He came to America from Serbia with four pennies, a few poems and a blueprint for a flying machine in his pocket but went on to invent the electrical generator, FM radio, remote control, robots, spark plugs, fluorescent lights and the coil which is used in TV and radio transmissions.
He did show a strong commitment to the whole 'mad scientist' thing, he was celibate, afraid of round things and hated human hair, jewellery and anything that wasn't divisible by three. If they isn't nutty enough for you he also built a death ray, a portable earthquake generator and constructed a bath designed to cleanse the human body of germs using nothing but electricity, oh and tower which generated a 130-foot long bolt of lightning which remains the world record for man-made lightning.
As well as dodging hairy humans and cylindrical things, he would only stay in hotel rooms with number you could divide by three and once paid for a stay with the gift of his death ray which the owners eagerly accepted although years after his death they opened it to find a bunch of wires but that's one those the hidden benefits of being a crazy genius, say you've created a death ray and people tend to believe you.
His rival was Thomas Edison who he worked for but after he refused to give him a bonus he was due, he told him to go do one and went off on his own and while Edison was inventing boring stuff like light bulbs, Tesla invented all the cool stuff which the FBI confiscated when he died for fear of someone else building the machines and actually using them to split the world in half, the spoilsports.
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