has so intense a nature with su much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men."

A few years after the death of his most beloved pigeon, Nikola Tesla died, literally penniless, in 1943.

Nikola Tesla