I enjoy reading about people who see the world differently, so Nikola Tesla seemed like someone worth getting to know. I picked up My Inventions, his autobiography, expecting stories about the machines that made him famous. What stayed with me was the way he envisioned those machines long before anyone else could.
Tesla’s imagination was shaped by a painful childhood. He writes about the death of his gifted brother, who suffered fatal injuries caused by a family horse. The loss devastated their parents and left Tesla feeling that his own accomplishments could never compare. His father, a clergyman, wanted him to follow the same path, but Tesla longed to become an engineer.
He credits much of his inventiveness to his mother. She designed and made tools and devices for the household, along with clothing and furnishings. Tesla saw in her a brilliant mind whose opportunities were limited by the time and place in which she lived. That detail made me pause: How many inventors have we never heard of because their work never left the home?
The most fascinating part of the book, though, is Tesla’s description of his own mind. As a child, he experienced images so vivid they sometimes interfered with what he saw around him. Later, he learned to direct that superpower toward invention. He says he could build a device in his imagination, change its parts, set it in motion and notice problems before making a physical version. He even describes detecting when an imagined turbine was out of balance.
Most of us might picture a finished invention. Tesla pictured what happened inside it. Reading his account, I kept thinking that he might have become an extraordinary artist: someone who could see entire worlds before putting a mark on paper. Instead, he used that gift to solve problems the rest of us could barely see.
His work on alternating-current motors and power systems helped make it practical to deliver electricity over long distances. He also developed the Tesla coil and explored wireless communication and control. The inventions can be difficult to follow in their technical detail, but their reach is easy to recognize. The modern world runs on ideas that once existed only in minds willing to imagine something different.
My Inventions is an interesting introduction to Tesla, especially if you want to hear how he understood his own work. I would still like to read a biography on him written by someone else, one that might place his memories alongside the accounts of people who knew him.
Reading about his creative thought process reminded me that creativity is more than a sudden flash of inspiration. It is also the patience to keep turning an idea over until we can see what it might become.
