Hi, I'm Toby, and welcome back to another video.
Today I'd like to show you through the school and university grades of the inventor Nikola Tesla.
Now Tesla, maybe more than any other scientist is regarded as being a true genius.
He had over 300 patents in his name, and these are responsible for much of the technology
in our world today.
He was behind the use of alternating currents which power our world, but he was also behind
things like radio, x-rays, wireless communication, and he had dreams of providing the world with
wireless power.
Now the story of his grades shows that he started off really well in his first year,
but by his third year of university, he had dropped out.
Now, Tesla's life has a bit of a trend of unfortunate circumstances getting in the way of genius.
And his studies are no different.
So although he never actually graduated, his time as a student did lay the groundwork for
his knowledge and ideas in physics and engineering.
So let's have a look at what he did.
The first set of documents I have here are from Tesla's time at school.
Now, when Tesla was 14 he moved north of his home-town to attend a Realschule in Rakovac.
He was here for three years, from 1870 to 1873, and it's where he developed a special
interest in physics.
This first document here is part of his matriculation certificate, that's like his graduation from
the school.
An interesting note about it is this is actually a duplicate, because his original document
was stolen from him on the day that he was due to depart for America in 1884.
I then have his grades from the three years at that school, and these are a translated
version that I've put into a table.
And I got the information from the school website which I'll put in the description.
We've got the subject he was taking, his grade in the first semester and his grade in the
second semester.
His overall success in his first year translated to first row and first row with honors, which
sounds like he's doing pretty well.
We've got an excellent in Maths over here, his diligence is persistent, and his moral
conduct is exemplary.
Let's have a look at the second year.
It looks fairly similar, we have physics on here at commendable and excellent, chemistry
at sufficient and excellent, his written works are considered neat, and again his overall
success is first row.
Let's have a look at his third year at this school.
Now, something interesting on his third year grade sheet is that in math he actually has
a fail, it's insufficient.
Now, this might not say so much about his math skills and more about the fact that Tesla
was apparently ill for two months, which is noted here on his absence.
And if you look over to the next page which is his matura exam, these are the last set
of exams that he would have done at this school, he actually has an excellent in mathematics,
so I don't think that it's saying Tesla was bad at maths at school, it just seems that
he was unfortunately ill and probably didn't perform as well as he wanted to there.
Overall they consider him mature for technical education, which means he's got a good groundwork
to go on and study this further.
During his time at this school, Tesla lived with his aunt and uncle.
I'd like to read you a quote about his time staying there.
"I never can forget the three years...
Rigid discipline...
I was fed like a canary bird... the slices of ham cut by my aunt were like tissue paper.
I had a voracious appetite...
The land was low and marshy and malaria fever never left me, while there"
"At last, however, my course was completed, the misery ended."
That's not a glowing review by Tesla.
After graduation, Tesla's father told him to go hunting instead of returning home because
there was a cholera outbreak in the town.
But Tesla returned anyway.
And since he was already undernourished and unwell, he contracted the disease on his very
first day home and we was bedridden for the next nine months.
This was when Tesla was 17, and at that time his prospects were to become a priest like
his father, or to go to the army.
Neither of which he wanted to do.
When it looked like Tesla might not recover, his father Milutin promised him that if he
did recover, he could study engineering at one of the best colleges.
After that, Tesla did make a good recovery and his father kept his word.
For a year after that, Tesla lived in the mountains with his uncle to fully recover
and possibly also to avoid conscription into the army.
Then, two years after he graduated from school, in 1875, he enrolled at the Austrian polytechnic
in Graz, where he was to study electrical engineering.
I have his grades from this time at Graz, and he was there from 1875 to late 1877, which
was age 19 to 21.
There are two pages to these grades and they're not in english so they're probably a bit hard
to read, although even if they were in english, the handwriting makes that difficult.
You can clearly make out a Nikola Tesla at the top there, and you can also see his birthday,
the 10th of July, 1856.
He was born in the town of Smiljan, his nationality is Serbian, this looks like his father's name
in here, and details about the school that he went to.
In these columns we have the subject, the lecturer who confirmed the attendance and
we have the result.
Since it's so hard to read, I did make up a translated version which I'll have here.
And we can have a look at that.
We can see that during Tesla's first year of university he scored all excellents which
is the highest grade possible.
In fact, Tesla did so well that he'd done nearly twice as many exams than is required.
Tesla was really grateful to be there.
He said that, "During the whole first year I regularly started my work at three o'clock
in the morning and continued until eleven at night."
He considered his professors to be very intelligent and there were three that he particularly liked.
These were Roegner who did mathematics, Poeschl who did experimental physics and Alle, who
also did mathematics.
Tesla said that Alle would often spend hours with him after a lecture, giving him different
mathematical problems to solve, and it was he who Tesla showed his first concepts of
flying machines and turbines to.
There are some interesting subjects here that we can look at, for example the cubature of
surfaces, which has got to do with cubes and finding volumes.
And we also have political arithmetic, which was to do with the statistics of government,
for example how many people lived in a certain area and how much food did they need.
We then have more common things that are pretty similar to what we do today, maths, physics,
chemistry, zoology, botany, engineering and french.
I should note that Tesla says that he didn't miss any lectures because he considered that
to be a sin and a waste.
That's in quite a contrast to Einstein who we covered the grades of recently, who would
regularly not show up to lectures and prefer to self study.
When Tesla returned home after his first year of study and showed these grades to his father,
his father kind of dismissed them.
But actually years after his father's death, Nikola found a package of letters which the
professors had written to his father, saying that, "Unless you take Nikola away from the
institution, he will likely be killed through overwork".
So it seems like Tesla's professors were actually begging his father to take him out to protect
Tesla from working too hard.
I'll show you his second year grades now, and they are here in the bottom of this first page.
They are 1876 to 1877, they're that section there and also a little bit on the next page,
this section here.
I also have a little translation here as well for these second year grades.
There's definitely not as many grades here, and that's because in his second year, Tesla
only enrolled in some of these maths and physics type classes, which allowed him to spend more
time in the library studying.
We can see that he's got another two excellent marks in mathematics and physics which is
the highest score possible, and he's got two goods down here for "on the congruence of
numbers" and "selected problems of political arithmetic."
Something interesting did happen in this second year, and it was in his technical physics
class with Poeschl.
Professor Poeschl one day brought into the classroom a new machine called the "Gramme
Dynamo", and it was a machine that, when turned using power, would generate electricity, and
if you supplied it with electricity, it would run as a motor.
This was a DC or direct current motor of course, because that's what people were using in the
day, and it required a commutator to work, which is a set of wire brushes that convert
an alternating current into being a direct current.
They switch the connection every half cycle.
Tesla mentions in his autobiography that during this demonstration, the machine was sparking
and creating loud noises.
Tesla then got the idea that the commutators were perhaps not necessary.
He gave this opinion to Poeschl, who wasn't very receptive to the idea, and he lectured
Tesla on why he was wrong, and why his idea of alternating currents would never work.
He said that an AC generator would be a perpetual motion scheme and an impossible idea.
Tesla just had to accept it at the time but he definitely wasn't convinced.
And later he went on to prove Poeschl wrong.
In fact Poeschl is remembered today, mainly for this very wrong stance in his discussion with Tesla.
In his third year which was 1877-1878 Tesla was supposed to take subjects such as Applied
mathematics, mathematics 3 B, Determinant Theory, Theory of conic sections,
Analytical mechanics.
But instead there is just a note here that says not reported to the professors.
So Tesla hasn't taken any exams in his third year and instead there's a note at the bottom
saying that his studies have been cancelled due to a non-payment of tuition fees for the
first semester 1877/78.
So Tesla started off so well in his studies but by third year everything had turned to custard.
Now there's a few things that were going on.
Tesla had been on a military scholarship which gave him payment for 3 years in exchange for
8 years of service in the army afterwards.
But at the end of his second year he lost this scholarship and it's not exactly clear why.
He asked for help from a different organisation but was twice refused.
At the end of his second year he also got involved in gambling.
he would play things like cards, chess and pool at the botanical gardens all night.
And his life became consumed with games and excessive coffee drinking and he spent less
time in the library.
Tesla never graduated from university but he did go on to be awarded several honorary
degrees later in his life.
After dropping out he worked for a bit as a technician, he played a lot of cards and
he was also was suffering from a nervous breakdown.
He was struggling with sensitivity to noise and light.
He said he could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between him and the timepiece.
A fly landing on a table would cause a dull thud in his ear.
A few years later Tesla did try to finish his studies and in 1880 he went to study in
Prague but he arrived too late to enrol in the course and ended up just sitting in on
some of the lectures.
There is so much more to say about Tesla that I don't have time for in this video.
He worked more as a technician, he moved to America and then worked for Thomas Edison
but quit over a dispute about pay.
Edison then launched a negative campaign against him and the two became enemies.
Teslas work and inventions led him to become the master of lightning.
He had a lot of big dreams but lost investment in trying to build his Wardenclyffe tower
to try supply the world with wireless power.
He then sought company in the friendship of pigeons and died alone in his New York hotel room.
More videos would be needed to cover all of that but I hope that this one has given you
a little bit of insight into his early years and his time as a student.
This video was made possible by contributions to my Patreon from viewers like you.
I've recently added in a new tier where I will make a handmade craft toy just like this
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A big thank you to my current patrons and a special to today's Patron Cats of the Day,
Anoushka and Squeaker.
Thank you for watching and i'll see you next time.