Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla pioneered the alternating-current system that powers the modern world, along with foundational work in wireless transmission, radio, and remote control. His patents on tuned wireless circuits predated Marconi's American filings — the U.S. Patent Office initially rejected Marconi's applications on exactly that ground before reversing course in 1904. Tesla died in a New York hotel room in 1943, largely broke and long since eclipsed in public credit by the men who commercialised his ideas — a biography that has since made him the magnet for admiring quotes he never demonstrably said.