Nikola Tesla Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Long interesting Nikola Tesla trivia quiz and answers.

Nikola Tesla Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Who was Nikola Tesla?
A: He was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist.

Tesla is best known for his contributions to the design of what?
A: The modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Where was Nikola Tesla born?
A: In the village Smiljan, Lika county, in the Austrian Empire (present day Croatia).

On what date was he born?
A: On 10 July 1856.

Who was his father?
A: Milutin Tesla (1819–1879).

What was Tesla’s father’s occupation?
A: He was an Eastern Orthodox priest.

Who was Tesla's mother?
A: Đuka Tesla whose father was also an Orthodox priest.

His mother had a talent for doing what?
A: Making home craft tools and mechanical appliances and the ability to memorize Serbian epic poems.

Đuka had never received a formal what?
A: Education.

Tesla credited his eidetic memory and creative abilities to his what?
A: His mother's genetics and influence.

Tesla was the fourth of how many children?
A: Five.

He had how many sisters?
A: Three, Milka, Angelina and Marica.

He had an older brother named Dane, who was killed in a what?
A: Horse riding accident when Tesla was aged five.

In 1861, Tesla attended primary school in Smiljan where he studied what?
A: German, arithmetic, and religion.

In 1862, the Tesla family moved to where?
A: The nearby Gospić, Lika where Tesla's father worked as parish priest.

In 1870, Tesla moved far north to Karlovac to do what?
A: Attend high school at the Higher Real Gymnasium.

The classes were held in what language?
A: German, as it was a school within the Austro-Hungarian Military Frontier.

Tesla would later write that he became interested in demonstrations of electricity by whom?
A: His physics professor.

Tesla noted that these demonstrations of this "mysterious phenomena" made him want to what?
A: To know more of this wonderful force.

Tesla was able to perform integral calculus in his head, which prompted his teachers to believe what?
A: That he was cheating.

He finished a four-year term in three years, graduating in what year?
A: 1873.

In 1873, Tesla returned to where?
A: Smiljan.

Shortly after he arrived, he contracted what disease?
A: Cholera.

He was bedridden for how long?
A: Nine months.

He was near “what” multiple times?
A: Death.

Tesla's father, in a moment of despair promised to do what?
A: To send him to the best engineering school if he recovered from the illness.

In 1874, Tesla evaded conscription into the Austro-Hungarian Army in Smiljan by doing what?
A: By running away southeast of Lika to Tomingaj, near Gračac.

While there he explored what?
A: the Mountains wearing hunter's garb.

Tesla said that this contact with nature made him what?
A: Stronger, both physically and mentally.

He read many books while in Tomingaj and later said that whose works had helped him to miraculously recover from his earlier illness?
A: Mark Twain's.

In 1875 where did Tesla enroll?
A: At Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria, on a Military Frontier scholarship.

How did Tesla do during his first year?
A: Tesla never missed a lecture, earned the highest grades possible, passed nine exams (nearly twice as many as required), started a Serb cultural club, and even received a letter of commendation from the dean of the technical faculty to his father, which stated, "Your son is a star of first rank."

During his second year, Tesla came into conflict with Professor Poeschl over what?
A: The Gramme dynamo, when Tesla suggested that commutators were not necessary.

Tesla claimed that he worked what hours?
A: From 3 a.m. to 11 p.m., no Sundays or holidays excepted.

After his father's death in 1879, Tesla found a package of what?
A: Letters from his professors to his father, warning that unless he was removed from the school, Tesla would die through overwork.

At the end of his second year, Tesla lost what?
A: His scholarship.

Tesla then became addicted to what?
A: Gambling.

What did he do during his third year?
A: Tesla gambled away his allowance and his tuition money, later gambling back his initial losses and returning the balance to his family.

When examination time came, Tesla was unprepared and asked for what?
A: An extension to study, but was denied.

He did not receive grades for the last semester of the third year and he never did what?
A: Graduated from the university.

In December 1878, Tesla left Graz and severed what?
A: All relations with his family to hide the fact that he dropped out of school.

His friends thought that he had what?
A: Drowned in the nearby Mur River.

Tesla moved to Maribor, where he worked as a what?
A: Draftsman for 60 florins per month.

He spent his spare time doing what?
A: Playing cards with local men on the streets.

In March 1879, Tesla's father went to Maribor to do what?
A: To beg his son to return home, but he refused.

Nikola suffered a “what” around the same time?
A: A nervous breakdown.

On 24 March 1879, Tesla was returned to Gospić under police guard for what?
A: Not having a residence permit.

On 17 April 1879, Milutin Tesla died at what age?
A: 60 after contracting an unspecified illness.

Some sources say that he died of a what?
A: Stroke.

During that year what did Tesla do?
A: Tesla taught a large class of students in his old school in Gospić.

In January 1880, two of Tesla's uncles put together enough money to help him do what?
A: Leave Gospić for Prague, where he was to study.

He arrived too late to enroll at what university?
A: Charles-Ferdinand University.

He had never studied what required subject?
A: Greek.

He was also illiterate in what other required subject?
A: Czech.

Tesla did, however, attend lectures in philosophy at the university as an auditor but he did not what?
A: Receive grades for the courses.

In 1881, where did Tesla moved to?
A: Budapest, Hungary, to work under Tivadar Puskás at a telegraph company, the Budapest Telephone Exchange.

Upon arrival, Tesla realized what?
A: That the company, then under construction, was not functional.

What did he do then?
A: He worked as a draftsman in the Central Telegraph Office instead.

Within a few months, the Budapest Telephone Exchange became what?
A: Functional, and Tesla was allocated the chief electrician position.

During his employment, Tesla made many improvements to what?
A: The Central Station equipment.

He also claimed to have perfected what?
A: A telephone repeater or amplifier, which was never patented nor publicly described.

In 1882, Tivadar Puskás got Tesla another job in Paris with what company?
A: The Continental Edison Company.

Tesla began working in what was then a brand new industry, installing what?
A: Indoor incandescent lighting citywide in the form of an electric power utility.

The company had several subdivisions and Tesla worked at the division in the Ivry-sur-Seine suburb of Paris in charge of installing what?
A: The lighting system.

There he gained a great deal of practical experience in what?
A: Electrical engineering.

Management took notice of his advanced knowledge in engineering and physics and soon had him doing what?
A: Designing and building improved versions of generating dynamos and motors.

They also sent him on to troubleshoot engineering problems where?
A: At other Edison utilities being built around France and in Germany.

In June 1884, Tesla emigrated to where?
A: The United States.

Where did he begin working almost immediately?
A: At the Machine Works on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

The machine works was an overcrowded shop with several hundred machinists, laborers, managing staff, and 20 "field engineers" struggling with the task of building what?
A: The large electric utility in that city.

As in Paris, Tesla was working on what?
A: Troubleshooting installations and improving generators.

One of the projects given to Tesla was to develop what?
A: An arc lamp-based street lighting system.

Arc lighting was the most popular type of street lighting but it required what?
A: High voltages and was incompatible with the Edison low-voltage incandescent system.

Tesla had been working at the Machine Works for a total of six months when what?
A: He quit.

Soon after leaving the Edison Company, Tesla was working on patenting a what?
A: An arc lighting system, possibly the same one he had developed at Edison.

In March 1885, he met with patent attorney Lemuel W. Serrell, Serrell who introduced Tesla to whom?
A: Two businessmen, Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, who agreed to finance an arc lighting manufacturing and utility company in Tesla's name.

What was the name of the new company?
A: Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing.

The investors showed little interest in Tesla's ideas for what?
A: New types of alternating current motors and electrical transmission equipment.

After the utility was up and running in 1886, they decided that the manufacturing side of the business was what?
A: Too competitive and opted to simply run an electric utility

They formed a new utility company, abandoning Tesla's company and leaving the inventor what?
A: Penniless.

Tesla even lost control of the patents he had generated, since he had done what with them?
A: He assigned them to the company in exchange for stock.

He had to work as a what?
A: A ditch digger for $2 per day.