Nikola Tesla died alone in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, $50 in debt to the management. His deathbed companion was a pigeon he'd nursed back to health. The man who invented alternating current, the radio transmission system, the induction motor, and the basic principles behind radar and X-ray technology died broke because he was a catastrophically bad businessman. Edison beat him in the press. Westinghouse used his patents. Marconi got the Nobel Prize for radio. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually voided Marconi's radio patents in Tesla's favor — but that was in 1943, the same year Tesla died.
January 7, 1943
83 years ago
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