Though born in 1856, Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla still captures our imagination. Even as a young man, Tesla proved eccentric. After dropping out of the Austrian Polytechnic university and avoiding his family, Tesla's friends thought him dead. The mysterious Tesla worked in Slovenia for a year, then studied in Prague at his father's urging. After a series of illnesses involving strange visions, Nikola Tesla next created what may have been the first loudspeaker for Budapest's original telephone company. After an engineering stint for Continental Edison Company in Paris, where he devised the induction motor, Tesla came to the U.S. Thomas Edison hired him based on a recommendation letter describing Tesla as a "great man." Tesla was promised $50,000 for re-working Edison's ill-conceived generators and motors. Edison reneged, igniting a life-long rivalry. Despite two rumored Nobel Prize nominations and the formation of his own company, Nikola Tesla died poor and unappreciated.