Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who was vital to the development of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity delivery system.

Nikola Tesla, who was born and raised in the Austrian Empire, studied engineering and physics without getting a degree in the 1870s, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the emerging electric power business. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and became a naturalized citizen. He briefly worked at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before striking out on his own. Tesla established laboratories and enterprises in New York to create a variety of electrical and mechanical devices with the assistance of partners to finance and commercialize his ideas. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and associated polyphase AC inventions were licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888 and were the foundation of the polyphase system that the firm subsequently commercialized.

Tesla experimented with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging in an attempt to develop technologies that he could patent and market. He also developed one of the first wireless-controlled boats ever displayed. Tesla rose to prominence as an inventor, demonstrating his accomplishments to celebrities and wealthy patrons in his lab, and was recognized for his theatrics during public talks. In his high-voltage, high-frequency power tests in New York and Colorado Springs throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution. He made statements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices in 1893. Tesla attempted to apply these concepts in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter but ran out of funds before completing it.

Following Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a number of innovations with varying degrees of success in the 1910s and 1920s. In January 1943, he died in New York City. Following his death, Tesla's invention faded into obscurity until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures designated the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. Since the 1990s, there has been a spike in public interest in Tesla.

Born: 10 July 1856 (Smiljan, Austrian Empire)
Died: 7 January 1943 (New York City, U.S.)