Nikola Tesla: life of the week

Hello and welcome to Life of the Week from History Extra, where leading historians delve into the lives of history's most intriguing and significant figures. Nikola Tesla is remembered as an enigmatic, eccentric genius who harnessed the power of electricity. But if we strip away some of this myth, What can we really say about the inventor's life and legacy? Ewan Morris joined Ellie Cawthorne for this Life of the Week episode to reveal how Tesla believed he could invent a death ray, whether he was really a recluse, and how he would feel about Elon Musk's company using his name today.

Thanks for joining me, Ewan, to talk about the life of Nikola Tesla. Before we go back into his biography and some of his work, what makes Tesla so fascinating? Why has he earned his place in the history books and why are we still talking about him today? I think that in lots of ways the most fascinating thing about Tesla is the fact that we're still talking about him and that we're still talking about him in a very, very particular kind of way. despite the fact that periodically we see biographies appearing or news stories or what have you appearing about Tesla all describing him as, oh, the forgotten genius, you know, the man who invented the modern electrical world and so on and so on and so on.

He's remarkably well remembered for a forgotten genius. He's featured on the US TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory. He's been on at least one Doctor Who episode that I can think of. There have been at least two recent movies.

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