Why have I never been taught about Nikola Tesla in highschool?

He doesn't appear in your physics textbook because he wasn't a physicist. Physics textbooks tend not to talk much about people anyway, but those few physicist who do get name-checked (Einstein, Newton, Maxwell) all have their names attached to fundamental laws. They might get short bios, but that's all. read more

Tesla has not really been credited with lots of other things that he might well have been the first to make use of, like radio transmission, for instance. We have a lot of clean and tidy stories about things like who invented the telephone, radio, the television, the battery and so on. read more

1. He was always in the background working for others and never stood alone. For a period of time he worked for Edison. Edison gave the man short shrift; probably knowing Tesla was smarter than he was. Edison didn't want Tesla to 'show him up.' Tesla then went to work for George Westinghouse who, earlier in 1869, invented the air brake. read more