In 1908 — about a century before the iPhone — inventor Nikola Tesla mused about creating a device "no bigger than a watch" that would allow someone to hear "music or song [or] the speech of a political leader" and transfer "any picture, character, drawing or print."
Today, we take the ability to send a photo to our grandparents for granted. But in Tesla's time, it was imagining the impossible.
So, what did Nikola Tesla invent with his ambitious mind? In his life, the Serbian-born inventor obtained around 300 patents for his designs. But he's best known for inventing alternating current (AC) — which powers homes and businesses, even today — and the induction motor, which is a key component of modern devices like vacuum cleaners and hair dryers.
Some of Nikola Tesla's inventions were overshadowed by the work of other scientists. He experimented with "shadowgraphs" around the same time that Wilhelm Röntgen invented the X-Ray. Tesla's work with wireless lights looks like a precursor to neon-lit signs.
And, heartbreakingly, Tesla's work on the radio was dwarfed by Guglielmo Marconi's successful 1901 radio message — even though Marconi used Tesla's technology. In fact, Tesla only got his due for radio six months after he died, when the U.S. Supreme Court deemed Marconi's patents invalid and posthumously awarded them to Tesla.
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