Nikola Tesla was considered as the person responsible for heralding the coming of the 2nd Industrial Revolution (electrical power, while the 1st was the steam power). His later inventions and ideas would have been successful if only he have known about the existence of the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. See more about this great scientist and technologist at the following sites.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/tesla.htm http://www.parascope.com/en/0996/tesla5.htm
although Yukawa's meson hypothesis for the strong force was made in 1935, it was in 1946, 3 years after the death of Tesla, that the charged pion was detected and in 1950, the neutral pion was detected. It was this path of events and discoveries that eventually led to the concept of quarks and the strong nuclear force of color charged gluons.