Tesla's road to engineering college

Tesla finished the Higher Real Gymnasium in Gospic at the age of 14. Tesla figured his next logical step would be to go to engineering college. The problem was that Tesla was required to either go into the military or enter the ministry or face substantial jail time. This led to a deep depression in which Tesla could not get out of. Eventually this depression turned for the worse when this illness reached a critical stage and the physicians gave up on the hope of saving his life. Fortunately Tesla's father was not as easy to lose hope and worked on trying to nurse his very delicate son back to health. When this did not show much promise he promised his son he would make sure he went to engineering school for electrical engineering if he recovered. As if by magic Tesla's strength began to return to him where in 4 months time he recovered completely. Tesla's father kept his word and enrolled his son in the polytechnic institute at Gratz which was located in Austria. His father enrolled him for the term that began the following fall. Tesla's father also kept his word in not making his fragile son enlist in the military or enter the ministry even though there were serious consequences for not doing that. Instead he sent his son out into the mountains for one full year to get away from the call of the military. In this time Tesla conducted many experiments on elcticity conducted from water sources. That following fall as promised by his father on what many thought was his deathbed he entered the University of Gratz for electrical engineering.

Tesla's family and childhood

I'm only about 50 pages into the first chapter of the book. This chapter is called Light and Power and is divided into 8 different sections. The first 10 or so pages of the book is mostly the author telling the reader why Tesla is such a renowed inventor and why he deserves more praise then he currently gets. After this sorta introduction the author delves into the history of Nikola Tesla himslef. Tesla's parwents are Reverand Milutin Tesla and his wife Djouka. He was born in the border province of Lika which is now part of Yukaslovia.Tesla had 2 sisters and 3 brothers, the oldest of the Tesla boys Dane passed away when Nikola was only 5 years of age. Dane was an extremely brialliant boy and Nikola strived to be like him. Nikola attended the Normal school in his village until the age of 10 when he enrolled in the Real gymnasium which is the equivalent to our high school. He showed remarkable talent in the studies of mathmatics and the sciences.Though Tesla enjoyed school the experiments he did outside of it with water wheels and other electical works fasinated him more. After finishing the Real Gymnasium with exceptionally high marks he continued his education at the Higher Real Gymnasium in Croatia. The next section is about his experiences at the Higher Real Gymnasium and beyond which I will hear about as I continue reading.

First post!

My book Prodigal genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla just came in yesterday. The book starts out with a series of interesting pictures. The first picture is of a giant building that resembles the NBA championship trophy. above this building there is text that says WorldWireless, then underneath the building it says return to Nikola Tesla 8 West 40 St., NY. This indicates that it was a sketch of something he was trying to achieve and did not want it lost. The next picture is a portrait of Tesla himself. The next picture is a newspaper cut out that states a fire destroyed mechanisms he had in this workshop that were of inestimable value. Next post I will discuss chapter 1 of this book.