We will begin this blog on Tesla auto shops by talking about the vehicle brand’s eponymous tutelary genius. In the span of an astonishing yet under-appreciated career, it is well known that Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla achieved a number of remarkable “firsts”:

• First to invent the alternating current (AC) motor
• First to develop AC generation and transmission technology
• First to file a U.S. patent (in 1884) for the electric arc lamp
• First to invent the Tesla coil, an induction device widely used in radio technology and for creating artificial lightning
• First to speculate that a very strong high-frequency signal might be used to develop a radar system (later inspiring Émile Girardeau, who helped develop France’s first radar system in the 1930s)
• First to install water-driven power machinery at Niagara Falls, which carried electricity to Buffalo by 1896
• First to photograph a subject (his friend Mark Twain) lit by phosphorescent light
• Tesla may well have produced the first x-ray photo (before Wilhelm Röntgen!) in the U.S. when he attempted to use a vacuum tube to obtain that aforementioned image of Mark Twain.
• While Tesla did not invent fluorescent or neon lights, he did creat the first neon sign.
• He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first-ever exhibited.