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Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. Born in Smiljan, in the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), Tesla emigrated to the United States in 1884, initially working for Thomas Edison before striking out on his own. His inventions and patents include the AC induction motor, polyphase electrical systems, the Tesla coil, and pioneering work in radio, X-rays, and remote control. Tesla held over 300 patents across 26 countries. Despite his extraordinary contributions to technology, he died nearly penniless in a New York hotel room in 1943, his later years marked by financial difficulties and increasing eccentricity. His posthumous reputation has surged dramatically, making him one of the most celebrated inventors in popular culture.

The War of Currents was the intense commercial and technological rivalry in the late 1880s and 1890s between Tesla's alternating current (AC) system and Thomas Edison's direct current (DC) system. Edison had invested heavily in DC infrastructure and launched a propaganda campaign against AC, including public electrocutions of animals to demonstrate its supposed dangers. Tesla, backed by industrialist George Westinghouse, championed AC as superior because it could be transmitted over long distances with minimal power loss using transformers — something DC could not do efficiently. The decisive moment came when Westinghouse won the contract to light the 1893 Chicago World's Fair using Tesla's AC system, and then harnessed Niagara Falls for AC power generation in 1896. AC became the global standard for electrical power distribution, vindicating Tesla's vision and establishing the infrastructure that powers civilization today.

The Tesla coil, invented by Tesla around 1891, is a resonant transformer circuit that produces high-voltage, low-current, high-frequency alternating current electricity. It creates spectacular electrical discharges — dramatic arcs of artificial lightning — that have made it an iconic symbol of mad-scientist energy in popular culture. Tesla originally developed it as part of his research into wireless power transmission, believing he could transmit electrical energy through the air without wires. While wireless power transmission at the scale Tesla envisioned remains impractical, the Tesla coil demonstrated fundamental principles of resonance and electromagnetic radiation that proved crucial to the development of radio technology, television, and eventually wireless communications. Today, Tesla coils are used primarily in educational demonstrations and entertainment, though their underlying principles inform modern wireless charging technology.

This question has been debated for over a century. Tesla demonstrated the principles of radio communication as early as 1893 and filed radio-related patents in 1897. Guglielmo Marconi achieved the first transatlantic radio transmission in 1901 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for his contributions to wireless telegraphy. Tesla sued Marconi for patent infringement, and in 1943 — months after Tesla's death — the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Tesla's favor, recognizing his radio patents as predating Marconi's. However, the reality is nuanced: multiple inventors contributed to radio technology, including Oliver Lodge and Karl Ferdinand Braun. Tesla's conceptual understanding of radio principles was arguably ahead of Marconi's, but Marconi was more effective at engineering practical systems and commercializing the technology. On JudgeMarket, this priority dispute fuels Tesla's narrative as an underrecognized genius.

Tesla's financial decline is one of the great tragedies of technological history. Several factors contributed to his poverty. He sold his lucrative AC motor patents to Westinghouse for a fraction of their ultimate value, reportedly tearing up the royalty contract when Westinghouse faced financial difficulty. His Wardenclyffe Tower project — an ambitious wireless transmission facility on Long Island — consumed enormous resources before financier J.P. Morgan withdrew support. Tesla was a brilliant inventor but a poor businessman, repeatedly failing to commercialize his ideas effectively. His later years were marked by increasingly grandiose claims — about death rays, earthquake machines, and communication with other planets — that eroded his credibility. He spent his final decade living alone in the New Yorker Hotel, his bills paid by Westinghouse as a kindness, surrounded by pigeons he fed in nearby parks.

Nikola Tesla is a unique asset on JudgeMarket, trading at a price that reflects his enormous internet-era cult following rather than his historical academic standing. His OPS price is fueled by a passionate online community that views him as the archetypal underappreciated genius — a narrative amplified by the contrast with Edison, whom internet culture has cast as the villain of the electricity story. Price drivers include mentions in technology media, Tesla Motors news (which keeps his name in headlines), documentaries, and viral social media content about his inventions. His price shows unusual resilience during market downturns because his fan base is intensely loyal. However, his volatility can spike when academic historians push back against the hagiographic online narrative, creating temporary dips that many traders view as buying opportunities.

Tesla's most ambitious dream was the wireless transmission of electrical energy across the globe. He envisioned a world where power stations would broadcast energy through the Earth and atmosphere, allowing anyone anywhere to receive electricity without wires — essentially free universal energy. His Wardenclyffe Tower, built on Long Island starting in 1901 with funding from J.P. Morgan, was intended to demonstrate this concept. When Morgan learned Tesla's true ambition went beyond wireless communication to wireless power (which could not be metered or monetized easily), he withdrew funding. The tower was never completed and was demolished in 1917. While Tesla's specific approach to wireless power was impractical at global scale, his core insight that energy could be transmitted wirelessly has been validated by modern technologies including wireless phone charging, RFID, and experimental microwave power beaming.

The Tesla vs. Edison rivalry is one of the most popular narrative trades on JudgeMarket. Internet culture has dramatically shifted the balance of popular opinion in Tesla's favor over the past two decades, elevating him from a little-known figure to a folk hero while casting Edison as a ruthless businessman who stole credit from others. This narrative shift is reflected in their relative JudgeMarket prices. However, academic historians generally offer a more balanced view: Edison was a prolific inventor in his own right with over 1,000 patents, and his system of organized industrial research at Menlo Park was itself a revolutionary innovation. Smart traders watch for sentiment reversals — Edison is arguably undervalued relative to his actual contributions, creating potential mean-reversion opportunities, while Tesla may be overvalued relative to his historical importance if the internet hagiography ever fades.

Tesla was famously eccentric in ways that have enhanced his cult appeal. He was obsessed with the number three, reportedly walking around buildings three times before entering and requiring hotel room numbers divisible by three. He claimed to have experienced vivid visions and blinding flashes of light since childhood, which he believed helped him visualize inventions in complete detail before building them. He was celibate by choice, believing sexual abstinence enhanced his scientific abilities. He developed a deep attachment to a particular white pigeon, claiming to love it "as a man loves a woman." In his later years, he made increasingly outlandish claims about inventions including a "death beam" particle weapon and an earthquake machine. These eccentricities, combined with his genuine technical brilliance, have made Tesla an irresistible figure for popular culture and a consistently engaging asset on JudgeMarket.

Tesla, Inc. (originally Tesla Motors) was founded in 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who named the company after Nikola Tesla in honor of his contributions to electrical engineering, particularly the AC induction motor that Tesla's electric vehicles use as a core technology. Elon Musk joined as chairman and lead investor in 2004 and later became CEO. The company has become one of the world's most valuable automakers, ensuring that Tesla's name appears in global headlines daily. This association is a significant and somewhat unusual price driver on JudgeMarket — the historical figure's visibility is amplified by a living corporation's market performance. When Tesla stock rises or the company achieves milestones, the inventor's cultural presence intensifies, creating measurable positive effects on his OPS price.

Tesla was a genuine pioneer of automation and remote control. In 1898, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat at Madison Square Garden in New York — one of the earliest demonstrations of remote control technology, which he called "teleautomation." Audiences were so astonished that many suspected fraud or telepathy. Tesla envisioned a future of autonomous machines that would free humanity from physical labor, writing extensively about "automatons" that could think and act independently. While his specific designs were primitive by modern standards, his conceptual framework anticipated robotics, drone technology, and autonomous vehicles by nearly a century. Tesla also proposed machines that could replicate human mental processes, foreshadowing artificial intelligence research. These forward-looking ideas contribute to Tesla's reputation as a futurist and strengthen his appeal to technology-oriented traders on JudgeMarket.

Tesla's reputation has undergone one of the most dramatic rehabilitations in intellectual history. During his lifetime, he went from celebrated inventor to marginalized eccentric. After his death in 1943, he was largely forgotten by the general public, remembered mainly by electrical engineers and Serbian nationalists. The internet age transformed his legacy: beginning in the early 2000s, web communities championed Tesla as a misunderstood genius, the "geek's hero" who was cheated by Edison and the establishment. Matthew Inman's influential 2012 comic on The Oatmeal, which raised money to preserve Tesla's Wardenclyffe laboratory, catalyzed mainstream awareness. The founding of Tesla Motors further embedded his name in contemporary culture. This trajectory — from obscurity to cult hero to mainstream icon — is itself a fascinating case study in reputation dynamics and makes Tesla one of JudgeMarket's most compelling narrative assets.

Nikola Tesla offers several attractive trading angles on JudgeMarket. His strong internet following provides reliable baseline demand, but his price can spike on viral content, documentaries, and Tesla Motors news. Event-driven traders should watch for engineering anniversaries, science communication moments, and pop-culture references. The Tesla-Edison pair trade is a perennial favorite — go long Tesla and short Edison when internet sentiment runs hot, or reverse the trade during periods of historical revisionism. For sector positioning, Tesla pairs well with Albert Einstein and J. Robert Oppenheimer for a "physics and engineering" basket. Contrarian traders should note that Tesla's internet-driven valuation may be vulnerable to corrections if academic pushback against oversimplified narratives gains traction. His price floor, however, is well-supported by genuine technological achievements and a deeply loyal community.

In his later years, Tesla made dramatic claims about powerful inventions that were never demonstrated. He described a "teleforce" weapon — popularly called a "death ray" — that would use a directed beam of particles to destroy enemy aircraft at a distance of 250 miles, rendering war impossible. He also claimed to have built an oscillator that caused an earthquake in his Manhattan laboratory, though no independent evidence supports this. These claims have never been verified, and most historians believe they were either theoretical concepts Tesla overstated or products of his declining mental state. After his death, the FBI seized his papers (the "Tesla Papers"), fueling conspiracy theories that the government suppressed revolutionary technology. While these claims lack evidence, they contribute to Tesla's mystique and his enduring appeal as a figure who seems to exist at the boundary between science and science fiction.

Nikola Tesla presents an interesting long-term investment case with both strong fundamentals and notable risks. On the bull side, his reputation trajectory has been consistently upward for two decades, driven by internet culture, the Tesla car brand, and genuine public interest in his contributions to electrical engineering. His narrative as the underappreciated genius has proven remarkably durable and emotionally resonant. On the bear side, his JudgeMarket price may be inflated relative to his actual historical impact — he was important but arguably not in the same tier as Albert Einstein or Isaac Newton in terms of fundamental scientific breakthroughs. The risk of narrative fatigue or historical correction exists. For long-term holders, Tesla works best as part of a diversified inventor-engineer portfolio alongside figures like Leonardo da Vinci, providing exposure to the "underdog genius" narrative while balancing with more conventionally esteemed figures.