Top World Inventors and what they have in Common:

Nikola Tesla

Origins and Immigration:

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1882, he moved to Paris and got a job repairing direct current (DC) power plants with the Continental Edison Company. Two years later he immigrated to the United States. 

Engineering and Inventions:

In the mid-1890's, Nikola Tesla working with George Westinghouse developed a system of alternating current (AC) which enabled power from Niagara Falls to be transmitted via electric transmission lines. The Niagara Falls electric hydro plant is still in operation today.

In Nikola Tesla's original contract with George Westinghouse, the inventor was promised a bonus of $2.50 for every horsepower of alternating current sold. But making Tesla's AC motor was expensive, and Westinghouse soon told Tesla he wouldn't be able to pay him what was originally promised.

Schooling:

Nikola Tesla never studied Engineering. Tesla instead studied the two subjects of math and physics at the Technical University of Graz and later studied philosophy at the University of Prague.

Funding:

Tesla's work with Westinghouse did not get him the funding to expand his inventions and implement them. Unfortunately for him, his arch-enemy Thomas Edison (who was NOT the inventor of the light bulb), Edison who was a stern advocate of DC current, direct current - low voltage, was the person who funded Nikola Tesla's laboratory and work. Where Tesla was all about AC current, Edison was all about DC current and Edison went as far as to burn Tesla's lab down and destroy his work.

Westinghouse hired Tesla, licensed the patents for his AC motor and gave him his own lab. In 1890 Thomas Edison with the help of J.P. Morgan arranged for a convicted New York murderer to be put to death in an AC-powered electric chair—a stunt designed to show how dangerous the Westinghouse standard could be.

 Nikola Tesla was backed financially by George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison was backed by J.P. Morgan.

J.P. Morgan nearly ruined George Westinghouse to be able to get control of  Nichola Tesla and stop him from making FREE AC energy. Tesla never got the right funding and died young and penniless in the New Yorker hotel. Most of his work that could be salvaged was confiscated by the US government.

Tesla’s inventions included:

• AC Power (alternating current)
• Tesla Coil
• Magnifying Transmitter
• Tesla Turbine
• Shadowgraph
• Radio
• Neon Lamp
• Hydroelectric Power
• Induction Motor
• Radio Controlled Boat
• Death Ray

Elon Musk

Origins and Immigration:

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria South Africa. Musk was born to a Canadian mother and South African father and raised in Pretoria, South Africa.

His parents divorced in 1980 and he mainly lived with his father in many different places in South Africa. He went to Waterkloof House Preparatory School and graduated from Pretoria Boys High School. He then moved to Canada in 1988 when he was 17, after he obtained Canadian citizenship through his mother. He got it before his South African military service was to begin. He felt that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States from Canada than from South Africa. 

Schooling:

Elon Musk never studied Engineering. Musk briefly attended the University of Pretoria before moving to Canada at age 17 to attend Queen's University. He spent two years at the Queen's School of Business in Kingston, Ontario. He then transferred to the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the Wharton School. He stayed a year to finish his second bachelor's degree in physics. Then he moved to California to attempt to get a PhD in applied physics at Stanford but he left the program after only two days because he wanted to pursue his entrepreneurial aspirations (start businesses) in the Internet, renewable energy and outer space. He became an American citizen in 2002.

Engineering and Funding:

Elon Reeve Musk (born June 28, 1971) was born to a Canadian mother and South African father, and raised in Pretoria, South Africa. He moved to Canada at age 17 to avoid conscription into the South African Military. 

Elon Musk co-founded web software company Zip2 with his brother Kimbal. The start-up was acquired by Compaq for $307 million in 1999. Musk co-founded online bank X.com that same year, which merged with Confinity in 2000 to form the company PayPal and was subsequently bought by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

In 2002, Musk founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer, and space transport services company, of which he is CEO, CTO, and lead designer. 
In 2004, he joined electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors, Inc. (now Tesla, Inc.) as chairman and product architect, becoming its CEO in 2008. 
In 2006, he helped create SolarCity, a solar energy services company and current Tesla subsidiary. 
In 2015, he co-founded OpenAI, a nonprofit research company that promotes friendly artificial intelligence. 
In 2016, he co-founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company focused on developing brain-computer interfaces and founded The Boring Company, a tunnel construction company. 
Musk has also proposed the Hyperloop, a high-speed vactrain transportation system.

Cornelius Theron

Origins:

Cornelius Theron was born on July 04, 1965, in Pretoria South Africa. Cornelius was born into a large Afrikaans/Dutch family with both parents being Architects in Pretoria, South Africa.

His parents divorced and all the children moved with their mother to a small farm outside Pretoria where Cornelius discovered his love for horses and wildlife. At age 13 Cornelius was placed in a boarding school namely Afrikaans Hoër Seunskool (Dutch Boys Highschool) and in 1982 the South African Army SADF enrolled him into the Infantry battalion called 7 SAI in Phalaborwa. He later joined the South African Defence Forse Military Intelligence division and served the remainder of his 2-year compulsory military service in Pretoria in the SADF headquarters command city. All this was during all the South African riots and anti-apartheid regime governmental wars and during all the American sanctions to remove the "white government and replace them with the new black Communist Government of the ANC and Nelson Mandela. 

Schooling, Career and Immigration:

Cornelius moved to Johannesburg while working for Chubb Electronics SA in Pretoria and accelerated in electronics by studying Electronics Engineering and Digital Techniques thru the University of South Africa and Department of Manpower. His first job ever was working at a TV repair store in Pretoria in 1986 fixing TVs and installing Mnet decoders in highrise towers and large residential complexes that were the early version of what we have here in the US call DirecTV.

A call from his long-lost mother who placed him in boarding school as a young boy came, for a family business upstart namely Low Cost Construction Inc. A million Rand company, responsible for building government-subsidized houses around the Cape Town poverty-stricken area of Delft. Cornelius heeded the family call and quit his career as an engineer. After building four 2-story homes, the LLC business went to hell after his family ransacked his bank accounts with lavish expenses and lifestyles and Cornelius left the Cape province and went back to work at Chubb Electronics in Johannesburg. Cornelius accelerated in Chubb real fast and as the highest yearly earner in the company's history moved up in the ranks. Chubb acquired their long-time rival namely Andrews Alarms to gain the 150-year-old timestamp as a company "in-business since" and he was given the top executive job to manage the company. With racism and hate and national riots in cities and bombs detonating, the apartheid regime was at an end.

Having served the South African Defence Force for eight years, (two full-time years and 6 years of two months of military camps per year) Cornelius left a country behind with no regrets, or money for that matter. The then South African government had a policy that if you are leaving South Africa and immigrating somewhere else, you can not take any assets with you at all and you will lose your South African citizenship. Cornelius immigrated to the United States of America in August of 1990, on an H1B visa, and later paid attorneys and went through the tedious and expensive process of getting a Green-Card with Permanent Residency status.

Engineering and funding:

Cornelius immigrated to the US in 1990 and finally settled in Wellington, Palm Beach county. He received his American Permanent Residency in 1997 after three Universities, the University of Miami, the University of Gainsville and Florida Atlantic University accredited all his schooling and work career to a Master's Degree in Electronic Engineering and better. He worked for many companies including Security Systems, later Adelphia as a security specialist, and even installed long and short-range digital and analog communication towers and repeaters. Cornelius worked for ADT Security, later owned by Tyco International and was responsible as Senior Systems Specialist working on security, surveillance including fiber optics projects for many large banks, credit card companies, and government agencies and contractors. Including being an inspector in fire suppression and code enforcement of the NEC code and NFPA 72 regulations thru-out South Florida.

September 11, 2001, hit America and terrorism came home again for Cornelius. Cornelius decided to quit working for the man and instead work for himself. Intellirex was born. A web design and database company. In 2006 the worst time of his life, Cornelius divorced, and in 2007 - 2008 the American economy and housing crash came and together with his divorce, wiped him out. In 2014 Cornelius and his family of five moved to Montana for a better life. The problem is in some small towns in America "if you ain't from here, you don't belong here". Moving around in Montana to find the perfect ranch and farmland, Cornelius had a near-death experience of pancreatitis plus pneumonia and was comatosed for weeks. Cornelius came out of the hospital in Helena that saved his life and decided to start all the invention companies that he has dreamt of all his life and be an inventor to change the world for the better.
Theron Weapons, Theron Aerospace, Theron Energy, Theron Technologies, Theron Generators, Theron Solar, and others were started and Cornelius packed up his family and moved back to Florida in 2019. The ranch in Montana he wanted to purchase fell through after the owner died and NINE kids took over the trust and more than doubled the price.

Theron Solar as a new upstart company was tested by Cornelius by implementing a solar array on his Wellington home that took his FPL electric bill from around $780 per month to around $10 per month. Trying to set up all these businesses in Florida after relocating from Montana was tough and expensive. Then came 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic struck. Literally, the whole world stopped and came to a halt and Cornelius lost everything again.

So, in the next phase, Cornelius is hoping to move to Tampa and restart life with his family of three generations now and pray for some funding to start some of these inventions and companies and help make the world a better place for everyone.

Some of the inventions and details can be found by visiting these websites:

US AUCTIONS LIVE
WHEELS 4 VETERANS
REAL HOT DEALS
THERON ENERGY
THERON WEAPONS
THERON AEROSPACE
THERON PROPERTIES
THERON NEWS PRESS
THERON GENERATORS
THERON SOLAR ENERGY
THERON TECHNOLOGIES
THERON HORTICULTURE
PERPETUAL ENERGY GENERATORS
PERPETUAL ENERGY GENERATOR
INTELLIREX AUCTION SOFTWARE
INTELLIREX WEB DESIGN

To date, Cornelius Theron has not raised any capital for his companies and all have been bootstrapped by him personally.

In-common traits:

To summarize, Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk, and Cornelius Theron all had these traits in common:

• Parents divorced that had a big impact as a child.
• Country of origin went through a major change or revolution.
• Moved across the world to become a first-generation immigrant to America.
• Was more diversely qualified in many fields and not only engineering.
• Had a very rough time starting their companies and getting the inventions off the ground.
• Had unique inventions that would change the world forever.