Late great engineers: Nikola Tesla

At around midnight on 9-10 July 1856, while thunder and lightning raged, one of the greatest electrical engineers of the early 20th century, Nikola Tesla, was born. The midwife said he’d be a ‘child of the storm’, while his mother thought he’d be a ‘child of light’. Looking back at Tesla’s career as an engineer, inventor and futurist – one defined by controversy and innovation – it’s tempting to think that both women present at his birth had a point. This is because Tesla, while playing a robust scientific role in bringing electrical power to the modern world, also dabbled in death rays and interplanetary communication. Both eccentric recluse and shameless self-publicist, he was a godsend for journalists looking for sensational copy. But he was also a headache for more responsible newspaper editors who were never quite sure how seriously to take the archetypal mad professor’s claims.