Letters From The Time Traveler: My Friend Nikola Tesla and His 1926 Prediction of the Cell Phone

Dearest,

I have had the privilege of being acquainted with some of the most brilliant minds in the world. One such man was Nikola Tesla.

He was born in 1856 in Serbia. This was a year after I started traveling, as you know. He showed intense curiosity about the world around him.

He could memorize entire books and store logarithmic tables in his brain. He picked up languages easily, and he could work through days and nights on only a few hours sleep.

By the time I met him in 1885, he had become a gambling addict. He also struggled with his mental health.

He would spend the next six years of his life “thinking” about electromagnetic fields and a hypothetical motor powered by alternate-current that would and should work. The thoughts obsessed him, and he was unable to focus on his schoolwork. Professors at the university warned Tesla’s father that the young scholar’s working and sleeping habits were killing him. But rather than finish his studies, Tesla became a gambling addict, lost all his tuition money, dropped out of school and suffered a nervous breakdown. It would not be his last.