Nikola Tesla, the entrepreneur who gave up everything for his dream.

Nikola Tesla, the entrepreneur who gave up everything for his dream.

In June of 1884, a young inventor of Serbian origin came to New York from the city of Paris in search of an opportunity to work with Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most successful and recognized inventors of America at the time.

This young inventor was Nikola Tesla, who arrived in the United States at the age of 28 years with nothing more than 4 cents in American currency, a book of poetry and a letter of recommendation that read:

"I know two great men, and you are one of them. The other is the young bearer of this letter. "
The letter was written for Thomas Edison by Charles Batchelor, Tesla's former boss at the Continental Edison Company, a company for which he worked in Paris.

Noticing the tremendous inventive capacity of the young man, Batchelor does not hesitate to recommend that he will emigrate to the growing North American economy of the late nineteenth century.

Thanks to the letter of recommendation, Tesla got a job as an electrical engineer at the Edison Machine Works, helping to solve some of the company's problems. However, the challenging ideas of Tesla and the professional jealousy of his new boss, made this working relationship last a short time.

During the time that Tesla worked for Edison, he repeatedly proved to be a brilliant person. In 1884, for example, the dynamos that Edison's company had installed in SS Oregon, were damaged; which delayed the departure of the ship from New York. Tesla volunteered to perform the repair, and was working all night, making the dynamos work again, thanks to which he received the congratulations of Edison the next morning.

Another of the highlights of this stage of Tesla's life was the occasion when Edison asked him to help improve the performance of DC generators that his company had designed, offering him a bonus of $ 50 thousand dollars ( equivalent to more than one million dollars today) if it succeeded. The young man, motivated and anxious to demonstrate his talent, put hands to work and redesigned the generators making them much more efficient. When Tesla went to see Edison to collect his reward, he told him: "Tesla, you do not understand our American humor", making him understand that the bonus was just a joke and breaking his word.

Despite his obvious talent and ability, many of Tesla's ideas went against the ideas and vision of Edison, so there was never a perfect harmony between the two.

Filled with frustration to see that his ideas and talent were not valued, he made the decision to give up his job and his salary to venture to start his own company.
Full of motivation because at last he would have the freedom to focus on developing his projects, but with very little money to do so, Tesla was forced to work temporarily digging ditches for Edison's company; so he collected some more money to take the next step in his career.

In 1886, Tesla founded his own company, the Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. However, the first investors did not agree with his plans for the development of an AC motor and finally relieved him from his position with the company.

Devastated by this failure, Tesla worked as a laborer in New York from 1886 to 1887 to maintain himself and raise capital for his next project.

In 1887, he built a brushless induction motor, powered by alternating current and presented it the following year at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In the same year, he developed the principle of his Tesla coil, and began working with George Westinghouse at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's, showing him his ideas on polyphase systems, which could allow the transmission of alternating current over long distances.

At that time, the demand for electric power grew in the United States, but the technology used to provide the service was the direct current of Edison, who had the support of J.P. Morgan Tesla, on the other hand, considered that the direct current was too inefficient and expensive, which is why, together with Westinghouse, they considered the challenge of supplying the entire country with alternating current.

Tesla's alternating current quickly proved to be far superior to Edison's standard DC system. Alternating current not only could produce significantly higher voltages, it could also transmit that electrical energy over longer distances and at a much lower cost than direct current.

Edison, guided by the fear of seeing the empire he was building fall, began a smear campaign against the alternating current, electrocuting animals and people in public using AC generators manufactured by the Westinghouse company, with the aim of showing how dangerous was the technology proposed by his rival.

The confrontation between the electric companies to dominate the market and a fall in the economy that took place at that time, would bring negative consequences for both competitors; however, Edison's company had the money and power of J.P. Morgan, so he could stay on his feet without problem; while the Westinghouse company was on the verge of bankruptcy and with few options to survive.

Given the difficult economic situation that the company was going through, George Westinghouse quoted Tesla as proposing to temporarily reduce or rescind his royalties to allow the company to come afloat again.

To the surprise of Westinghouse, Tesla broke the original contract on the spot and completely renounced his royalties, thus saving Westinghouse Electric from bankruptcy. For Tesla it was much more important the impact that his invention would bring for humanity, than all the money he could earn with his patents.

Without the cost of paying royalties to Tesla, the Westinghouse company managed to attract new investors to continue its operations.

Thanks to a couple of strategic moves from Westinghouse, his company won the contract to light the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, one of the most important events on the planet. The event had more than 27 million attendees who witnessed the lighting of more than 200 thousand light bulbs in front of their eyes. The fair was the perfect showcase for the whole world to witness the benefits of Tesla's alternating current.

After the fair, Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's won the tender to power the Niagara Falls power plant, the most ambitious electric power generation project of the time. Thanks to this victory, Tesla's alternating current became the standard and began to spread throughout the world.

Currently, Tesla's alternating current continues to illuminate the entire world and its legacy is invaluable. The contributions of Tesla to humanity are more transcendent than many think. In total, more than 300 registered patents are attributed to him throughout his life. His inventions and discoveries were the basis of great developments of his time and of later times; and he is considered as the "father of the second industrial revolution", thanks to his influence in areas such as electromagnetism, radiofrequency and telecommunications, among others.

Tesla gave up everything that stood in the way of his dreams: emigrated away from his family in search of great opportunities, resigned his job to work on their projects and completely renounced several of his patents so that his inventions could benefit humanity.

It is worth asking: How much are we willing to sacrifice for our dreams? What are we doing today, that is more important than money? What is the legacy we want to leave in this world?

Nikola Tesla died in 1943 at the age of 86 in a hotel room in New York, but his story would transcend and inspire new generations of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Larry Page, who claim to be great admirers of Tesla and his achievements.

In the words of Tesla himself:

"The scientist does not aim for an immediate result. He does not expect his advanced ideas to be easily accepted. Your duty is to lay the foundations for those who are to come and point the way. "
Great words of a genius with ideas quite advanced for his time, but who dedicated his life to build a better world.