by Brian Dunning. No personality in the history of science has
been pushed further into the realm of mythology than the
Serbian-American electrical engineer Nikola Tesla. He is,
without a doubt, one of the true giants in the history of
electromagnetic theory. […] Tesla’s unparalleled combination of
genius and aberrance have turned him into one of the seminal
cult figures of the day. As such, at least as much fiction as
fact have swirled around popular accounts of his life, and
devotees of conspiracy theories and alternative science
hypotheses have hijacked his name more than that of any other
figure. In order to put it in the proper perspective, we have to
first clear up a popular misconception. Tesla did not invent
alternating current, which is what he’s best remembered for. AC
had been around for a quarter century before he was born, which
was in 1856 in what’s now Croatia. While Tesla was a young man
working as a telephone engineer, other men around Europe were
already developing AC transformers and settin