Once upon a time there was a man. He was relatively misunderstood by almost everyone he came in contact with. People thought he was crazy and overly hungry for knowledge of the future. He had a thirst for knowledge about electricity, physics, and other related sciences, but all the information he learned contributed to the creation of multiple scientific inventions that changed the world. Without Nikola Tesla the world would not be as technologically advanced as it is today. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in the European country of Croatia to Mulutin and Djuka Tesla. His father, Mulutin, was a Serbian Orthodox priest. His mother, Djuka, was an inventor of various household appliances. Growing up under his mother's influence may have fueled the ideas floating in his head. Seeing that perhaps it was for her, he thought that it would be possible for him to be successful too. He studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Austria and at the University of Prague. At the beginning of his education, Tesla intended to study mainly physics and mathematics. However, his mind became fascinated with electricity and he soon began a career at a telephone company as an electrical engineer. It wasn't long before his mind began producing designs for machines that used electricity. The first of many involved an induction motor. “While in Strasbourg in 1883, he privately built a prototype of the induction motor and made it work successfully. Unable to interest anyone in Europe in promoting this radical device, Tesla accepted a job offer for Thomas Edison in New York” (Vujovic). Since childhood, Tesla dreamed of harnessing the hydroelectric power of Niagara Falls, which was located in New York. Moving to America with… half a paper… would have until sometime after his death. Others were given credit for what he had invented years earlier. Nikola Tesla had most likely created even more inventions, but kept them hidden. He was a genius disguised as a madman. His mind was always thinking about how science worked and how he could build a device to bring his plan to life. He achieved this many times with electrical generating equipment such as the many variations of the Tesla coil. Alternating current is probably the most important invention in his collection. Without it there would be no wall sockets to easily connect everyday devices. The world's population would still use Edison's direct current method of electricity. Nikola Tesla may seem like a person not so important to the lifestyle of the modern era, but without him the twenty-first century could have been extremely different.