Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American scientist, inventor, and polyglot. He was born in Croatia to Serbian parents â - one an inventor, the other a priest â - and studied at the University of Prague before immigrating to the USA.

The list of Tesla's experiments, inventions, and hundreds of patents reads like the plot points of an amazing science fiction movie:
Electromagnetism
AC power
Fluorescent lights
Earthquake machine
X-rays
Steam engine
Helicopterplane
Radio waves from space
Dynamo electric machine
Teleforce beam
Ship's log
Valvular conduit
Fluid propulsion
Pyromagneto electric generator
Apparatus for aerial transportation
...and, of course, the Tesla coil.

Though Tesla was famous in his lifetime â - he was a friend of Mark Twain and received a massive public funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York â - after his death he faded from the public eye. Some of his work was even misattributed to other inventors with better PR.

Edison, Marconi, and others may have gotten all the glory, but recently Nikola Tesla's star has been ascendant â - especially now that science and the public are catching up to the once-eccentric ideas of this visionary, mad scientist, and natty dresser.

Now Tesla can keep you company in an intense-yet-cuddly version that measures approximately 12 inches standing. And he's still a natty dresser.