Ever since I built my first "Tesla Coil" for a science fair project in 1959, I was hooked and have been studying everthing I can find about his work ever since.
Now, with the internet, it's easy and is an excellent pursuit for whenever there is spare time.
Back in his day, Edison was still into DC for electric distribution...it sucked as you may imagine. He had the media )press back then) on his side do the spin always magnifies his work.
About that same time, Tesla demonstrated that he could light a whole building with no wires.
And that's where he failed. He was right about AC, but wrong about the method of distribution.
My friend Arnie has been in the same line of business for quite a few years. Very profitable.
When my dad first came to the US in 1926, he was only 17 and lived in NYC for twenty years. And every day on his walk from his apartment to work, my dad passed Nikola Tesla sitting in the park feeding pidgeons -- same time every day. Dad said that it took him along time to work up the courage, but finally one morning my dad decide to start walking through the park, past Tesla and say good morning to him. "Dobro jutro, Gospodin Tesla" "Dobro jutro, Gospodin." was Tesla's response ("Good Morning, Mister Tesla." "Good Morning Sir.") , every morning for years. My dad said that was the only thing that they ever said to one another, because any other discourse without introduction would have seemed rude -- and my father figured that Tesla was such an important man that why would he want to talk to him? It was an honor for my dad to even be acknowledged by him. Then my dad quit that job and didn't walk that direction anymore so he didn't see Nikola Tesla again alive, but he did go to his funeral. And like most American Serbs, I have heard about Tesla from my father for as long as I can remember.
A really good book on Tesla is Margaret Cheney's, "Tesla, Man Out of time". The priest who officiated at Tesla's funeral, was the same priest who married my parents and baptised my brother.
As for Tesla's other "social skills", from everything I've read, Tesla had obsessive-compulsive disorder and whole lot of phobias. But sometimes that is the price of genius. And I believe that it is probable that we have gotten far more enjoyment and pleasure from Tesla's inventions than Tesla ever really got from life. That is very sad!
There was some kind of feud going on between Tesla and another brilliant Serb inventor at the time -- Michael Pupin. And on Pupin's deathbed, he asked for Tesla to forgive him and Tesla did. Ironically, to this day, the Tesla society also honors Pupin every year with a graveside memorial service.
By the way, there is film that is being made called "The Prestige" and David Bowie is slated to play Nikola Tesla in it!
And when you wanted to turn out the lights, you had to turn out ALL the lights.
Tesla was a genius!
Did you know that he used to zap himself with electricity every day?
That may sound crazy until you learn that "galvanic treatments" are used to put small charges of electricity into the human body, mainly done while on a table here in the U. S. PT's here call it "Electric Galvanic Stimulation."
However, when I was desperately ill and bed-ridden with Epstein-Barr virus some 20 years ago, I had the great good fortune of having a European PT who put me in a bathtub of water with charges of electrical current coming from a machine with electrodes, putting current into my body. Obviously, if they don't know what they're doing, they can FRY you. My PT told me that the electrical current kills bacteria, viruses, and bad cells in the body. Remember, she was from Europe, and had no ties to the U. S. Cancer Conglomerate!
The treatment has great promise for patients, especially reducing tumors in Cancer patients. It is being called "Electrochemical Treatment." The Chinese have been using the process for decades.