biography nikola tesla

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Nikola Tesla

By: History.com Editors

Updated: March 13, 2020 | Original: November 9, 2009

Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. Though he was famous and respected, he was never able to translate his copious inventions into long-term financial success—unlike his early employer and chief rival, Thomas Edison.

Nikola Tesla’s Early Years

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox church and his mother managed the family’s farm. In 1863 Tesla’s brother Daniel was killed in a riding accident. The shock of the loss unsettled the 7-year-old Tesla, who reported seeing visions—the first signs of his lifelong mental illnesses.

Did you know? During the 1890s Mark Twain struck up a friendship with inventor Nikola Tesla. Twain often visited him in his lab, where in 1894 Tesla photographed the great American writer in one of the first pictures ever lit by phosphorescent light.

Tesla studied math and physics at the Technical University of Graz and philosophy at the University of Prague. In 1882, while on a walk, he came up with the idea for a brushless AC motor, making the first sketches of its rotating electromagnets in the sand of the path. Later that year 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.

Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison

Tesla arrived in New York in 1884 and was hired as an engineer at Thomas Edison’s Manhattan headquarters. He worked there for a year, impressing Edison with his diligence and ingenuity. At one point Edison told Tesla he would pay $50,000 for an improved design for his DC dynamos. After months of experimentation, Tesla presented a solution and asked for the money. Edison demurred, saying, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.” Tesla quit soon after.

Nikola Tesla and Westinghouse

After an unsuccessful attempt to start his own Tesla Electric Light Company and a stint digging ditches for $2 a day, Tesla found backers to support his research into alternating current. In 1887 and 1888 he was granted more than 30 patents for his inventions and invited to address the American Institute of Electrical Engineers on his work. His lecture caught the attention of George Westinghouse, the inventor who had launched the first AC power system near Boston and was Edison’s major competitor in the “Battle of the Currents.”

Westinghouse hired Tesla, licensed the patents for his AC motor and gave him his own lab. In 1890 Edison 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.

Buoyed by Westinghouse’s royalties, Tesla struck out on his own again. But Westinghouse was soon forced by his backers to renegotiate their contract, with Tesla relinquishing his royalty rights.

In the 1890s Tesla invented electric oscillators, meters, improved lights and the high-voltage transformer known as the Tesla coil. He also experimented with X-rays, gave short-range demonstrations of radio communication two years before Guglielmo Marconi and piloted a radio-controlled boat around a pool in Madison Square Garden. Together, Tesla and Westinghouse lit the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and partnered with General Electric to install AC generators at Niagara Falls , creating the first modern power station.

Nikola Tesla’s Failures, Death and Legacy

In 1895 Tesla’s New York lab burned, destroying years’ worth of notes and equipment. Tesla relocated to Colorado Springs for two years, returning to New York in 1900. He secured backing from financier J.P. Morgan and began building a global communications network centered on a giant tower at Wardenclyffe, on Long Island. But funds ran out and Morgan balked at Tesla’s grandiose schemes.

Tesla lived his last decades in a New York hotel, working on new inventions even as his energy and mental health faded. His obsession with the number three and fastidious washing were dismissed as the eccentricities of genius. He spent his final years feeding—and, he claimed, communicating with—the city’s pigeons.

Tesla died in his room on January 7, 1943. Later that year the U.S. Supreme Court voided four of Marconi’s key patents, belatedly acknowledging Tesla’s innovations in radio. The AC system he championed and improved remains the global standard for power transmission.

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Biography Online

Nikola Tesla Biography

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was one of the greatest and most enigmatic scientists who played a key role in the development of electromagnetism and other scientific discoveries of his time. Despite his breathtaking number of patents and discoveries, his achievements were often underplayed during his lifetime.

Short Biography Nikola Tesla

Tesla was a bright student and in 1875 went to the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz. However, he left to gain employment in Marburg in Slovenia. Evidence of his difficult temperament sometimes manifested and after an estrangement from his family, he suffered a nervous breakdown. He later enrolled in the Charles Ferdinand University in Prague, but again he left before completing his degree.

During his early life, he experienced many periods of illness and periods of startling inspiration. Accompanied by blinding flashes of light, he would often visualise mechanical and theoretical inventions spontaneously. He had a unique capacity to visualise images in his head. When working on projects, he would rarely write down plans or scale drawings, but rely on the images in his mind.

In 1880, he moved to Budapest where he worked for a telegraph company. During this time, he became acquainted with twin turbines and helped develop a device that provided amplification for when using the telephone.

In 1882, he moved to Paris, where he worked for the Continental Edison Company. Here he improved various devices used by the Edison company. He also conceived the induction motor and devices that used rotating magnetic fields.

With a strong letter of recommendation, Tesla went to the United States in 1884 to work for the Edison Machine Works company. Here he became one of the chief engineers and designers. Tesla was given a task to improve the electrical system of direct current generators. Tesla claimed he was offered $50,000 if he could significantly improve the motor generators. However, after completing his task, Tesla received no reward. This was one of several factors that led to a deep rivalry and bitterness between Tesla and Thomas Edison . It was to become a defining feature of Tesla’s life and impacted his financial situation and prestige. This deep rivalry was also seen as a reason why neither Tesla or Edison was awarded a Nobel prize for their electrical discoveries.

Disgusted that he did not ever receive a pay rise, Tesla resigned, and for a short while, found himself having to gain employment digging ditches for the Edison telephone company.

In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, but it wasn’t a success as his backers didn’t support his faith in AC current.

In 1887, Tesla worked on a form of X-Rays. He was able to photograph the bones in his hand; he also became aware of the side-effects of using radiation. However, his work in this area gained little coverage, and much of his research was later lost in a fire at a New York warehouse.

“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up… His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.”

– Nikola Tesla,  Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

In 1891, Tesla became an American citizen. This was also a period of great advances in electrical knowledge. Tesla demonstrated the potential for wireless energy transfer and the capacity for AC power generation. Tesla’s promotion of AC current placed him in opposition to Edison who sought to promote his Direct Current DC for electric power. Shortly before his death, Edison said his biggest mistake was spending so much time on DC current rather than the AC current Tesla had promoted.

In 1899, Tesla moved to Colorado Springs where he had the space to develop high voltage experiments. This included a variety of radio and electrical transmission experiments. He left after a year in Colorado Springs, and the buildings were later sold to pay off debts.

In 1900, Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. This was an ambitious project costing $150,000, a fortune at the time.

In 1904, the US patent office reversed his earlier patent for the radio, giving it instead to G. Marconi . This infuriated Tesla who felt he was the rightful inventor. He began a long, expensive and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to fight the decision. Marconi went on to win the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909. This seemed to be a repeating theme in Tesla’s life: a great invention that he failed to personally profit from.

Nikola Tesla also displayed fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs.

Tesla was in many ways an eccentric and genius. His discoveries and inventions were unprecedented. Yet, he was often ostracised for his erratic behaviour (during his later years, he developed a form of obsessive-compulsive behaviour). He was not frightened of suggesting unorthodox ideas such as radio waves from extraterrestrial beings. His ideas, lack of personal finance and unorthodox behaviour put him outside the scientific establishment and because of this, his ideas were sometimes slow to be accepted or used.

“All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle.”

– Nikola Tesla, A Means for Furthering Peace (1905)

Outside of science, he had many artistic and literary friends; in later life he became friendly with Mark Twain , inviting him to his laboratory. He also took an interest in poetry, literature and modern Vedic thought, in particular being interested in the teachings and vision of the modern Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda . Tesla was brought up an Orthodox Christian, although he later didn’t consider himself a believer in the true sense. He retained an admiration for Christianity and Buddhism.

“For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of insuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.”

– Nikola Tesla,  The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

As well as considering scientific issues, Tesla was thoughtful about greater problems of war and conflict, and he wrote a book on the subject called   A Means for Furthering Peace (1905).  This expressed his views on how conflict may be avoided and humanity learn to live in harmony.

“What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride, which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife.”

– Nikola Tesla,  My Inventions (1919)

Personal life

Tesla was famous for working hard and throwing himself into his work. He ate alone and rarely slept, sleeping as little as two hours a day.  He remained unmarried and claimed that his chastity was helpful to his scientific abilities. In later years, he became a vegetarian, living on only milk, bread, honey, and vegetable juices.

Tesla passed away on 7 January 1943, in a New York hotel room.  He was 86 years old.

After his death, in 1960 the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic field strength the Tesla in his honour.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “ Biography of Nikola Tesla” , Oxford, UK – www.biographyonline.net . Last updated 25th September 2017

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age

Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age at Amazon

Tesla: The Man who invented the Twentieth Century

Key Inventions of Nikola Tesla

• Development in electromagnetism
• Theoretical work on Alternating Current (AC)
• Tesla Coil – magnifying transmitter
• Polyphase system of electrical distribution
• Patent for an early form of radio
• Wireless electrical transfer
• Devices for lightning protection
• Concepts for electrical vehicles

Important contributions in

• Early models of radar
• Remote control
• Nuclear physics

Related pages

Inventions that changed the world  – Famous inventions that made a great difference to the progress of the world, including aluminium, the telephone and the printing press.

External pages

• Tesla Museum

Biography of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-American Inventor

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Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856–January 7, 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and futurist. As the holder of nearly 300 patents, Tesla is best known for his role in developing the modern three-phase alternating current (AC) electric power supply system and for his invention of the Tesla coil, an early advancement in the field of radio transmission.

During the 1880s, Tesla and Thomas Edison , inventor and champion of direct electrical current (DC), would become embattled in the “War of the Currents” over whether Tesla’s AC or Edison’s DC would become the standard current used in long-distance transmission of electrical power.

Fast Facts: Nikola Tesla

• Known For: Development of alternating current (AC) electrical power
• Born: July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia)
• Parents: Milutin Tesla and Đuka Tesla
• Died: January 7, 1943 in New York City, New York
• Education: Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria (1875)
• Patents: US381968A —Electro-magnetic motor, US512,340A —coil for electro-magnets
• Awards and Honors : Edison Medal (1917), Inventor’s Hall of Fame (1975)
• Notable Quote : “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”

Early Life and Education

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in the village of Smiljan in the Austrian Empire (now Croatia) to his Serbian father Milutin Tesla, an Eastern Orthodox priest, and his mother Đuka Tesla, who invented small household appliances and had the ability to memorize lengthy Serbian epic poems. Tesla credited his mother for his own interest in inventing and photographic memory. He had four siblings, a brother Dane, and sisters Angelina, Milka, and Marica. 

In 1870, Tesla started high school at the Higher Real Gymnasium in Karlovac, Austria. He recalled that his physics teacher’s demonstrations of electricity made him want “to know more of this wonderful force.” Able to do integral calculus in his head, Tesla completed high school in just three years, graduating in 1873.

Determined to pursue a career in engineering, Tesla enrolled at the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria, in 1875. It was here that Tesla studied a Gramme dynamo, an electrical generator that produces direct current. Observing that the dynamo functioned like an electric motor when the direction of its current was reversed, Tesla began thinking of ways this alternating current could be used in industrial applications. Though he never graduated—as was not uncommon then—Tesla posted excellent grades and was even given a letter from the dean of the technical faculty addressed to his father stating, “Your son is a star of first rank.”

Feeling that chastity would help him focus on his career, Tesla never married or had any known romantic relationships. In her 2001 book, “ Tesla: Man Out of Time ,” biographer Margaret Cheney writes that Tesla felt himself to be unworthy of women, considering them to be superior to him in every way. Later in life, however, he publicly expressed strong dislike what he called the “new woman,” women he felt were abandoning their femininity in an attempt to dominate men.

The Path to Alternating Current

In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary, where he gained practical experience as the chief electrician at the Central Telephone Exchange. In 1882, Tesla was hired by the Continental Edison Company in Paris where he worked in the emerging industry of installing the direct current-powered indoor incandescent lighting system patented by Thomas Edison in 1879. Impressed by Tesla’s mastery of engineering and physics, the company’s management soon had him designing improved versions of generating dynamos and motors and fixing problems at other Edison facilities throughout France and Germany.

When the manager of the Continental Edison facility in Paris was transferred back to the United States in 1884, he asked that Tesla be brought to the U.S. as well. In June 1884, Tesla emigrated to the United States and went to work at the Edison Machine Works in New York City, where Edison’s DC-based electrical lighting system was fast becoming the standard. Just six months later, Tesla quit Edison after a heated dispute over unpaid wages and bonuses. In his diary, Notebook from the Edison Machine Works: 1884-1885 , Tesla marked the end of the amicable relationship between the two great inventors. Across two pages, Tesla wrote in large letters, “Good By to the Edison Machine Works.”

By March 1885, Tesla, with the financial backing of businessmen Robert Lane and Benjamin Vail, started his own lighting utility company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. Instead of Edison’s incandescent lamp bulbs, Tesla’s company installed a DC-powered arc lighting system he had designed while working at Edison Machine Works. While Tesla’s arc light system was praised for its advanced features, his investors, Lane and Vail, had little interest in his ideas for perfecting and harnessing alternating current. In 1886, they abandoned Tesla’s company to start their own company. The move left Tesla penniless, forcing him to survive by taking electrical repair jobs and digging ditches for $2.00 per day. Of this period of hardship, Tesla would later recall, “My high education in various branches of science, mechanics, and literature seemed to me like a mockery.”

During his time of near destitution, Tesla’s resolve to prove the superiority of alternating current over Edison’s direct current grew even stronger.

Alternating Current and the Induction Motor

In April 1887, Tesla, along with his investors, Western Union telegraph superintendent Alfred S. Brown and attorney Charles F. Peck, founded the Tesla Electric Company in New York City for the purpose of developing new types of electric motors and generators.

Tesla soon developed a new type of electromagnetic induction motor that ran on alternating current. Patented in May 1888, Tesla’s motor proved to be simple, dependable, and not subject to the constant need for repairs that plagued direct current-driven motors at the time.

In July 1888, Tesla sold his patent for AC-powered motors to Westinghouse Electric Corporation, owned by electrical industry pioneer George Westinghouse. In the deal, which proved financially lucrative for Tesla, Westinghouse Electric got the rights to market Tesla’s AC motor and agreed to hire Tesla as a consultant.

With Westinghouse now backing AC and Edison backing DC, the stage was set for what would become known as “The War of the Currents.”

The War of the Currents: Tesla vs. Edison

Recognizing the economic and technical superiority of alternating current to his direct current for long-distance power distribution, Edison undertook an unprecedently aggressive public relations campaign to discredit AC as posing a deadly threat to the public—a force should never allow in their homes. Edison and his associates toured the U.S. presenting grizzly public demonstrations of animals being electrocuted with AC electricity. When New York State sought a faster, “more humane” alternative to hanging for executing condemned prisoners, Edison, though once a vocal opponent of capital punishment, recommended using AC-powered electrocution. In 1890, murderer William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in a Westinghouse AC generator-powered electric chair that had been secretly designed by one of Edison’s salesmen.

Despite his best efforts, Edison failed to discredit alternating current. In 1892, Westinghouse and Edison’s new company General Electric, competed head-to-head for the contract to supply electricity to the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. When Westinghouse ultimately won the contract, the fair served as a dazzling public display of Tesla’s AC system.

On the tails of their success at the World’s Fair, Tesla and Westinghouse won a historic contract to build the generators for a new hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls. In 1896, the power plant began delivering AC electricity to Buffalo, New York, 26 miles away. In his speech at the opening ceremony of the power plant, Tesla said of the accomplishment, “It signifies the subjugation of natural forces to the service of man, the discontinuance of barbarous methods, the relieving of millions from want and suffering.”

The success of the Niagara Falls power plant firmly established Tesla’s AC as the standard for the electric power industry, effectively ending the War of the Currents.

The Tesla Coil

In 1891, Tesla patented the Tesla coil, an electrical transformer circuit capable of producing high-voltage, low-current AC electricity. Though best-known today for its use in spectacular, lightening-spitting demonstrations of electricity, the Tesla coil was fundamental to the development of wireless communications. Still used in modern radio technology, the Tesla coil inductor was an essential part of many early radio transmission antennas.

Tesla would go on to use his Tesla coil in experiments with radio remote control, fluorescent lighting , x-rays , electromagnetism , and universal wireless power transmission. 

On July 30, 1891, the same year he patented his coil, the 35-year-old Tesla was sworn in as a naturalized United States citizen.

Radio Remote Control

At the 1898 Electrical Exposition in Boston’s Madison Square Gardens, Tesla demonstrated an invention he called a “telautomaton,” a three-foot-long, radio-controlled boat propelled by a small battery-powered motor and rudder. Members of the amazed crowd accused Tesla of using telepathy, a trained monkey, or pure magic to steer the boat.

Finding little consumer interest in radio-controlled devices, Tesla tried unsuccessfully to sell his “Teleautomatics” idea to the US Navy as a type of radio-controlled torpedo. However, during and after World War I (1914-1918), the militaries of many countries, including the United States incorporated it.

Wireless Power Transmission

From 1901 through 1906, Tesla spent most of his time and savings working on arguably his most ambitious, if a far-fetched, project—an electrical transmission system he believed could provide free energy and communications throughout the world without the need for wires. 

In 1901, with the backing of investors headed by financial giant J. P. Morgan, Tesla began building a power plant and massive power transmission tower at his

Wardenclyffe laboratory on Long Island, New York. Seizing on the then commonly-held belief that the Earth’s atmosphere conducted electricity, Tesla envisioned a globe-spanning network of power transmitting and receiving antennas suspended by balloons 30,000 feet (9,100 m) in the air. 

However, as Tesla’s project drug on, its sheer enormity caused his investors to doubt its plausibility and withdraw their support. With his rival, Guglielmo Marconi—enjoying the substantial financial support of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison—was making great advances in his own radio transmission developments, Tesla was forced to abandon his wireless power project in 1906.

Later Life and Death

In 1922, Tesla, deeply in debt from his failed wireless power project, was forced to leave the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City where he had been living since 1900, and move into the more-affordable St. Regis Hotel. While living at the St. Regis, Tesla took to feeding pigeons on the windowsill of his room, often bringing weak or injured birds into his room to nurse them back to health.

Of his love for one particular injured pigeon, Tesla would write, “I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”

By late 1923, the St. Regis evicted Tesla because of unpaid bills and complaints about the smell from keeping pigeons in his room. For the next decade, he would live in a series of hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills at each. Finally, in 1934, his former employer, Westinghouse Electric Company, began paying Tesla $125 per month as a “consulting fee,” as well as paying his rent at the Hotel New Yorker.

In 1937, at age 81, Tesla was knocked to the ground by a taxicab while crossing a street a few blocks from the New Yorker. Though he suffered a severely wrenched back and broken ribs, Tesla characteristically refused extended medical attention. While he survived the incident, the full extent of his injuries, from which he never fully recovered, was never known.

On January 7, 1943, Tesla died alone in his room at the New Yorker Hotel at the age of 86. The medical examiner listed the cause of death as coronary thrombosis, a heart attack.

On January 10, 1943, New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia delivered a eulogy to Tesla broadcast live over WNYC radio. On January 12, over 2,000 people attended Tesla’s funeral at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. Following the funeral, Tesla’s body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Ardsley, New York.

With the United States then fully engaged in World War II ., fears that the Austrian-born inventor might have been in possession of devices or designs helpful to Nazi Germany , drove the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seize Tesla’s possessions after his death. However, the FBI reported finding nothing of interest, concluding that since about 1928, Tesla’s work had been “primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character often concerned with the production and wireless transmission of power; but did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.”

In his 1944 book, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla , journalist, and historian John Joseph O’Neill wrote that Tesla claimed to have never slept more than two hours per night, “dozing” during the day instead to “recharge his batteries.” He was reported to have once spent 84 straight hours without sleep working in his laboratory.

It is believed that Tesla was granted around 300 patents worldwide for his inventions during his lifetime. While several of his patents remain unaccounted for or archived, he holds at least 278 known patents in 26 countries, mostly in the United States, Britain, and Canada. Tesla never attempted to patent many of his other inventions and ideas.

Today, Tesla’s legacy can be seen in multiple forms of popular culture, including movies, TV, video games and several genres of science fiction. For example, in the 2006 movie The Prestige, David Bowie portrays Tesla developing an amazing electro-replicating device for a magician. In Disney’s 2015 film Tomorrowland: A World Beyond, Tesla helps Thomas Edison, Gustave Eiffel , and Jules Verne discover a better future in an alternate dimension. And in the 2019 film The Current War, Tesla, played by Nicholas Hoult, squares off with Thomas Edison, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, in a history-based depiction of the war of the currents.

In 1917, Tesla was awarded the Edison Medal, the most coveted electrical prize in the United States, and in 1975, Tesla was inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame. In 1983, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Tesla. Most recently, in 2003, a group of investors headed by engineer and futurist Elon Musk founded Tesla Motors, a company dedicated to producing the first car fittingly powered totally by Tesla’s obsession—electricity.

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• “The War of the Currents: AC vs. DC Power.” U.S. Department of Energy , https://www.energy.gov/articles/war-currents-ac-vs-dc-power .
• Cheney, Margaret. “Tesla: Master of Lightning.” MetroBooks, 2001.
• Dickerson, Kelly.“Wireless Electricity? How the Tesla Coil Works.” LiveScience , July 10, 2014, https://www.livescience.com/46745-how-tesla-coil-works.html .
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• O’Neill, John J. “Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla.” Cosimo Classics, 2006.
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Nikola Tesla – The Genius Who Lit the World and Saw the Future

• by history tools
• November 19, 2023

Nikola Tesla was one of the most forward-thinking inventors and engineers in history whose pioneering work with electricity literally lit up the modern world. Though underappreciated in his own time, Tesla created hundreds of groundbreaking innovations that fundamentally advanced technology and changed the course of history. This complete biography explores Tesla’s storied life, brilliant vision, and lasting impact.

Introduction to the Master of Electricity

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia and displayed astonishing mental abilities and imagination from an early age. His lifelong passion for energy and electricity was evident even as a child when he created his own tiny waterwheels and turbines. Tesla went on to study math, physics, and mechanics in his teen years at advanced schools in Austria and Germany, showing great promise. After graduating, he worked with Thomas Edison on DC power projects for a period but soon struck out on his own to champion AC electricity instead.

Tesla constructed his first AC motors in the late 1880s and partnered with George Westinghouse to commercialize AC power. This set the stage for an epic technology battle against Edison called the “War of the Currents” which Tesla and Westinghouse ultimately won, ensuring AC became the global standard. Throughout his life, Tesla discovered groundbreaking electrical innovations that form the basis of modern power and communication systems. Though he died in obscurity, Tesla‘s inventionsUNDOUBTEDLY constituted some of the most important technological advances in history.

Early Life and Education – The Making of a Genius

Childhood of creativity and tragedy.

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10th, 1856 in Smiljan, Croatia. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox church and his mother Djuka Mandic was a homemaker and amateur inventor who created household appliances to help with daily tasks. Tesla inherited much of his inventive spirit from his mother. Tesla was one of five children, though his older brother died tragically in an accident when Nikola was five years old. The loss deeply impacted him and shaped his obsessive and eccentric personality later in life.

As a child, Tesla displayed astonishing creativity and visualization abilities. He could supposedly perform complex mathematical equations entirely in his mind without writing them down. Young Tesla was also captivated by thunderstorms and lightning. He made sketches of inventions like turbines and engines, even constructing a tiny waterwheel as a boy by observing the local river. His interests foreshadowed his future passion for electricity and engineering.

Immersive Education Shapes a Visionary Mind

In 1870, Tesla attended the Austrian Polytechnic School in Graz on an academic scholarship where he studied physics, mechanics, and mathematics. There, Tesla became fascinated with the Gramme dynamo which generated direct current electricity while also exploring fields like electrical engineering before they were widely taught. In his second year, Tesla stopped attending lectures and studied independently instead, astonishing professors with his brilliance but also worrying them with his unusual study habits and solitary nature.

After leaving Graz without a degree in 1878, Tesla contracted cholera and seemingly had intense visions during his recovery where he claimed to have unlocked the secrets of alternating current in a moment of insight. The following year, he attended the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague deepening his education even further and receiving a degree in physics in 1882. Tesla’s academic efforts clearly shaped his boundary-pushing innovations down the line.

Early Career – Harnessing the Magic of Electricity

Fresh out of school in 1882, Tesla began working for the Continental Edison Company in Paris. He focused on improving direct current generators and motors. At the time, Edison’s DC system was the only existing power system. After two years, Tesla departed for America to meet Edison himself and share his ideas.

Working With his Hero-turned-Rival, Edison

In 1884, Tesla arrived in New York and was hired to work directly for Thomas Edison. The two inventors got along well initially, and Edison was impressed by Tesla‘s skill. But things began deteriorating as Tesla pushed for more pay and Edison denied him. Edison reportedly offered $50,000 if Tesla could improve his inefficient direct current dynamos. Tesla succeeded but Edison dismissed the offer as a joke, causing bad blood between them.

Tesla left Edison‘s company after just one year of service. But this marked the start of Tesla’s pioneering research into alternating current electricity which would become his claim to fame. The messy split also sparked an intense rivalry with Edison that would culminate in the War of the Currents.

Discovering Alternating Current

In 1885, Tesla secured funding for his own startup focused on arc lighting systems and began developing his own AC motors and transformers. While working with high frequency alternators, he rediscovered the rotating magnetic field principle that essentially forms the basis of AC machinery today.

Tesla acquired several patents for AC motors, generators, and transformers in 1887-1888. His innovations relied on polyphase alternating currents rather than direct currents to distribute power more efficiently over long distances. Tesla gave acclaimed lectures to engineers describing the advantages of AC over DC. His ideas quickly caught the attention of American entrepreneur George Westinghouse.

Winning the War of the Currents – AC vs DC

George Westinghouse recognized the merits of Tesla’s AC approach and purchased his polyphase system patents in 1888 which included AC motors and transformers. This decision set the stage for a battle over the future of electricity between Westinghouse backing AC and Thomas Edison promoting DC. The stakes were enormous given the two incompatible electrical standards.

Edison wielded his broad patents and influence to block adoption of AC as much as possible, even staging public stunts to portray AC as dangerous. But thanks to Tesla’s innovations, Westinghouse prevailed when AC was chosen to power the Chicago World Fair of 1893 illuminating over 200,000 lightbulbs. Niagara Falls also chose AC to generate their groundbreaking hydroelectric plant in 1895. AC proved capable of transmitting power over vastly greater distances than DC which required power stations every mile.

This victory by Westinghouse demonstrated the superiority of AC power which was quickly adopted as the standard. To this day, our homes and cities are powered by Tesla‘s polyphase AC system showing its profound impact. Tesla‘s innovations literally electrified the modern world.

Trailblazing Inventions – Fueling the Future

In addition to revolutionizing electric power, Tesla discovered countless groundbreaking inventions over his lifetime that changed the future of technology and paved the way for modern wireless communication.

Radio and Wireless Communication

Tesla is credited by many to have been the first person to transmit and receive radio signals when he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat in 1898. While Guglielmo Marconi won the Nobel Prize for radio in 1909, Tesla had developed the underlying principles two years earlier. Tesla predicted the coming age of wireless communication, stating:

“As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influences that shape our destinies…we can never fathom the marvellous complexity of the causes behind the daily incidents that pass before our eyes and their altered relationships.” (Tesla 1926)

Tesla also patented various fundamental radio circuits between 1896-1900 that formed the basis for modern radio engineering. Though Marconi is often viewed as the inventor of radio, clearly Tesla‘s groundwork was pivotal.

Remote Control

In 1898 at Madison Square Garden, Tesla demonstrated a boat controlled wirelessly using radio-like technology to the amazement of crowds. This was one of the earliest implementations of remote control technology. Tesla described the system as being wireless like “invisible waves” and foresaw remote control being used in all kinds of mechanical devices and vehicles in the future.

Working with high voltage electricity and vacuum tubes, Tesla created some of the first X-ray images in 1895. They were produced earlier than Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays which garnered him the first Nobel Prize in Physics. Though Tesla did not win that prize, his innovations contributed to the field.

Electric Motors

Tesla invented the first AC induction motor in 1883 exploiting rotating magnetic fields generated by alternating current. Induction motors are brushless motors that provide high efficiency and operational speeds. They are the most common type of AC motors in use today powering appliances, tools, conveyors, and more.

Neon Lights

While investigating gases, Tesla created fluorescent light bulbs that lit up when electricity passed through them. This discovery led to the development of neon signs and lighting. Tesla‘s innovations literally brightened up the world.

Laser Vision

Tesla proposed using high voltage electricity and tiny metal particles to produce beams of concentrated light. Essentially, he had envisioned laser technology before the first working laser was invented in 1960. This showed Tesla’s thinking was decades ahead of his time.

A Futurist Stalled by Business Failures

In addition to his AC system and visionary inventions, Tesla conceived of even more ambitious plans that were simply impossible with the technology of his era. He envisioned worldwide wireless transmission of electricity essentially turning the earth into a giant conductor. In 1901, he began constructing his Wardenclyffe Tower facility on Long Island to demonstrate wireless power transmission on a large scale and provide telecommunications. But unable to secure adequate funding from industrialists like J.P Morgan, Tesla had to abandon the unfinished project in 1905.

Tesla articulated many forward-thinking concepts like wireless networks, self-driving vehicles, smart homes, and AI. But his poor business skills and inability to gain investors meant many of these revolutionary technologies could only be realized later by others. While a brilliant scientist, Tesla lacked the entrepreneurial abilities of businessmen like Edison or Westinghouse to commercialize his ideas. Tesla lived the final decade of his life in poverty relying on the kindness of friends until passing in 1943.

Legacy – Illuminating the Modern Age

Though Tesla‘s pioneering technologies were not always recognized during his lifetime, his inventions legitimately transformed the world and remain integral to our electrical infrastructure today. He was a pivotal figure whose work ranks among the most important innovations in history. Tesla undisputably provided the key infrastructure enabling modern society to flourish. He electrified the world and saw the future more clearly than almost anyone.

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The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

The eccentric inventor and modern Prometheus died 75 years ago, after a rags-to-riches to rags life

Richard Gunderman, The Conversation

Match the following figures – Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, Alfred Nobel and Nikola Tesla – with these biographical facts:

• Spoke eight languages
• Produced the first motor that ran on AC current
• Developed the underlying technology for wireless communication over long distances
• Held approximately 300 patents
• Claimed to have developed a “superweapon” that would end all war

The match for each, of course, is Tesla. Surprised? Most people have heard his name, but few know much about his place in modern science and technology .

The 75th anniversary of Tesla’s death on Jan. 7 provides a timely opportunity to review the life of a man who came from nowhere yet became world famous; claimed to be devoted solely to discovery but relished the role of a showman; attracted the attention of many women but never married; and generated ideas that transformed daily life and created multiple fortunes but died nearly penniless.

Early years

Tesla was born in Croatia on a summer night in 1856, during what he claimed was a lightning storm – which led the midwife to say, “He will be a child of the storm,” and his mother to counter prophetically, “No, of the light.”* As a student, Tesla displayed such remarkable abilities to calculate mathematical problems that teachers accused him of cheating. During his teen years, he fell seriously ill, recovering once his father abandoned his demand that Nikola become a priest and agreed he could attend engineering school instead.

Although an outstanding student, Tesla eventually withdrew from polytechnic school and ended up working for the  Continental Edison Company , where he focused on electrical lighting and motors. Wishing to meet Edison himself, Tesla immigrated to the U.S. in 1884, and he later claimed he was offered the sum of US$50,000 if he could solve a series of engineering problems Edison’s company faced. Having achieved the feat, Tesla said he was then told that the offer had just been a joke, and he left the company after six months.

Tesla then developed a relationship with two businessmen that led to the founding of  Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing . He filed a number of electrical patents, which he assigned to the company. When his partners decided that they wanted to focus strictly on supplying electricity, they took the company’s intellectual property and founded another firm, leaving Tesla with nothing.

Tesla reported that he then  worked as a ditch digger  for $2 a day, tortured by the sense that his great talent and education were going to waste.

Success as an inventor

In 1887, Tesla met two investors who agreed to back the formation of the Tesla Electric Company. He set up a laboratory in Manhattan, where he developed the  alternating current induction motor , which solved a number of technical problems that had bedeviled other designs. When Tesla demonstrated his device at an engineering meeting, the Westinghouse Company made arrangements to license the technology, providing an upfront payment and royalties on each horsepower generated.

The so-called “ War of the Currents ” was raging in the late 1880s. Thomas Edison promoted direct current, asserting that it was safer than AC. George Westinghouse backed AC, since it could transmit power over long distances. Because the two were undercutting each other’s prices, Westinghouse lacked capital. He explained the difficulty and asked Tesla to sell his patents to him for a single lump sum, to which Tesla agreed, forgoing what would have been a vast fortune had he held on to them.

With the  World’s Columbian Exposition  of 1893 looming in Chicago, Westinghouse asked Tesla to help supply power; they’d have a huge platform for demonstrating the merits of AC. Tesla helped the fair illuminate more light bulbs than could be found in the entire city of Chicago, and wowed audiences with a variety of wonders, including an electric light that required no wires. Later Tesla also helped Westinghouse win a contract to generate electrical power at  Niagara Falls , helping to build the first large-scale AC power plant in the world.

Challenges along the way

Tesla encountered many obstacles. In 1895, his Manhattan laboratory was devastated by a fire, which destroyed his notes and prototypes. At Madison Square Garden in 1898, he demonstrated  wireless control  of a boat, a stunt that many branded a hoax. Soon after he turned his attention to the wireless transmission of electric power. He believed that his system could not only distribute electricity around the globe but also provide for worldwide wireless communication.

Seeking to test his ideas, Tesla built a laboratory in  Colorado Springs . There he once drew so much power that he caused a regional power outage. He also detected signals that he claimed emanated from an extraterrestrial source. In 1901 Tesla persuaded J.P. Morgan to invest in the construction of a  tower on Long Island  that he believed would vindicate his plan to electrify the world. Yet Tesla’s dream did not materialize, and Morgan soon withdrew funding.

In 1909,  Marconi received the Nobel Prize  for the development of radio. In 1915, Tesla unsuccessfully sued Marconi, claiming infringement on his patents. That same year,  it was rumored  that Edison and Tesla would share the Nobel Prize, but it didn’t happen. Unsubstantiated speculation suggested their mutual animosity was the cause. However, Tesla did receive numerous honors and awards over his life, including, ironically, the American Institute of Electrical Engineers  Edison Medal .

A singular man

Tesla was a  remarkable person . He said that he had a photographic memory, which helped him memorize whole books and speak eight languages. He also claimed that many of his best ideas came to him in a flash, and that he saw detailed pictures of many of his inventions in his mind before he ever set about constructing prototypes. As a result, he didn’t initially prepare drawings and plans for many of his devices.

The 6-foot-2-inch Tesla cut a dashing figure and was popular with women, though he never married, claiming that his  celibacy played an important role in his creativity . Perhaps because of his nearly fatal illness as a teenager, he feared germs and practiced very strict hygiene, likely a barrier to the development of interpersonal relationships. He also exhibited unusual phobias, such as an aversion to pearls, which led him to refuse to speak to any woman wearing them.

Tesla held that his greatest ideas came to him in solitude. Yet he was no hermit, socializing with many of the most  famous people of his day  at elegant dinner parties he hosted. Mark Twain frequented his laboratory and promoted some of his inventions. Tesla enjoyed a reputation as not only a great engineer and inventor but also a philosopher, poet and connoisseur. On his 75th birthday he received a congratulatory letter from Einstein and was featured on the cover of Time magazine.

Tesla’s last years

In the popular imagination, Tesla played the part of a mad scientist . He claimed that he had developed a motor that ran on cosmic rays; that he was working on a new non-Einsteinian physics that would supply a new form of energy; that he had discovered a new technique for photographing thoughts; and that he had developed a new ray, alternately labeled the death ray and the peace ray, with vastly greater military potential than Nobel’s munitions.

His money long gone, Tesla spent his later years moving from place to place, leaving behind unpaid bills. Eventually, he settled in at a New York hotel, where his rent was paid by Westinghouse. Always living alone, he frequented the local park, where he was regularly seen feeding and tending to the pigeons , with which he claimed to share a special affinity. On the morning of Jan. 7, 1943, he was found dead in his room by a hotel maid at age 86.

Today the name Tesla is still very much in circulation. The airport in Belgrade bears his name, as does the world’s best-known electric car, and the magnetic field strength of MRI scanners is measured in Teslas. Tesla was a real-life Prometheus: the mythical Greek titan who raided heaven to bring fire to mankind, yet in punishment was chained to a rock where each day an eagle ate his liver. Tesla scaled great heights to bring lightning down to earth, yet his rare cast of mind and uncommon habits eventually led to his downfall, leaving him nearly penniless and alone.

*Editor's Note, August 29, 2019: This article has been updated to correct Tesla's birthplace. Though he was of Serbian ethnicity, he was born in present day Croatia.

Richard Gunderman, Chancellor's Professor of Medicine, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy, Indiana University

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Nikola Tesla: Biography, Inventions & Quotes

Nikola Tesla is often called one of history’s most important inventors, one whose discoveries in the field of electricity were way ahead of his time and continue to influence technology today. Despite his accomplishments, however, Tesla died penniless and without the accolades that would he would ultimately earn over a century later.

The “genius who lit the world” is now commemorated with an electrical unit called the Tesla, has a place in the inventor’s hall of fame, streets, statues, and a prestigious engineer’s award in his name, but in life he wasn’t always so successful.

Brilliant scientist, terrible businessman

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in a town called Smiljan, today part of Croatia but then located within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a priest and his mother, despite not having any formal education, tinkered in machinery and was known for having a spectacular memory.

Tesla’s career as an inventor began early; while working at the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest, at the age of just 26, he is reported to have first sketched out the principles for a rotating magnetic field — an important idea still used in many electromechanical devices. This major achievement laid the groundwork for many of his future inventions, including the alternating current motor and ultimately led him to New York City in 1884, lured by Thomas Edison and his groundbreaking engineering factory, Edison Machine Works.

It is often said that as brilliant a scientist as Tesla was, he was an equally terrible businessman, unable (or possibly unwilling) to see the commercial value behind his ideas. Thomas Edison was both an inventor and a business mogul focused on the bottom line, and he often clashed with Tesla over methods and ideology. It was also unlikely, perhaps, that two minds so brilliant could coexist in peace for very long and, indeed, Tesla quit Edison Machine Works only a year later.

Tesla’s creativity was given free rein at the new laboratory he established, Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing, where he experimented with early X-ray technology, electrical resonance, arc lamps and other ideas. Moves to Colorado and then back to New York coincided with other great scientific feats, including advances in turbine science, the installation of the first hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls and, most importantly, the perfection of his alternating current system.

Through it all, the compulsive, eccentric and often sensational Tesla provided terrific sound bites for reporters, speaking frequently to the press about new, futuristic ideas up to a few years before his death, when he became a recluse. Tesla died in 1943, broke and alone in a New York City hotel room.

Tesla’s legacy has experienced a resurgence of sorts in recent years, thanks to a handful of supporters who have popularized his work in the media, in the hopes of having a Nikola Tesla science museum built on the grounds of a former laboratory on Long Island, New York.

Innumerable patents

The exact number of patents held by Tesla is disputed, as some likely remain undiscovered, historians believe. He is thought to be responsible for at least 300 inventions (many related to each other), in addition to countless unpatented ideas that he developed over the course of his career.

Alternating current

Perhaps Tesla’s most famous and important idea, alternating current (AC), was an answer to his old boss Edison’s inefficient — as Tesla put it — use of direct current (DC) in the new electric age. While DC power stations sent electricity flowing in one direction in a straight line, alternating currents change direction quickly, and could do so at a much higher voltage.

Indeed, Edison’s power lines that crisscrossed the Atlantic seaboard were short and weak due to DC, while AC was able to send electricity much farther afield. Though Thomas Edison had more resources and an established reputation, Tesla’s AC power grids eventually became the norm. Several dozen of Tesla’s patents were related to alternating current science.

The Tesla Coil

Since named for its inventor, this impressive machine transforms energy into extremely high voltage charges, creating powerful electrical fields capable of producing spectacular electrical arcs. Besides the lightning-bolt shows they can put on, Tesla Coils had very practical applications in wireless radio technology and some medical devices. Tesla experimented with his coils in the last years of the 19th century.

The true father of radio

Tesla tinkered with radio waves as early as 1892, debuting a radio wave-controlled boat in 1898 with great fanfare at an electrical exhibition at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Expanding on the technology, he patented more than a dozen ideas related to radio communication, before Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi leapt ahead of a financially unstable Tesla and completed the first transatlantic radio transmission (a bit of Morse code, sent from England to Newfoundland) on the back of Tesla’s science. Marconi and Tesla’s battle for intellectual recognition waged for decades before the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately revoked some of Marconi’s patents in 1943, restoring Tesla as the father of radio, at least legally.

Tesla quotes

“Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.” — "A Visit to Nikola Tesla" by Dragislav L. Petković in Politika (April 1927)

“The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.” — “Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” — “Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World" in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

Further reading:

• Tesla Memorial Society

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• Electrical Engineering: Biographies

Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943)

Eccentric scientific genius whose inventions in the field of electrical apparatus stemmed from inspirations received in extraordinary visions of a paranormal character. Unlike most innovators in the fields of engineering and electricity, his inventions did not require patient experiment and trial-and-error testing of models. The ideas flashed into his mind as working units, complete to the final details of component design and size. For example, as a young student of electrical engineering and physics, at a time when the concept of alternating current was considered a fallacy of the perpetual motion type, he knew that he could solve this problem. After only a few years of consideration of the problem, the complete detailed vision of an alternating current motor using a rotating magnetic field came to him while he gazed at a sunset.

He was born in July 10, 1856, in the village of Similjan in the Austro-Hungarian border area of Lika (now in Slovenia ). Even as a boy, he was inventive; at the age of nine he constructed a 16-bug power motor by harnessing June bugs to a thin wooden wheel. He was educated at an elementary school , then had four years at Lower Realschule, Gospic, Lika, which was followed by three years at the Higher Realschule, Carlstadt, Croatia . He graduated in 1873. Tesla was a student for four years at the Polytechnic School, Gratz, Austria , studying mathematics, physics, and mechanics. Afterward he enrolled in philosophy studies for two years at the University of Prague , Bohemia (now the capital of the Czech Republic ).

He commenced his career as an inventor in Budapest , Hungary , in 1881. There he constructed a telephone repeater and engaged in various branches of engineering and manufacture. In 1884 he immigrated to the United States , later becoming a naturalized citizen. For nearly a year he worked for inventor Thomas A. Edison, who was impressed by his skill and hard work, but the two men were diametrically opposed in temperament and method. Tesla was a visionary who solved problems in a flash of insight, whereas Edison relied on patient trial-and-error in practical experiments. Tesla insisted on the superiority of alternating current and its applications, whereas Edison believed it a dead end and championed direct current . Tesla parted company with Edison after being promised $50,000 for improving the design and efficiency of dynamos. When Tesla solved the problem and asked for the money, Edison said he was only joking. Tesla immediately resigned.

His salary at the Edison Company had been modest. For the next two years he had a difficult time, but in 1887 he was backed to form the Tesla Electric Company in New York . He was now able to construct the alternating current machines he had visualized earlier.

The Tesla system made it possible to supply electricity economically over distances of hundreds of miles, instead of the short distances of the Edison direct current powerhouses. Tesla's demonstrations made a great impression on another inventor, George Westinghouse of the Westinghouse Electric Company of Pittsburgh . Westinghouse paid Tesla $1 million for rights on his alternating current system, comprising some 40 patents, with a contract additionally stipulating a royalty of a dollar per horsepower.

In attempting to span the continent with an alternating current system, Westinghouse ran into financial difficulties; his own backers insisted that he renounce his royalty contract to Tesla, otherwise they would withdraw support. When Westinghouse explained his difficulty to Tesla, Tesla recalled how Westinghouse had believed in him. In a magnanimous gesture Tesla tore up his contract, thereby sacrificing some $12 million in unpaid royalties.

Tesla went on to invent new apparatus involving original principles. He was responsible for many important innovations: the system of electricity conversion and distribution by oscillatory dischargers, generators of high frequency current; the Tesla coil or transformer, a system of wireless transmission of intelligence; mechanical oscillators and generators of electrical oscillation; research and discoveries in radiation, material streams, and emanations; and high-potential magnifying transmitting. One of his most spectacular achievements was harnessing the water power of Niagara Falls . In 1895 the Westinghouse Electric Company installed a gigantic hydroelectric project, using the Tesla polyphase system of alternating current.

Tesla opened up many important avenues of scientific development and has rarely been properly acknowledged by later historians. His experiments with electromagnetic waves formed the basis of the development of radio. He stated that cosmic rays were responsible for the radioactivity of radium, thorium, and uranium and predicted that other substances would be made radioactive by bombardment. He thus anticipated the basic principles of X-ray apparatus and the electron microscope. In his work with wireless controlled automata he anticipated radio-controlled rocket missiles.

Not surprisingly, he had one or two blind spots. He did not accept for many years that atomic fission would produce energy. He misunderstood the mechanism of vision; he believed that visual images perceived by the brain were returned to the retina of the eye, and might be amplified or projected. However, there was no mistaking his own extraordinary visionary faculty and the discoveries associated with it. In an article titled "Making Your Imagination Work For You," he wrote:

"During my boyhood I had suffered from a peculiar affliction due to the appearance of images, which were often accompanied by strong flashes of light … . Then I began to take mental excursions beyond the small world of my actual knowledge. Day and night, in imagination, I went on journeys — saw new places, cities, countries, and all the time I tried hard to make these imaginary things very sharp and clear in my mind.

"This I did constantly until I was 17, when my thoughts turned seriously to invention. Then, to my delight, I found I could visualize with the greatest facility. I needed no models, drawings, or experiments. I could picture them all in my head.

"Here, in brief, is my own method: After experiencing a desire to invent a particular thing, I may go on for months or years with the idea in the back of my head. Whenever I feel like it, I roam around in my imagination and think about the problem without any deliberate concentration. This is a period of incubation.

"There follows a period of direct effort. I choose carefully the possible solutions of the problem I am considering, and gradually center my mind on a narrowed field of investigation. Now, when I am deliberately thinking of the problem in its specific features, I may begin to feel that I am going to get the solution. And the wonderful thing is, that if I do feel this way, then I know I have really solved the problem and shall get what I am after.

"The feeling is as convincing to me as though I already had solved it. I have come to the conclusion that at this stage the actual solution is in my mind subconsciously, though it may be a long time before I am aware of it consciously.

"Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally. In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device. Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.

"The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In 30 years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor , the vacuum tube wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way."

Tesla's friend and biographer John J. O'Neill stated that Tesla "was unquestionably an abnormal individual, and of a type that does have what are known as 'psychic experiences.' He was emphatic in his denial that he ever had experiences of that sort; yet he has related incidents that clearly belong in the psychic category." According to O'Neill, Tesla was fearful that admitting to having psychic experiences might cause him to be misunderstood as supporting Spiritualism or theories that something operates in life other than matter and energy.

In his later years, Tesla suffered financial difficulties and was unable to construct some of his most ambitious inventions. He claimed he had discovered an inexhaustible source of energy that could be transmitted anywhere in the world without wires or loss of power. He correctly foresaw that at some future time "it will be possible for nations to fight without armies, ships, or guns by weapons far more terrible, to the destructive action and range of which there is virtually no limit." Tesla is credited with having discovered a protective radiation principle of the kind popularly termed "death ray."

In 1912 he refused the Nobel Prize because it was to be awarded jointly to himself and Thomas A. Edison; instead the award went to the Swedish scientist Gustav Dalen.

In an unpublished article entitled "Man's Greatest Achievement" (cited in O'Neill's biographical Prodigal Genius, 1968), Telsa writes:

"Long ago he [the human being] recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the Akasa or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never ending cycles, all things and phenomena … "

This is the language of Theosophy or Hindu metaphysics. Tesla's states of higher consciousness, achieved by intense concentration and a celibate life, resemble Hindu concepts of cosmic energy in the universe, aroused in the human body under the name of kundalini through yoga disciplines and meditation, resulting in expanded consciousness and access to an infinity of cosmic intelligence.

Tesla died in poverty in New York on January 7, 1943. Soon afterward, FBI operatives opened the safe in his room and took away papers reputedly containing details of a secret invention of possible value in warfare.

O'Neill, John J. Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla . London: Neville Spearman, 1968. Reprint, London: Granada , 1980.

Peat, David. In Search of Nikola Tesla . Bath, England : Ash-grove Press, 1983.

Tesla, Nikola. "Making Your Imagination Work For You." American Magazine (April 1921).

Wilson, Colin, ed. Men of Mystery. London: W. H. Allen, 1977.

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Tesla, Nikola

Tesla, nikola.

( b. Smiljan, Croatia [now Yugoslavia], 10 July 1856; d. New York , N.Y., 7 January 1943)

physics, electrical engineering .

Tesla was born of Serbian parents in a mountain village that was then part of Austria-Hungary. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a clergyman of the Serbian Orthodox church, while his mother, Djuka Mandić, although illiterate, was a skillful inventor of home and farm implements. Tesla himself was intended for the clergy, but early developed a taste for mathematics and science. When he was seven, the family moved to Gospić, where he finished grammar school and graduated from the Real-Gymnasium. He then attended the Higher Real-Gymnasium in Karlovac and, upon graduation, persuaded his father to let him enter the Joanneum, the polytechnical college of Graz, Austria.

It was while he was a student in Graz that Tesla’s attention was first drawn to problems of the induction motor. His observation that a Gramme dynamo that was being run as a motor in a classroom demonstration sparked badly between its commutator and brushes led him to suggest that a motor without a commutator might be devised–an idea that his professor ridiculed. Nothing daunted, Tesla continued to develop the idea. In 1879 he left Graz to enroll at the University of Prague, but left without taking a degree when his father died. He then held a number of jobs; in 1881 he went to Budapest to work for the new telephone company there. During his year there he thought of the principle of the rotating magnetic field, upon which all polyphase induction motors are based. The discovery, by his own account, was instantaneous, complete, and intuitive. Walking in a park with a friend, Antony Szigety, Tesla was moved to recite a passage from Goethe’s Faust (of which he had the whole by heart) when “. . . the idea came like a lightning flash. In an instant I saw it all, and drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams which were illustrated in my fundamental patents of May, 1888, and which Szigety understood perfectly.” It was, however, some time before he was able to exploit his invention commercially.

In 1882 Tesla went to Paris as an engineer with the Continental Edison Company. The following year he was sent to Strasbourg to repair an electric plant, and while there built a crude prototype of his motor. He thus experienced “the supreme satisfaction of seeing for the first time rotation effected by alternating currents without commutator.” In 1884 he went to the United States to promote his new alternating-current motor. He arrived in New York with a working knowledge of a dozen languages, a book of poetry, four cents, and an introduction to Thomas Edison. Although Edison was totally committed to direct current , he gave Tesla a job, and for a year Tesla supported himself redesigning direct-current dynamos for the Edison Machine Works. By 1885 he had left Edison and had gone into business developing and promoting an industrial arc lamp. He was forced out of the company when production began, however, and for a time lived precariously, doing odd jobs and day labor. Within two years he was back on his feet, and had formed his own laboratory for the development of his alternating-current motor.

By 1888 Tesla had obtained patents on a whole polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors; the rights to these were bought in that year by George Westinghouse , and the “battle of the currents” was begun. Although Edison continued to espouse direct current , Tesla’s system triumphed to make possible the first large-scale harnessing of Niagara Falls and to provide the basis for the whole modern electric-power industry. In 1889 Tesla became an American citizen.

During the next few years Tesla worked in his New York laboratories on a wide variety of projects. He was very successful, particularly in his invention of the Tesla coil, an air-core transformer, and in his further research on high-frequency currents. In 1891 he lectured on his high-frequency devices to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and this lecture, coupled with a spectacular demonstration of these apparatuses, made him famous. He repeated his performance in Europe, to great acclaim, and enjoyed international celebrity.

In 1893 the Chicago World Columbian Exposition was lighted by means of Tesla’s system and work was begun on the installation of power machinery at Niagara Falls . In a lecture-demonstration given in St. Louis in the same year–two years before Marconi’s first experiments–Tesla also predicted wireless communication; the apparatus that he employed contained all the elements of spark and continuous wave that were incorporated into radio transmitters before the advent of the vacuum tube . Engrossed as he was with the transmission of substantial amounts of power, however, he almost perversely rejected the notion of transmission by Hertzian waves, which he considered to be wasteful of energy. He thus proposed wierless communication by actual conduction of electricity through natural media, and, working in Colorado Springs , Colorado, in 1899–1900, proved the earth to be a conductor. In a further series of experiments. Tesla produced artificial lightning in flashes of millions of volts that were up to 135 feet long–a feat that has never been equaled. It was at his Colorado laboratory, too, that Tesla, who had become increasingly withdrawn and eccentric ever since the death of his mother in 1892, announced that he had received signals from foreign planets, a statement that was greeted with some skepticism.

Tesla’s vision always embraced the widest applications of his discoveries. Of his wireless system, he wrote in 1900: “I have no doubt that it will prove very efficient in enlightening the masses, particularly in still uncivilized countries and less accessible regions, and that it will add materially to general safety, comfort and convenience, and maintenance of peaceful relations.” With the financial backing of J. P. Morgan, he began work on a worldwide communications system, and a 200–foot transmission tower was constructed at Shoreham, on Long Island . By 1905, however, Morgan had withdrawn his support, and the project came to an end. The tower was destroyed by dynamite, under mysterious circumstances, in 1914.

Although he continued to enjoy a measure of fame, Tesla made little money from his inventions, and became increasingly poor during the last decades of his life. His name continued to flourish before the public, however, since he was a reliable source for scientific prophecy, and exploited as such in the popular press. While he gave demonstrations of some of his earlier marvels–his exhibition of a radio–guided teleautomatic boat filled Madison Square Garden in 1898–he became oracular in his later years and, for example, offered no proof of the potent “death–ray” that he announced in 1934, on his seventy–eighth birthday. Nonetheless, Tesla continued to invent devices of commercial and scientific worth, from which, since he seldom bothered to seek a patent, he received little profit.

Tesla was a complete recluse in his last years, living in a series of New York hotel rooms with only pigeons for company. At his death his papers and notes were seized by the Alien Property office; they are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, a country in which he is revered as a national hero.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. The greatest part of Tesla’s notes and correspondence is in the Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade, Yugoslavia. That institution has published a selection of source materials, in English, as Leland I. Anderson, ed., Nikola Tesla, 1856–1943: Lectures, Patents, Articles (Belgrade, 1956), which includes an autobiographical sketch; another autobiographical segment is “Some Personal Recollections,” in Scientific American (June, 1915).

II. Secondary Literature. A commemorative volume of speeches made on the occasion of the centenary of Tesla’s birth is A Tribute to Nikola Tesla: Presented in Articles, Letters, Documents (Belgrade, 1961). Full biographies are Inez Hunt and Wanetta W. Draper, Lightning in His Hand: The Life Story of Nikola Tesla (Denver, 1964); and John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (New York, 1944). Shorter treatments include Haraden Pratt, “Nikola Tesla, 1856–1943,” in Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, 44 (1956), 1106–1108; and Kenneth M. Swezey, “Nikola Tesla, Pathfinder of the Electrical Age,” in Electrical Engineering, 75 (1956), 786–790; and “Nikola Tesla,” in Science, 127 (1958), 1147–1159.

Kenneth M. Swezey

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Nikola Tesla

The Croatian-American inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) invented the induction motor and the transformer known as the Tesla coil and discovered the rotating magnetic field principle.

Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia on July 9, 1856. He attended the Polytechnic School at Graz for 4 years and spent a year at the University of Prague (1879-1880). His first employment was in a government telegraph engineering office in Budapest, where he made his first invention, a telephone repeater, and conceived the idea of a rotating magnetic field. He subsequently worked in Paris and Strasbourg.

In 1884 Tesla went to the United States . He was associated briefly with Thomas Edison in New Jersey , where he designed new dynamos, but the two had a salary misunderstanding and Tesla withdrew. After a difficult period, during which Tesla invented but lost his rights to an arc-lighting system, he established his own laboratory in New York City in 1887.

A controversy between alternating-current and direct-current advocates raged in the 1880s and 1890s, featuring Tesla and Edison as leaders in the rival camps. The advantages of the polyphase alternating-current system, as developed by Tesla, soon became apparent, however, particularly for long-distance power transmission. Assisted by George Westinghouse , an early convert to alternating current and Tesla's employer for a year, the system was adopted in the early 1890s for both a major power project ( Niagara Falls ) and a major lighting project (the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition).

Brilliant and eccentric, Tesla was then at the peak of his inventive powers. He produced in rapid succession the induction motor (utilizing his rotating magnetic field principle) and other electrical motors, new forms of generators and transformers, and a system for alternating-current power transmission; later he invented the Tesla coil and made basic discoveries concerning wireless communication. Tesla also invented fluorescent lights and a new type of steam turbine, and he became increasingly intrigued with the wireless transmission of power.

Tesla, a strikingly handsome, tall, slender man and a captivating public lecturer, was an unorthodox, almost mystical person; he exhibited unusual powers of perception and forecasting, but his life was increasingly that of a shy, lonely recluse. He refused to accept the 1912 Nobel Prize offered jointly to him and Edison and reluctantly accepted the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1917. He died in New York City on Jan. 7, 1943, the holder of more than 700 patents.

Further Reading

The outstanding biography of Tesla is John J. O'Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (1944). O'Neill's portrait is sensitive and sympathetic, if somewhat metaphysical, but it describes Tesla's electrical contributions thoroughly. Two popular accounts are Arthur J. Beckhard, Electrical Genius: Nikola Tesla (1959), and Inez Hunt and Wanetta W. Draper, Lightning in His Hand (1964).

Additional Sources

Cheney, Margaret, Tesla, man out of time, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1981.

Nikola Tesla: life and work of a genius, Belgrade: Yugoslav Society for the Promotion of Scientific Knowledge Nikola Tesla, 1976.

Seifer, Marc, Wizard: the life and times of Nikola Tesla, Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Pub., 1996.

Tesla, Nikola, The fantastic inventions of Nikola Tesla, Stelle, Ill.: Adventures Unlimiteds, 1993.

Tesla, Nikola, My inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla, Williston, Vt.: Hart Bros., 1982. □

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Croatian physicist and electrical engineer who invented a number of important electrical devices, including the AC motor and generator. Tesla was born in Croatia and moved to the United States in 1884, where he worked in Thomas Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey . Leaving the Edison Works to pursue his own work, Tesla was instrumental in developing alternating current as a more efficient means of electrical power. He was memorialized with the unit of magnetic force, the tesla.

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Nikola Tesla summary

Nikola Tesla , (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Lika, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died Jan. 7, 1943, New York, N.Y., U.S.), Serbian U.S. inventor and researcher. He studied in Austria and Bohemia and worked in Paris before coming to the U.S. in 1884. He worked for Thomas Alva Edison and George Westinghouse but preferred independent research. His inventions made possible the production and distribution of alternating-current electric power. He invented an induction coil that is still widely used in radio technology, the Tesla coil (1891); his system was used by Westinghouse to light the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Tesla established an electric power station at Niagara Falls that delivered power to Buffalo, N.Y., by 1896. His research also included work on a carbon button lamp and on the power of electrical resonance. He discovered terrestrial stationary waves (1899–1900), proving that Earth is a conductor. Due to lack of funds, many of his ideas remained only in his notebooks, which are still examined by enthusiasts for inventive clues.

1856 - 1943

Nikola Tesla

A famous name in engineering and physics, the legend of Nikola Tesla seems to grow larger with each passing year as history looks back at his life and series of inventions. He was responsible for numerous breakthroughs in how to use electrical power and is the inventor of the first-ever alternating current (AC) motor. He is well-known for his rival in the electricity business, Thomas Edison , and for the fact that despite his brilliance, financial success for his inventions failed to follow his brilliance in the laboratory. Born in the middle of the 19th century in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, his father was a Serbian Orthodox priest while his mother managed the family farm. With an infinity for hard facts, Tesla studied both physics and math at the Technical University of Graz, and went on to study philosophy at the University of Prague. He was on a walk in his mid-20s when he first envisioned the idea of a brushless AC motor , stopping on the path to sketch what its rotating electromagnets might look like in the sand along the way. In order to get more experience and exposure, he moved to Paris in 1884 and soon had a job doing repair work at direct current (DC) power plants with the Continental Edison Company, a French firm that had been established that same year by the legendary American inventor Thomas Edison. Edison was impressed by the younger engineer and once promised him, apparently in jest, that he would pay Tesla $50,000 for an improved design to Edison’s DC dynamos. After several months, Tesla achieved success, showed it to Edison, asked for his money, and was told it had been a joke. Not long after that, he quit working for Edison and founded the Tesla Electric Light Company, but it struggled. He continued his research into the alternating current and over the next few years racked up more than 30 patents for the technology. While speaking to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, he crossed paths with fellow inventor George Westinghouse, a close competitor of Edison’s. Tesla went to work for Westinghouse, producing various inventions and doing well financially as a result. He invented high-voltage transformers, improved on existing electric light designs, and earned more patents for his work on meters and electric oscillators. He and Westinghouse installed AC generators at Niagara Falls, effectively creating the world’s first power station. He also dabbled in radio technology a few years before Guglielmo was credited for inventing it. After his lab burned in 1895, destroying decades of work, Tesla moved to Colorado briefly, then returned to New York to partner with financial giant J.P. Morgan. Morgan bankrolled Tesla’s attempts to build a giant tower in Long Island that would serve as a global communications network. But the funding ran out and the deal went south. Tesla retreated to his permanent home at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, working on further experiments including radio-powered remote controls and X-ray technology. He began to slip into mental illness and passed away at the age of 86 in the Hotel New Yorker. Posthumously he was given credit for many of the radio patents that had originally been granted to Guglielmo.

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Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American engineer and inventor who is highly regarded in energy history for his development of alternating current (AC) electrical systems. He also made extraordinary contributions in the fields of electromagnetism and wireless radio communications.

Early Life and Education:

Nikola Tesla was born in the Croatian town of Smiljan (Austrian Empire) on 10 July in 1856 to a priest father. He studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz and later attended the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague. Unfortunately his father died early, and he had to leave the university after completing only one term.

Tesla accepted a job under Tivadar Puskás in a Budapest telegraph company in 1880. He was later promoted to chief electrician and later engineer for the company. He later moved to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company as an engineer.

Contributions and Achievements:

After moving to New York, United States, Tesla worked for Thomas Alva Edison, but the two did not get along well. He started working with George Westinghouse in 1885. There, he devised an electrical distribution system that employed alternating current (AC).

Tesla made public the first successful wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891.

Probably Tesla’s most important contribution to energy history is the use of alternating current (AC). The Westinghouse Electric Company was the first to implement this technology by lighting the World Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It proved to be a more efficient and effective method compared to the direct current (DC) system of Edison, to transport electricity in a grid. The technology quickly became the basis for most modern electricity distribution systems. Besides the AC system, Tesla helped in the development of generators and turbine design. The earliest demonstration of fluorescent lighting was also his accomplishment.

Later Life and Death:

Nikola Tesla continued his research work on electricity generation and turbine design in his later life. Even at 81, he claimed to have completed a “dynamic theory of gravity” – something which was never published. He died in New York City of a heart thrombus on 7 January 1943. He was 86 years old.

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The fascinating life of Nikola Tesla, the genius who electrified the world and dreamed up death rays

July 10 is the birthday of Nikola Tesla, who would have been 161 years old today.

It's a good time to celebrate the life of the Serbian-American engineer and physicist: Without Tesla, you might not be able to affordably power your home, let alone read this sentence.

Tesla filed more than 300 patents during his 86 years of life, and his inventions helped pave the way for alternating current (AC), electric motors, radios, fluorescent lights, lasers, and remote controls, among many other things.

Some of his ideas later in life, however, seem strange even now. He once described plans for a death ray, for example, and alluded to another idea for an impenetrable "wall of force" to block and destroy foreign invasions.

Here's a glimpse into the remarkable life of one of history's most important — and eccentric — geniuses.

Tanya Lewis wrote a previous version of this story.

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan in the Austo-Hungarian Empire (modern-day Croatia).

His father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian Orthodox Priest and his mother, Djuka Mandic, was an inventor of household appliances.

Source: Tesla Society

In college, Tesla was initially interested in studying physics and mathematics, but soon became fascinated by electricity.

He attended the Realschule, Karlstadt in 1873, the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria and the University of Prague. He took a job as an electrical engineer at a telephone company in Budapest in 1881.

He developed the concept of an induction motor while walking in a park with a friend.

Later, while he was in Strasbourg, France in 1883, he built a prototype of the induction motor (an AC motor powered by electromagnetic induction) and tested it successfully. Since he couldn't get anyone in Europe interested in it, Tesla came to the United States to work for Thomas Edison in New York.

Tesla's childhood dream was to harness the power of Niagara Falls.

In 1895, he designed the first hydroelectric power plant in the Falls, a major victory for alternating current. A statue was later erected on Goat Island in Tesla's honor.

For all his brilliance, Tesla was pretty eccentric. At one point, he stopped eating solid foods.

He ate honey, drank bowls of warm milk, and made a potion from vegetables like artichokes and celery.

Source: " The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla - Biography of a Genius "

He claimed he never slept for more than two hours at a time.

However, Tesla did admit to dozing off sometimes to "recharge his batteries." According to one report, he once worked for 84 hours without sleeping.

Source: " Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla "

In 1882, Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, a principle of physics that forms the basis for nearly all devices that use AC power.

He used this principle to construct the AC induction motor and polyphase system for the generation, transmission, distribution and use of electric power.

While Tesla was working in Thomas Edison’s lab in New Jersey, the two fought a 'war' with over the best form of electrical current.

Edison favored direct current or DC (which flows in one direction), while Tesla favored alternating current or AC (which changes direction periodically). This led to the "war of the currents," which Tesla eventually won because of AC's greater efficiency. 

Tesla also worked closely with industrialist and inventor George Westinghouse, and their partnership helped establish electricity across America.

Tesla wrote a classic paper called "A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers," in 1888, in which he introduced the concept of his motors and electrical systems. The work caught Westinghouse's attention, and they ended up partnering to work on bringing electricity to the rest of the country.

Tesla's AC-driven system  remains the world standard for delivering electricity today.

He also invented the Tesla coil, a device that is widely used today in radios, TV sets, and other electronics.

In 1891, Tesla developed an induction coil that produced high-frequency alternating currents, now known as the Tesla coil. He used it in experiments to produce electric lighting, X-rays, and wireless power, and it became the basis of radio and TV. Today, the coils are mostly used in educational displays and entertainment.

Source: PBS.org

Tesla patented the basic system of radio in 1896.

The invention of radio is often credited to  Guglielmo Marconi, who made the first transatlantic radio transmission in 1901. But Tesla developed patents for the basic elements of a radio transmitter that were later used by Marconi — a point that led the two into a court battle.

Source: Earlyradiohistory.us

Tesla also dreamed up two concepts that remained purely theoretical: the 'death ray' and an 'impenetrable wall of force' that'd ward off foreign invasions.

T he FBI kept a dossier on Tesla throughout his life in the US, but kept it classified until 2011, when the bureau publicly released  250 pages .  

In 1943, when Tesla died, electrical engineer and military technology researcher  John G. Trump  — who an  April 2016 New Yorker article  dubbed President Trump's "nuclear" uncle  — examined Tesla's effects for the FBI and reported his findings.

John Trump reportedly told the Bureau: "Tesla's 'thoughts and efforts during at least the past 15 years were primarily of a speculative, philosophical, and somewhat promotional character,' but 'did not include new, sound, workable principles or methods for realizing such results.'"

Source: Business Insider

Through his life, Tesla never married, but he once claimed to love a pigeon.

Tesla used to take walks to the park to feed the pigeons. He developed an unusual relationship with a white pigeon that used to visit him every day.

" I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life," Tesla reportedly said.

Source: Tesla Society  and Tesla Universe

• Main content

• About Tesla

Biography of Nikola Tesla

Nikola tesla biography.

Already at an early age, Tesla shows insight and ambition. There is an anecdote from his life related to his first sight of Niagara Falls, where he announced to his uncle Josip that one day, he would put a big wheel there and use the potential of the falls. This was his childhood dream.

Tesla started school in Smiljan, where he learned German, mathematics, and religion. After moving to Gospic, he carried forward with elementary school finishing Preparatory Elementary School and Lower Real Gymnasium. From Gospic, he left for Rakovac, located near Karlovac, and finished Higher Real Gymnasium.

When Tesla completed high school, he avoided forced enlistment in an ongoing war, and went to study physics and other disciplines at the Polytechnic School in Graz, located south of Vienna. However, he did not stay to complete his degree. Still, he later enrolled at the University of Prague, where he advanced his knowledge of wave mechanics (and indirectly AC), working with Professor Ernst Mach.

After his studies, Tesla began his career as an electrical engineer with a telephone company in Budapest in 1881. Tinkering with equipment as a telephone line repairman, he created a kind of amplifier, a forerunner of loudspeakers, which he never filed as his own patent.

Tesla started to work in Edison’s lab in New Jersey, where he began to improve Edison’s line of dynamos. This is the point where his divergence of opinion with Edison over direct current versus alternating current began. Due to disagreements with Edison, he decides to found his own company.

In 1885, he founded a company called the Tesla Electric and Manufacturing Company, which went bankrupt a year later. After that, Tesla is forced to finance himself through hard manual work. Two years later, he founded a new company called Tesla Electric Company. That same year, 1887, Tesla decided to register his patents, which included a multi-phase electric power transmission motor system, an induction motor, generators and transformers. A year later, in partnership with George Westinghouse, Tesla sold his alternating current patents for $1 million (some sources claim he received only $60,000).

After going to Europe and visiting Lika, Tesla's birthplace, in 1890, he began researching high-frequency current, where after a year, he constructed the first transformer, the so-called Tesla coil. In 1892, he returned to Lika for his mother's funeral.

In 1896 the first hydroelectric plant was commissioned at the foot of Niagara Falls and used Tesla's alternating current patents. In 1899, Tesla built an experimental station in Colorado Springs to experiment with high voltage, high-frequency electricity and other phenomena. There he worked for one year, and after that, he moved to Long Island, where he never had a chance to finish his research on wireless transmission of electricity because J.P. Morgan stopped to finance him.

From 1910 to 1922, Tesla continued with his engineering inventions, where 1919, Tesla's autobiography „My inventions” was first published. He was awarded the Edison medal in 1917 and, in 1926, received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zagreb. In 1937 he earned two honorary doctorates from the Polytechnic University in Graz and the University of Paris.

Tesla spent his life in hotels, and he lived in the Hotel New Yorker for the last ten years. He died there on January 7th, 1943, in his apartment on the 33rd floor. A state funeral was held at St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City. He was cremated, and his ashes were interned in a golden sphere, Tesla’s favorite shape, which was handed over to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

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Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla: Biography of a Genius Paperback – August 30, 2016

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• Print length 576 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Citadel
• Publication date August 30, 2016
• Dimensions 5.94 x 1.18 x 8.93 inches
• ISBN-10 0806539968
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About the author, excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., the life and times of nikola tesla biography of a genius, kensington publishing corp..

Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sadder fate than the Servians. From the height of its splendor, when the empire embraced almost the entire northern part of the Balkan peninsula and a large portion of what is now Austria, the Servian nation was plunged into abject slavery, after the fateful battle of 1389 at the Kosovo Polje, against the overwhelming Asian hordes. Europe can never repay the great debt it owes to the Servians for checking, by the sacrifice of its own liberty, that barbarian influx.

Nikola Tesla

It was during a crackling summer storm in Smiljan, a small hamlet at the back edge of a plateau set high in the mountains, when Nikola Tesla was born. The Serbian family resided in the province of Lika, a plateau and gentle river valley in Croatia where wild boar and deer still dwell and farmers still travel on ox-drawn wagons. Only a cart ride from the Adriatic, the land is well protected from invasion by sea, by the Velebit ridge to the west, which runs the length of the province and towers over the coastline as a steep cliff, and by the Dinaric Alps to the east, a chain of mountains that emerge from Austria, span the Balkan peninsula and culminate in the south as the isle of Crete.

Though hidden, Smiljan was centrally located, fifteen miles east of the tiny seaport of Karlobag, six miles west of the bustling town of Gospic and forty-five miles southwest of the cascading wonder known as Plitvice Lakes, an interlinking chasm of caves and streams and magnificent waterfalls that lie at the base of the Dinaric chain.

In the early 1800s, having been briefly part of Napoleon's Illyrian provinces, Croatia was now a domain of Austria-Hungary. With its neighboring Slavic countries of Bosnia, Hercegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia, Croatia was sandwiched between the ruling Hapsburg dynasty to the north and the Ottoman Empire to the south.

In ancient times, and for many centuries, much of the coastline along the Adriatic was ruled by the Illyrians, a piratical tribe believed to have descended from regions around Austria. Successfully protecting their borders from such rulers as Alexander the Great, many Illyrians rose into social prominence; some, at the time of Christ, became emperors.

Slavs, traveling in close-knit clans known as zadrugas, were first recognized by the Byzantines in the second century A.D. in the areas around what is now Belgrade. Tesla's appearance resembled the characteristic features of the Ghegs, a tribe described as being tall and having convex-shaped noses and flat skulls. Like other Slavs, these people were originally pagans and worshiped nature spirits and a god of thunder and lightning. Tesla's early ancestors were probably born in the Ukraine. They most likely traveled down through Romania into Serbia and lived near Belgrade, along the Danube. After the Battle of Kosovo in the latter part of the fourteenth century, they crossed the Kosovo plains into Montenegro and continued their migration northward into Croatia in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

All Slavs speak the same language. The major distinction between Croats and Serbs stems from the differences in the histories of their respective countries. The Croats adopted the pope as their spiritual leader and followed the Roman form of Catholicism; the Serbs adopted a Byzantine patriarch and the Greek Orthodox view. Whereas Roman priests remain celibate, Greek Orthodox priests may marry.

In the east and central regions Slavs were more successful in maintaining their own control over what came to be called the kingdom of Serbia; whereas in the west, in Croatia, outside rulers, such as Charlemagne in A.D. 800, occupied the region. While Croatia maintained the Christianization policies of the Franks, the Serbs and Bulgarians drove out the papacy and revived their own pagan faith, which included animal sacrifice and pantheism. Many of the ancient pagan gods were made saints and were celebrated in higher esteem than Jesus. Tesla's patron saint Nicholas was a fourth-century god who protected sailors.

To further alienate the two groups, although speaking the same verbal language, Croats adopted the Latin alphabet, whereas Serbs and Bulgarians took on the Cyrillic alphabet used by the Greek Orthodox church.

Before Turkish rule, from the ninth century until the 1300s, Serbia had maintained autonomy. For Serbia, this period was its golden age, as the Byzantines accepted its autonomous status. Due to the philanthropic nature of its kings, a dynamic medieval art flourished, and great monasteries were erected.

Croatia, on the other hand, was in much more turmoil. Influenced by western Europe, the ruling class attempted unsuccessfully to institute a feudal system of lords and serfs. This policy directly opposed the inherent structure of the democratic zadrugas, and so Croatia was never able to establish a unified identity. Nevertheless, one independent offshoot of Croatia, Ragusa (Dubrovnik), which had established itself as a port of commerce and a rival of Venice as a major sea power, became a melting pot for south Slavic culture and a symbol for the Illyrian ideal of a unified Yugoslavia.

The identity of Serbia as a nation, however, changed for all time on June 15, 1389, the day 30,000 Turks obliterated the Serbian nation in the Battle of Kosovo. Cruel conquerors, the Turks destroyed Serbian churches or converted them to mosques. Drafting the healthiest male children into their armies, they skewered and tortured the men and forced the women to convert and marry Turks. Many Serbs fled, taking up residence in the craggy mountains of Montenegro or the hidden valleys of Croatia. Some of those that remained became wealthy as Turkish vassals; others, mostly of mixed blood, became pariahs.

The Battle of Kosovo is as important to the Serbs as the Exodus to the Jews or the Crucifixion to the Christians. It is commemorated every year on the anniversary of the tragedy as Vidov Dan, the day "when we shall see." As one Serb told the author, "It follows us always." The massacre and ensuing defilement of the kingdom became the dominant motif of the great epic poems which served to unify the identity of the Serbian people through their centuries of hardship.

Unlike the Croats, who did not have this kind of all-embracing exigency, the Serbs had Kosovo. Combined with their adherence to the Greek Orthodox religion in a twofold way, Serbs, no matter where they lived, felt united.

The century of Tesla's birth was marked by the rise of Napoleon. In 1809 the emperor wrested Croatia from Austro-Hungarian rule and established French occupation. Extending his domain down the Adriatic coast, Napoleon reunited the Illyrian provinces and introduced French libertarian ideals. This philosophy helped dismantle the outmoded feudal system of lords and serfs and reawaken the idea of a unified Balkan nation. At the same time, the occupation created an identity with the French culture. Tesla's paternal grandfather and maternal great- grandfather both served under the French emperor.

With support from the Russians, Serbian bands united in 1804 under the leadership of the flamboyant hog farmer George Petrovich, known as Kara-George (in Turkish, Black George), a man of Montenegrin heritage trained in the Austrian army. However, in 1811, Napoleon invaded Russia; thus, support for Serbia evaporated.

Forty thousand Turks marched against the Serbs, leveling towns and butchering citizens. Serbs were often executed by impalement, their writhing bodies lined up along the roads to the city. All males captured above the age of fifteen were slaughtered, and women and children were sold as slaves. Kara-George fled the country.

Milosh, the new Serbian leader, was a sly and treacherous character, able to walk a thin line between Serbs and the sultan. In 1817, when Kara-George returned, he was decapitated, his head sent by Milosh to Istanbul. A tyrant as terrible as any Turkish pasha, Milosh became the official head of Serbia in 1830.

One of the more sapient figures of the day was the scholar and Serb Vuk Karadjich (1787-1864). Schooled in Vienna and St. Petersburg, Vuk believed "all Yugoslavs were one."

Pleading with Milosh to build schools and to form a constitution, Vuk created, with a student, a Serbo-Croatian dictionary that combined the two written languages. He published the epic folk ballads, which gained the attention of Goethe, and through this means the Serbian plight and also its unique literature were translated and spread to the western world.

In Croatia, the land of Tesla's birth, Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, in 1843, issued a proclamation forbidding any discussion about Illyrianism, thereby helping keep the Serbs and Croats a separate people. In 1867 the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy was created, and Croatia became a semiautonomous province of the new empire. Simultaneously, in Serbia, Michael Obrenovich was finally able to "secure the departure ... of the Turkish garrisons from Belgrade" and convert the state into a constitutional monarchy.

Tesla's background was thus a mixture of crossed influences, a monastic environment, a Byzantine legacy of a once great culture, and incessant battles against barbarous invaders. As a Serb growing up in Croatia, Tesla inherited a rich mix of tribal rituals, egalitarian rule, a modified form of Greek Orthodox Catholicism, pantheistic beliefs, and myriad superstitions. Women cloaked their bodies in black garb, and men packed a cross in one pocket and a weapon in another. Living at the edge of civilization, Serbs saw themselves as protectors of Europe from the Asian hordes. They bore that responsibility with their blood for many centuries.

CHILDHOOD (1856-74)

I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.

NIKOLA TESLA

Nikola Tesla descended from a well established frontier zadruga whose original family name had been Draganic. By the mid-1700s the clan had migrated to Croatia, and the Tesla name arose. It was "a trade name like Smith ... or Carpenter," which described a woodworking ax that had a "broad cutting blade at right angles to the handle." Supposedly, the Teslas gained the name because their teeth resembled this instrument.

The inventor's grandfather, also named Nikola Tesla, was born about 1789 and became a sergeant in Napoleon's Illyrian army during the years 1809-13. Like other Serbs living in Croatia, Nikola Tesla, the elder, was honored by fighting for an emperor who sought to unify the Balkan states and overthrow the oppressive regime of the Austro-Hungarians. He "came from a region known as the military frontier which stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the plains of the Danube including ... the province of Lika [where the inventor was born]. This so-called 'corpus separatum' in the Hapsburg monarchy had its own military administration different from the rest of the country, and therefore [they were] not subjects of the feudal lords." Mostly Serbs, these people were warriors whose responsibility was to protect the territory from the Turks. And in return, unlike the Croats, Serbs were able to own their own land.

Shortly after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Nikola Tesla married Ana Kalinic, the daughter of a prominent officer. After the collapse of Illyria, the grandfather moved to Gospic, where he and his wife could raise a family in a civilized environment.

On February 3, 1819, Milutin Tesla, the inventor's father, was born. One of five children, Milutin was educated in a German elementary school, the only one available in Gospic. Like his brother Josip, Milutin tried to follow in his father's footsteps. In his late teens he enrolled in an Austro-Hungarian military academy but rebelled against the trivialities of regimented life. He was hypersensitive and dropped out after an officer criticized him for not keeping his brass buttons polished.

Whereas Josip became an officer and later a professor of mathematics, first in Gospic and then at a military academy in Austria, Milutin became politically active, wrote poetry, and entered the priesthood. Influenced by the philosopher Vuk Karadjich, Milutin promulgated the "Yugoslav idea" in editorials published in the local newspapers under the nom de plume Srbin Pravicich, "Man of Justice." Tesla wrote that his father's "style of writing was much admired ... pen[ning] sentences ... full of wit and satire." He called for social equality among peoples, the need for compulsory education for children, and the creation of Serbian schools in Croatia.

Through these articles, Milutin attracted the attention of the intellectual elite. In 1847 he married Djouka Mandic, a daughter from one of the more prominent Serbian families.

Djouka's maternal grandfather was Toma Budisavljevic (1777-1840), a regal, white-bearded priest who was decorated with the French Medal of Honor by Napoleon himself in 1811 for providing leadership during the French occupation of Croatia. Soka Budisavljevic, one of Toma's seven children, followed the family tradition by marrying a Serbian minister, Nikola Mandic, who himself came from a distinguished clerical and military family. Their daughter, Djouka, who was born in 1821, was Tesla's mother.

Eldest daughter of eight children, Djouka's duties increased rapidly, for her mother was stricken with failing eyesight and eventually became blind.

"My mother ... was a truly great woman of rare skill and courage," Tesla wrote. Probably due to the magnitude of her responsibilities, which included, at age sixteen, preparing for burial the bodies of an entire family stricken with cholera, Djouka never learned to read. Instead, she memorized the great epic Serbian poems and also long passages of the Bible.

Tesla could trace his lineage to a segment of the "educated aristocracy" of the Serbian community. On both sides of the family and for generations there could be found clerical and military leaders, many of whom achieved multiple doctorates. One of Djouka's brothers, Pajo Mandic, was a field marshal in the imperial Austro-Hungarian army. Another Mandic ran an Austrian military academy.

Petar Mandic, a third brother and later favorite uncle of Nikola's, met with tragedy as a young man when his wife passed away. In 1850, Petar entered the Gomirje Monastery, where he rose in the clerical hierarchy to become the regional bishop of Bosnia.

In 1848, through the help of the Mandic name, Milutin Tesla obtained a parish at Senj, a northern coastal fortress located just seventy-five miles from the Italian port of Trieste. From the stone church, situated high on austere cliffs, Milutin and his new bride could overlook the blue-green Adriatic Sea and the mountainous islands of Krk, Cres, and Rab.

For eight years the Teslas lived in Senj, where they sired their first three children: Dane (pronounced Dah-nay), born in 1849, the first son, and two daughters, Angelina, born the following year, who would later become the grandmother to the current honorary head of the Tesla Memorial Society, William Terbo, and Milka, who followed two years later. As with her other two sisters and like her mother, Milka would eventually marry a Serbian Orthodox priest.

Djouka was proud of her son, Dane, who used to sit with the fishermen on the shore and bring back stories of great adventure. Like his younger brother, who was yet to be born, Dane was endowed with extraordinary powers of eidetic imagery.

Due to a profound sermon on the subject of "labor," as a result of which Milutin was awarded a special red sash by the archbishop, the minister was promoted to a congregation of forty homes in the pastoral farming village of Smiljan, situated only six miles from Gospic. Milutin was returning home, where his father still lived. In 1855, the young minister, his pregnant wife, and his three children packed their oxcart and made the fifty-mile journey over the Velebit ridge through the Lika valley to their new dwelling.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Citadel; Reprint edition (August 30, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 576 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0806539968
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0806539966
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.94 x 1.18 x 8.93 inches
• #12 in Physics of Electricity
• #26 in History of Technology
• #147 in Scientist Biographies

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Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla | A True Genius!

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About the author

Marc j. seifer.

Marc J. Seifer, PhD has been a handwriting expert for more than 35 years and was editor-in-chief of The Journal of the American Society of Professional Graphologists for more than a decade. He has worked for the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office and Crime Laboratory, the Department of Defense, Undersea Warfare, United Parcel Service, and numerous banks, insurance agencies, and lawyers. He was featured on the History Channel discussing the Howard Hughes Mormon Will and on Associated Press International TV on the handwriting of bin Laden and on PBS American Experience discussing Nikola Tesla. He has lectured at Oxford University, Cambridge University, Brandeis, Cranbrook Retreat, and numerous conferences around the world. Featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and MIT's Technology Review, his articles have appeared in Wired, Civilization, The Historian, Extraordinary Science and Psychiatric Clinics of North America.

Having lived an extraordinary life in a variety of fields, Marc set out to fictionalize his interests and aspects of his life in THE RUDY STYNE QUADRILOGY, four novels spanning over 30 years of writing. In the first novel, RASPUTIN'S NEPHEW, having taught Parapsychology and having worked with a number of super psychics, Marc covers this complex and controversial field in an exciting thriller involving assassination and the attempted kidnapping of a super psychic by the Russians uncovered by his hero, ace reporter for Modern Times Magazine, Rudy Styne.

The next two novels, DOPPELGANGER and CRYSTAL NIGHT, continue the exploits of ace reporter Rudy Styne in the modern story as Rudy seeks to track down a major computer hacker. And in the back story, starting in 1906, Marc creates a full-bodied saga about the Maxwells, a Jewish family who build an elite airline in southern Germany, as we follow their travails as one of the brothers, Simon Maxwell, flies with the Red Baron and Hermann Goring for the Kaiser in World War I, and as the Maxwells work hard to maintain their airline as Hitler rises to power through the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.

And in the fourth novel, FATE LINE, Marc fictionalizes aspects of his life as a handwriting expert by constructing a graphological murder mystery as he takes Rudy Styne to Bountiful Utah to track down a kidnapper of a child-star ice-skater, and then back to New York, Indiana, Florida and Rhode Island in his quest to uncover a diabolical plot involving the mystery killings of handwriting experts in all of these states.

Along the way, as with each novel, Marc constructs his stories so that the reader learns a great deal of history about each of these fields. These are unique stories that do not follow formula. They are original works that create characters that will stay with the reader long after the last page of each book has been turned.

A retired teacher of psychology and forensic graphology at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, his book WIZARD: THE LIFE & TIMES OF NIKOLA TESLA: BIOGRAPHY OF A GENIUS, translated into nine languages has been called "Revelatory" by Publisher's Weekly (a boxed and starred review), "Serious Scholarship" by Scientific American, a "Masterpiece" by Nelson DeMille and is "Highly Recommended" by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Customers find the biography fascinating, interesting, and brilliant. They also describe the information quality as well-researched, informative, and revealing. However, some find the book boring, second-rate, and not worth the time. Opinions differ on the writing quality, with some finding it impressive and seamlessly detailed, while others say it's confusing and difficult to understand. Readers also disagree on the readability, with others finding it riveting and lively, while still others say the read is slow and painful.

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Customers find the biography fascinating, interesting, and brilliant. They appreciate the extensive research on his background and early life. Readers also mention the book provides a detailed account of his inventions. Overall, they describe the subject as brilliant.

"... Interesting as to his ideas , product improvements and inventions that most do not know, such as lasers, jet engines etc." Read more

"Comprehensive, clearly written biography, unsung hero . I grew up in Miller Place, on Long Island, New York...." Read more

"...It is also a detailed account of his inventions , at least as far as can be known as he became rather secretive in his later years...." Read more

"...A book well worth reading and a historical figure well worth studying ." Read more

Customers find the book well-researched, informative, and revealing. They say it's full of scientific facts and technical data. Readers also mention the book answers a lot of questions and is a worthwhile read for future engineers, historians, or people interested in science.

" Lots of good info but very long and hard to read as it flashes around issues and times...." Read more

"This book is assiduously researched and footnoted ...." Read more

"...I think the author did a phenomenal job of researching Tesla and writing about his life...." Read more

"...This book has given me an entirely different perspective on life , technology, and the value in knowing the truth...." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book. Some mention it's impressively well-researched and detailed, while others say the writing is confusing and difficult to understand.

"Comprehensive, clearly written biography , unsung hero. I grew up in Miller Place, on Long Island, New York...." Read more

"Lots of good info but very long and hard to read as it flashes around issues and times...." Read more

"...which Seifer presents Tesla is unparalleled and the amount of detail included is just enough without going overboard...." Read more

"...Take a look at this work. It is not always the most elegantly written , but the work is still quite readable. Documentation is solid." Read more

Customers have mixed opinions about the readability of the book. Some find it fascinating, riveting, and lively. However, others say the book is slow, painful, and tedious.

"...If you are not a technical person, you may find the book extremely tedious as it delves so very deeply into some of his most prominent failures." Read more

"...of the various characters (Edison, Westinghouse et al) are lively and entertaining...." Read more

" A little slow , but what do you expect...." Read more

"...Not a book for just anyone, it is nonetheless passionate and committed , worth the effort of a sometimes plodding devotion to research." Read more

Customers find the book extremely boring, second-rate, and redundant. They also say it has no good storyline or real purpose.

"...From the standpoint of biographies, this is pretty much a second-rate effort when compared to many others I have read...." Read more

"...He also had a very unusual, very highly trained memory. Flawed ability to earn money , too liberal with his spending, yet Tesla can truly be..." Read more

"...It just could not keep my attention. Waste of time and money ." Read more

"...It spent a little bit too much time on Tesla's relations and time spent with social acquaintances and business associates." Read more

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Why Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla Clashed During the Battle of the Currents

Thomas Edison is widely known as one of history’s most consequential inventors, a legacy born of both his indisputable genius in the laboratory and noted ruthlessness as a businessman; the old adage is that history is written by the victors, and in Edison’s case, he spun his narrative in real-time. Sometimes, as in the case of inventions developed by contemporaries such as Nikola Tesla , that meant bending the truth a little bit.

Born in 1847, at the very end of the industrial revolution, Edison was part of a new wave of scientists and inventors that lit the way into the modern era. His famed research lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey hosted the development of innovations that still undergird much of our industrial and consumer infrastructure, including the phonograph (which recorded and played sound), motion pictures and the light bulb. His work there was so important that the town in which Menlo Park was located now bears his name.

Obsessed with his work and known to be an exacting boss, Edison had an ego as incandescent as his light bulbs, a sense of his own greatness that was undoubtedly justified. He was also incredibly competitive, willing to do whatever was required to ensure that his idea won out.

Edison invented DC lighting, a safer solution to the often dangerous arc lamps

Born in Serbia, Tesla was a different kind of genius. Whereas Edison was an eternal experimenter and tinkerer, Tesla was a human calculator, and his ability to work out complex math and physics equations in his mind helped him achieve early career success in Europe.

After a nomadic adolescence spent traveling and taking classes across Eastern Europe, Tesla wound up in Hungary at the age of 25, hired to work as an electrical engineer at the Budapest Telephone Exchange. He excelled there, channeling the workaholic tendencies he’d displayed as a top student back in Croatia before dropping out of school. Within a year he was off to Paris to work for the Continental Edison Company, an offshoot of the inventor’s successful American business.

At that point, electricity was beginning to light up the streets of cities around the world. At first, most cities were using high-voltage arc lamps to illuminate the night sky, but while they shone bright and amazed a civilization that had throughout all of history been governed by the sun’s rise and fall, the early lighting technology also presented a problem: it was very dangerous . Arc lighting was fueled by power stations that pumped through more than 3,000 volts of electricity at a time, which often led to sparks, overheating and full-on explosions in public places, raining flickers of electricity down on pedestrians and starting fires with regularity.

Electricity generated by direct current (DC) was a far safer alternative, and once Edison developed a stable and long-lasting incandescent lightbulb , he set out to provide lighting to homes and buildings around the world. By 1882, his Edison Illuminating Company opened the world’s first central power station on Pearl Street in Manhattan. The company used direct current to deliver 110 volts of electricity to nearby buildings — it started out with 59 customers — and provided a significantly reduced risk of accidental mishap.

Tesla invented an alternating current power system

For the next two years, Edison’s DC electric generation spread the incandescent light to a growing number of cities across the country. But for its growing reach, it had a significant weakness: electricity delivered by direct current could only travel so far, especially in those early days. As a result, other inventors continued to develop what was called alternating current (AC), which could easily modulate voltage using transformers.

Tesla was one of those AC devotees. In 1882, while working for Edison’s Parisian outpost and out on a walk with a friend, Tesla was suddenly struck with the solution to an engineering challenge that had been vexing him for some time. His ability to visualize entire complex mathematical equations and feats of engineering came in handy, as Tesla dreamed up the mechanics of an AC-generating motor.

Developing and honing the alternating current generator became something of an obsession for him, and in 1884, when his American boss in Paris was summoned back to the United States, he suggested that Tesla emigrates to the west. And so in September of that year, Tesla arrived in Manhattan after a harrowing journey in which most of his possessions were stolen during a mutiny on the ship.

Tesla eventually worked for Edison, but the two had clashing ideologies

However, money wouldn’t be a concern for all that long. Tesla ran into Edison himself, who invited the immigrant inventor to work for him at the Edison Machine Works on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. A letter of recommendation from his old boss did not hurt his cause.

At the time, Tesla recalled in an interview years later, he was in awe of his new boss. “This wonderful man, who had received no scientific training, yet had accomplished so much, filled me with amazement."

Tesla was put to work on a variety of projects, including repairing the circuitry system on the Oregon, the first boat to be lit by electrical power, reassembling DC generators and other tasks. Years later, in an interview conducted in 1921, Tesla recalled impressing Edison with his quick fix of the Oregon’s lighting system, to the point that Edison declared him a “damn good man.”

The Serbian inventor was also charged with creating an arc lighting system, but his usage of AC power was of no interest to Edison, who had a fortune invested in DC power and did not want to lose his loyalties. Later, Tesla would purportedly say that Edison himself promised a large sum to improve on the DC system, then retracted the offer when Tesla presented him with his work, claiming that he “did not understand American humor,” infuriating Tesla to the point that he stormed out and set out on his own, determined to spite the elder inventor.

Tesla then licensed patents to Edison's rival

Tesla only worked for Edison for about six months , and after a time spent digging graves, he received enough investor cash to set up his own company in Rahway, New Jersey, close to Menlo Park. Those investors took the company out from under him, and it wasn’t until 1887, with a new factory in Manhattan, that Tesla was able to truly pursue his AC motor.

It wouldn’t take long before he’d mastered the machine, as he was awarded seven separate patents for its various mechanics in the spring of 1888. Soon after, he licensed those patents to George Westinghouse , Edison’s chief rival in the race to supply cities with power. The race between AC and DC would escalate from there, with Edison pulling out nearly all the stops to prove that AC was dangerous, (though the famed death by electrocution of Topsy the elephant was not his doing) to discredit what would ultimately prove a far superior system.

Tesla died nearly penniless, though that had nothing to do with Edison. He made a fortune from his contracts with Westinghouse, but lost it all through poor business deals, bad investments and expenditures on grand experiments that resulted in failure. His supposed rivalry with Edison was almost by association and difference of opinion on scientific matters, highlighted only in hindsight as Tesla’s incredible career, which spanned far more than AC power innovations.

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My inventions : the autobiography of Nikola Tesla

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• Nikola Tesla Biography

Who is Nikola Tesla?

Nikola Tesla is regarded as one of history's most influential inventors, with discoveries in the area of electricity that were far ahead of their time and continue to have an impact on technology today. Tesla died penniless and without the acclaim that he would eventually receive over a century later, despite his achievements.

Tesla's career as an inventor began early; at the age of 26, he is said to have sketched up the concepts for a rotating magnetic field while working at the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest, an essential innovation that is currently employed in many electromechanical devices. This huge breakthrough paved the way for many of his other innovations, including the alternating current motor, and eventually brought him to New York City in 1884, where he was drawn by Thomas Edison and his groundbreaking engineering firm, Edison Machine Works.

The “genius who illuminated the world” is now memorialised with an electrical unit known as the Tesla, as well as streets, statues, and a prominent engineer's award in his honour, but he wasn't always so successful in life. But Tesla was a scientist, who had deep theories always in mind. Let’s discuss Nikola Tesla Information here completely. 

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Where Was Nikola Tesla Born?

Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in the town of Smiljan, which is now part of Croatia but was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a priest, while his mother, despite her lack of formal education, worked with machinery and was known for her incredible memory. Keep reading the article for the entire Nikola Tesla biography.

Nikola Tesla Education Qualification

Tesla's family relocated to nearby Gospi in 1862, where Tesla's father served as a parish priest. Nikola finished primary school and then moved on to middle school. Tesla travelled to Karlovac in 1870 to attend the Higher Real Gymnasium, where classes were taught in German, as was the case throughout the Austro-Hungarian Military Frontier. Tesla later wrote that his physics professor sparked his interest in electricity demonstrations. These displays of this "mystery phenomenon" made Tesla want to "know more about this wonderful power," he said. Tesla's ability to complete integral calculus in his mind led his teachers to suspect he was cheating. He graduated in 1873 after completing a four-year term in three years.

Tesla returned to Smiljan in 1873. He developed cholera shortly after arriving, was bedridden for nine months, and came close to death several times. Tesla's father pledged to send him to the top engineering school if he recovered from his illness in a time of despair. Tesla escaped conscription into the Austro-Hungarian Army in Smiljan in 1874 by fleeing to Tomingaj, southeast of Lika. He went there dressed as a hunter and explored the mountains. Tesla claimed that his contact with nature made him physically and intellectually stronger. While at Tomingaj, he studied a lot of books and later claimed that Mark Twain's works had miraculously helped him recover from his former illness.

Tesla received a Military Frontier scholarship to the Imperial-Royal Technical College in Graz in 1875. Tesla never missed a lecture during his first year, obtained the highest marks possible, passed nine tests, founded a Serb cultural society, and even received a letter of congratulations from the dean of the technical college to his father, stating, "Your son is a star of the first rank." Professor Jakob Pöschl's thorough lectures on electricity enthralled Tesla while he was in Graz.

Tesla Discoveries

Tesla discovered, designed, and developed ideas for a number of significant innovations, the majority of which were officially patented by other inventors, including dynamos (electrical generators comparable to batteries) and the induction motor, over the course of his career. He was also a pioneer in the development of radar, X-ray, remote control, and the rotating magnetic field, which is the foundation of most AC machinery. Tesla is most recognised for his contributions to AC power and the Tesla coil, which he invented.

1. AC Electrical System

Alternating current (AC), perhaps Tesla's most famous and essential innovation, was a response to his old boss Edison's inefficient (as Tesla called it) use of direct current (DC) in the new electric age. Unlike DC power plants, which carry energy in a straight line in one direction, alternating currents change direction quickly and at a significantly greater voltage. Because of DC, Edison's power lines that crossed the Atlantic coast were short and weak, whereas AC could deliver current considerably further. Tesla's AC power grids finally became the standard, despite the fact that Thomas Edison had more resources and a better reputation.

2. Hydroelectric Power Plant

At Niagara Falls, Tesla developed one of the first AC hydroelectric power facilities in the United States in 1895. It was used to power the city of Buffalo, New York the next year, a feat that was widely recognised around the world and aided AC electricity's progress toward becoming the world's power system.

3. Tesla Coil

Tesla patented the Tesla coil in the late 1800s, which established the groundwork for wireless technology and is still used in radio technology today. The Tesla coil is an inductor that was used in many early radio transmission antennas as the heart of an electrical circuit. The coil and a capacitor work together to resonate current and voltage across the circuit from a power source. Tesla studied fluorescence, x-rays, radio, wireless power, and electromagnetic radiation in the earth and its atmosphere with his coil.

4. Death Ray

Tesla subsequently returned to work, largely as a consultant, after suffering a nervous breakdown following the end of his free energy project. Tesla even caught the FBI's attention with his claims of developing a strong "death ray," which had attracted the Soviet Union's interest during WWII.

5. Free Energy

Tesla began work on his most ambitious project yet around 1900, after becoming obsessed with the wireless transmission of energy. He planned to build a global, wireless communication system — to be transmitted through a large electrical tower — for sharing information and providing free energy throughout the world. Tesla began work on the free energy project in earnest in 1901, with finance from a group of investors that included financial titan J. P. Morgan, constructing and building a facility with a power plant and a gigantic transmission tower on a site on Long Island, New York, that became known as Wardenclyffe.

Tesla also experimented with radio waves as early as 1892, displaying a radio wave-controlled boat in 1898 at an electrical show in New York's Madison Square Garden to much acclaim. Expanding on the technology, Tesla patented more than a dozen radio communication ideas before Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi beat Tesla to the punch and completed the first transatlantic radio transmission using Tesla's research. The dispute for intellectual recognition between Marconi and Tesla lasted decades before the United States Supreme Court cancelled part of Marconi's patents in 1943, restoring Tesla as the founder of radio, at least legally.

Nikola Tesla vs. Thomas Edison

Tesla came to the United States in 1884 with nothing but the clothing on his back and a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison, the renowned inventor and business mogul whose DC-based electrical works were quickly becoming the industry standard. Edison hired Tesla, and the two men spent the next few years working side by side on improving Edison's innovations. Several months later, the two parted ways due to a tense business-scientific relationship, which historians attribute to their polar opposite personalities: while Edison was a powerful personality focused on marketing and financial success, Tesla was commercially out-of-touch and fragile.

Nikola Tesla Facts

Tesla was a scientist, physicist, engineer, and inventor. Alternating current (AC), the form of electricity that fuels civilization and is essential for lighting, was one of his greatest innovations.

Tesla became close friends with Mark Twain after claiming that reading author Mark Twain's writing helped him recover from a terrible illness.

Tesla was given ＄50,000 by Thomas Edison to upgrade his existing electricity-generating technology. Tesla was successful, although Edison later stated that he was joking. Tesla abruptly resigned.

According to several who recounted Tesla's obsessive rituals and superstitions, he may have suffered from what is now known as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Tesla never married. Tesla once expressed his view that he would never be worthy of a lady. He devoted himself to scientific research.

Tesla was a multilingual genius with a photographic memory.

Tesla's alternating current (AC) clashed with Edison's direct current (DC), which required power plants to be built every square mile, rendering DC wasteful in comparison to AC.

To show that AC was too unsafe to utilise, Edison staged gruesome public demonstrations of animal electrocutions.

Tesla once stated that he was in love with a white pigeon because he feared that personal connection would interfere with his study.

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor and engineer who developed the rotating magnetic field, which is the foundation of most alternating-current machines. He also invented the three-phase electric power transmission system. In 1884, he immigrated to the United States and sold George Westinghouse the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. He created the Tesla coil, an induction coil that is widely utilised in radio technology, in 1891. Tesla was born into a Serbian family. His father was an Orthodox priest, and his mother, though uneducated, was quite brilliant. He developed incredible imagination and originality, as well as a poetic touch, as he grew older. Historians believe that several of Tesla's patents have yet to be discovered, hence the precise number of patents he holds is contested. He is credited with at least 300 innovations (many of which are related), as well as many unpatented ideas that he developed over the course of his career.

FAQs on Nikola Tesla Biography

1. When is Nikola Tesla’s Birthday?

Ans: Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Austrian Empire, on July 9th or 10th, 1856. (now in Croatia).

2. How Did Nikola Tesla Die & Nikola Tesla Age at Death Was?

Ans: Tesla died of coronary thrombosis at the age of 86 in New York City, where he had lived for nearly 60 years, on January 7, 1943. The legacy of Tesla's work, on the other hand, continues to this day. Near the site of his former New York City laboratory, at the intersection of 40th Street and 6th Avenue, a street sign identifying "Nikola Tesla Corner" was put up in 1994.

3. Why Was Tesla’s Lab Burned?

Ans: During the construction of the tower, Tesla ran out of money and was foreclosed on twice. Assets were liquidated to pay off his debts, much as they did with his prior Colorado Springs lab. The US government detonated a bomb in the tower in 1917, thinking that it was being used by German spies during World War I.