I don’t know why I didn’t write about this before, perhaps I didn’t have my laptop with me. I became interested in Nikola Tesla after reading this comic. It was a fun read and it covers some highlights of his life. Shortly after that, I donated a few bucks to buy back his laboratory and turn it into a museum (link). I think it’s been over a year since then, but last month I watched a 1980’s movie called “Tajna Nikole Tesle” or “The Secret of Nikola Tesla” (imdb, full movie in youtube, torrent magnet link). There’s no doubt he was a genius. After this I got a little obsessed reading more of his work, trying to get a glimpse of how he thought. I found “The Nikola Tesla Treasury” collection (the Kindle edition is $1.93 USD in amazon) and it’s what I was looking for. It includes his autobiography (which I doubt is unaltered).

I never thought I’d feel so relieved by reading his work. After selling my share of my previous company I took a few months off, so I had a little too much free time to be alone with my thoughts. I was feeling a bit down after arriving at the conclusion that we’re nothing more than automatons. It sounds odd but if you really analyze yourself and how you interact with your environment, I guarantee that you’ll arrive at the same conclusion. Tesla writes in his autobiography:

In the course of time it became perfectly evident to me that I was merely an automaton endowed with power of movement, responding to the stimuli of the sense organs and thinking and acting accordingly.

This realization nearly wrecked my year, but Tesla seemed really calm about it. Geniuses. Anyway, the sole fact that I was not alone made me feel much better.