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Nikola Tesla

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• Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Biography of Nikola Tesla
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Where was Nikola Tesla born?

Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents in Smiljan, in what was then the Austrian Empire (now in Croatia).

When did Nikola Tesla die?

Nikola Tesla died on January 7, 1943, in New York City.

Where did Nikola Tesla attend school?

Nikola Tesla studied engineering at the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague .

How did Nikola Tesla change the world?

Tesla developed the alternating-current power system that provides electricity for homes and buildings. He also pioneered the field of radio communication and was granted more than 100 U.S. patents.

What was Nikola Tesla’s childhood like?

As a boy, Tesla was often sick, but he was a bright student with a photographic memory. In addition to his interest in engineering, he possessed a wild imagination as well as a love of poetry.

Nikola Tesla (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died January 7, 1943, New York , New York, U.S.) was a Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field , the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers , and motors to George Westinghouse . In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology .

Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. As he matured, he displayed remarkable imagination and creativity as well as a poetic touch.

Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz , Austria , and the University of Prague . At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo , which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor , and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest , he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed, after work hours, his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with Thomas Edison , but the two inventors were far apart in background and methods, and their separation was inevitable.

In May 1888 George Westinghouse , head of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Pittsburgh , bought the patent rights to Tesla’s polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction precipitated a titanic power struggle between Edison’s direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out.

Tesla soon established his own laboratory, where his inventive mind could be given free rein. He experimented with shadowgraphs similar to those that later were to be used by Wilhelm Röntgen when he discovered X-rays in 1895. Tesla’s countless experiments included work on a carbon button lamp, on the power of electrical resonance , and on various types of lighting.

In order to allay fears of alternating currents, Tesla gave exhibitions in his laboratory in which he lit lamps by allowing electricity to flow through his body. He was often invited to lecture at home and abroad. The Tesla coil , which he invented in 1891, is widely used today in radio and television sets and other electronic equipment. That year also marked the date of Tesla’s U.S. citizenship.

Westinghouse used Tesla’s alternating current system to light the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. This success was a factor in their winning the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls , which bore Tesla’s name and patent numbers. The project carried power to Buffalo by 1896.

In 1898 Tesla announced his invention of a teleautomatic boat guided by remote control . When skepticism was voiced, Tesla proved his claims for it before a crowd in Madison Square Garden .

In Colorado Springs , Colorado, where he stayed from May 1899 until early 1900, Tesla made what he regarded as his most important discovery— terrestrial stationary waves. By this discovery he proved that Earth could be used as a conductor and made to resonate at a certain electrical frequency. He also lit 200 lamps without wires from a distance of 40 km (25 miles) and created man-made lightning, producing flashes measuring 41 metres (135 feet). At one time he was certain he had received signals from another planet in his Colorado laboratory, a claim that was met with derision in some scientific journals.

Returning to New York in 1900, Tesla began construction on Long Island of a wireless world broadcasting tower, with $150,000 capital from the American financier J. Pierpont Morgan . Tesla claimed he secured the loan by assigning 51 percent of his patent rights of telephony and telegraphy to Morgan. He expected to provide worldwide communication and to furnish facilities for sending pictures, messages, weather warnings, and stock reports. The project was abandoned because of a financial panic, labour troubles, and Morgan’s withdrawal of support. It was Tesla’s greatest defeat.

Tesla’s work then shifted to turbines and other projects. Because of a lack of funds, his ideas remained in his notebooks, which are still examined by enthusiasts for unexploited clues. In 1915 he was severely disappointed when a report that he and Edison were to share the Nobel Prize proved erroneous . Tesla was the recipient of the Edison Medal in 1917, the highest honor that the American Institute of Electrical Engineers could bestow.

Tesla allowed himself only a few close friends. Among them were the writers Robert Underwood Johnson, Mark Twain , and Francis Marion Crawford . He was quite impractical in financial matters and an eccentric , driven by compulsions and a progressive germ phobia. But he had a way of intuitively sensing hidden scientific secrets and employing his inventive talent to prove his hypotheses . Tesla was a godsend to reporters who sought sensational copy but a problem to editors who were uncertain how seriously his futuristic prophecies should be regarded. Caustic criticism greeted his speculations concerning communication with other planets, his assertions that he could split the Earth like an apple, and his claim of having invented a death ray capable of destroying 10,000 airplanes at a distance of 400 km (250 miles).

After Tesla’s death the custodian of alien property impounded his trunks, which held his papers, his diplomas and other honors, his letters, and his laboratory notes. These were eventually inherited by Tesla’s nephew, Sava Kosanovich, and later housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade . Hundreds filed into New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine for his funeral services, and a flood of messages acknowledged the loss of a great genius. Three Nobel Prize recipients addressed their tribute to “one of the outstanding intellects of the world who paved the way for many of the technological developments of modern times.”

In 2003 American entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning founded Tesla Inc. , the manufacturer of electric automobiles, solar panels, and batteries, in honor of the inventor. Tesla Inc. quickly became one of the most recognizable car brands in the world.

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The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla

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Tesla is regarded as one of the top researchers and inventors in the field of electricity. There are 43 chapters in the book, the majority of which focus on various areas of research and discoveries by Tesla. The ideas and inventions are communicated in their unique ways, each of which establishes its position based on inherent value.

Tesla advanced past his contemporaries to the next stage while also extending and revolutionizing the work of his predecessors. The book has historical relevance since it reveals the breadth of Tesla’ s early innovations in addition to demonstrating the depth of his thought and inventiveness. This popular collectable is a must-have for all! • An exhaustive collection of Tesla’ s ground-breaking endeavors, studies, and creations • Filled with an amazing sense of possibilities • Comprises Tesla’ s incredible research and writings • Considered as the bible of every electrical engineer • An insightful and fascinating read

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Who Was 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 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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• Cheney, Margaret. “Tesla: Man Out of Time.” Simon & Schuster, 2001.
• O'Neill, John J. (1944). “Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla.” Cosimo Classics, 2006.
• Gunderman, Richard. “The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla.” Smithsonian.com , January 5, 2018, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/extraordinary-life-nikola-tesla-180967758/ .
• Tesla, Nikola. “Notebook from the Edison Machine Works: 1884-1885.” Tesla Universe, https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/books/nikola-tesla-notebook-edison-machine-works-1884-1885 .
• “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 .
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• O’Neill, John J. “Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla.” Cosimo Classics, 2006.
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• Thomas Edison's Greatest Inventions
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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

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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Nikola Tesla

Serbian American scientist Nikola Tesla invented the Tesla coil and alternating-current (AC) electricity, in addition to discovering the rotating magnetic field.

Quick Facts

When was nikola tesla born, nikola tesla and thomas edison, solo venture, how did nikola tesla die, legacy: movies, electric car, and wardenclyffe tower renovation, who was nikola tesla.

Engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla designed the alternating-current (AC) electric system, which is the predominant electrical system used across the world today. He also created the “Tesla coil” that is still used in radio technology. Born in modern-day Croatia, Tesla immigrated to the United States in 1884 and briefly worked with Thomas Edison before the two parted ways. The Serbian American sold several patent rights, including those to his AC machinery, to George Westinghouse . Tesla died at age 86 in January 1943, but his legacy lives on through his inventions and the electric car company Tesla that’s named in his honor.

FULL NAME: Nikola Tesla BORN: July 10, 1856 DIED: January 7, 1943 BIRTHPLACE: Smiljan, Croatia ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Tesla was born on July 10, 1856, in the Austrian Empire town of Smiljan that is now part of Croatia.

He was one of five children, including siblings Dane, Angelina, Milka, and Marica. Nikola’s interest in electrical invention was spurred by his mother, Djuka Mandic, who invented small household appliances in her spare time while her son was growing up.

Tesla’s father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian orthodox priest and a writer, and he pushed for his son to join the priesthood. But Nikola’s interests lay squarely in the sciences.

Tesla received quite a bit of education. He studied at the Realschule, Karlstadt (later renamed the Johann-Rudolph-Glauber Realschule Karlstadt) in Germany; the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria; and the University of Prague during the 1870s.

After university, Tesla moved to Budapest, Hungary, where for a time he worked at the Central Telephone Exchange. It was while in Budapest that the idea for the induction motor first came to Tesla, but after several years of trying to gain interest in his invention, at age 28, Tesla decided to leave Europe for America.

In 1884, Tesla arrived in the United States with little more than the clothes on his back and a letter of introduction to famed inventor and business mogul Thomas Edison , whose DC-based electrical works were fast becoming the standard in the country. Edison hired Tesla, and the two men were soon working tirelessly alongside each other, making improvements to Edison’s inventions.

Several months later, the two parted ways due to a conflicting business-scientific relationship , attributed by historians to their incredibly different personalities. While Edison was a power figure who focused on marketing and financial success, Tesla was commercially out-of-touch and somewhat vulnerable. Their feud would continue to affect Tesla’s career.

In 1885, Tesla received funding for the Tesla Electric Light Company and was tasked by his investors to develop improved arc lighting. After successfully doing so, however, Tesla was forced out of the venture and, for a time, had to work as a manual laborer in order to survive. His luck changed two years later when he received funding for his new Tesla Electric Company.

Throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed, and developed ideas for a number of important inventions—most of which were officially patented by other inventors—including dynamos (electrical generators similar to batteries) and the induction motor.

He was also a pioneer in the discovery of radar technology, X-ray technology, remote control, and the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most AC machinery. Tesla is most well-known for his contributions in AC electricity and for the Tesla coil.

AC Electrical System

Tesla designed the alternating-current (AC) electrical system, which quickly became the preeminent power system of the 20 th century and has remained the worldwide standard ever since. In 1887, Tesla found funding for his new Tesla Electric Company, and by the end of the year, he had successfully filed several patents for AC-based inventions.

Tesla’s AC system soon caught the attention of American engineer and businessman George Westinghouse , who was seeking a solution to supplying the nation with long-distance power. Convinced that Tesla’s inventions would help him achieve this, in 1888, he purchased his patents for $60,000 in cash and stock in the Westinghouse Corporation.

As interest in an AC system grew, Tesla and Westinghouse were put in direct competition with Thomas Edison , who was intent on selling his direct-current (DC) system to the nation. A negative press campaign was soon waged by Edison, in an attempt to undermine interest in AC power.

Unfortunately for Edison, the Westinghouse Corporation was chosen to supply the lighting at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and Tesla conducted demonstrations of his AC system there.

Hydroelectric Power Plant

In 1895, Tesla designed what was among the first AC hydroelectric power plants in the United States, at Niagara Falls. The following year, it was used to power the city of Buffalo, New York—a feat that was highly publicized throughout the world and helped further AC electricity’s path to becoming the world’s power system.

In the late 19 th century, Tesla patented the Tesla coil, which laid the foundation for wireless technologies and is still used in radio technology today. The heart of an electrical circuit, the Tesla coil is an inductor used in many early radio transmission antennas.

The coil works with a capacitor to resonate current and voltage from a power source across the circuit. Tesla used his coil to study fluorescence, x-rays, radio, wireless power, and electromagnetism in the earth and its atmosphere.

Wireless Power and Wardenclyffe Tower

Having become obsessed with the wireless transmission of energy, around 1900, Tesla set to work on his boldest project yet: to build a global, wireless communication system transmitted through a large electrical tower that would enable information sharing and provide free energy throughout the world.

With funding from a group of investors that included financial giant J. P. Morgan , Tesla began work on the free energy project in earnest in 1901. He designed and built a lab with a power plant and a massive transmission tower on a site on Long Island, New York, that became known as Wardenclyffe.

However, doubts arose among his investors about the plausibility of Tesla’s system. As his rival, Guglielmo Marconi —with the financial support of Andrew Carnegie and Thomas Edison —continued to make great advances with his own radio technologies, Tesla had no choice but to abandon the project.

The Wardenclyffe staff was laid off in 1906, and by 1915, the site had fallen into foreclosure. Two years later, Tesla declared bankruptcy, and the tower was dismantled and sold for scrap to help pay the debts he had accrued.

After suffering a nervous breakdown following the closure of his wireless power project, Tesla eventually returned to work, primarily as a consultant. But as time went on, his ideas became progressively more outlandish and impractical. He grew increasingly eccentric, devoting much of his time to the care of wild pigeons in the parks of New York City . Tesla even drew the attention of the FBI with his talk of building a powerful “death ray,” which had received some interest from the Soviet Union during World War II.

Poor and reclusive, Tesla died of coronary thrombosis on January 7, 1943, at the age of 86 in New York City, where he had lived for nearly 60 years.

The legacy of Tesla’s work lives on to this day. In 1994, a street sign identifying “Nikola Tesla Corner” was installed near the site of his former New York City laboratory, at the intersection of 40 th Street and 6 th Avenue.

Several movies have highlighted Tesla’s life and famous works, most notably:

• The Secret of Nikola Tesla , a 1980 biographical film starring Orson Welles as J. P. Morgan .
• Nikola Tesla, The Genius Who Lit the World , a 1994 documentary produced by the Tesla Memorial Society and the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Serbia.
• The Prestige , a 2006 fictional film about two magicians directed by Christopher Nolan , with rock star David Bowie portraying Tesla.

In 2003, a group of engineers founded Tesla Motors, a car company named after Tesla dedicated to building the first fully electric-powered car. Entrepreneur and engineer Elon Musk contributed over $30 million to Tesla in 2004 and serves as the company’s co-founder and CEO.

Tesla Motors unveiled its first electric car, the Roadster, in 2008. A high-performance sports vehicle, the Roadster helped changed the perception of what electric cars could be. In 2014, Tesla launched the Model S, a lower-priced model that, in 2017, set the MotorTrend world record for 0 to 60 miles per hour acceleration at 2.28 seconds. The company’s designs showed that an electric car could have the same performance as gasoline-powered sports car brands like Porsche and Lamborghini.

Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe

Since Tesla’s original forfeiture of his free energy project, ownership of the Wardenclyffe property has passed through numerous hands. Several attempts have been made to preserve it, but efforts to declare it a national historic site failed in 1967, 1976, and 1994.

Then, in 2008, a group called the Tesla Science Center (TSC) was formed with the intention of purchasing the property and turning it into a museum dedicated to the inventor’s work. In 2009, the Wardenclyffe site went on the market for nearly $1.6 million, and for the next several years, the TSC worked diligently to raise funds for its purchase. In 2012, public interest in the project peaked when Matthew Inman of TheOatmeal.com collaborated with the TSC in an Internet fundraising effort, ultimately receiving enough contributions to acquire the site in May 2013.

Wardenclyffe Tower finally joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2018. Work on its restoration is still in progress. A $20 million redevelopment broke ground in April 2023, but those efforts were complicated by large fire that November. The site is closed to the public “for the foreseeable future” for reasons of safety and preservation, according to the Tesla Science Center.

• Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
• I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.
• 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.

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About Nikola Tesla

Dive into the captivating world of Nikola Tesla, the mastermind whose inventions have sculpted the modern landscape of science and technology. Our comprehensive portal at Nikola Tesla Legend serves as your gateway to explore every facet of Tesla's life, from the pivotal moments captured in our ' Timeline Biography ' to in-depth explorations in ' Biography '. Uncover the essence of Tesla's genius through a treasure trove of original materials including ' News Papers ', an extensive archive of articles about Tesla, and ' Photography ', a collection of rare images that illuminate his journey.

Embark on a voyage through Tesla's intellectual legacy with access to his ' Lectures ', a compilation of profound insights, and ' Correspondence ', revealing his personal communications. Delve into ' Books ' for recommended readings on Tesla, and confront the intrigue with ' FBI Files ' showcasing original documents. Furthermore, discover the breadth of Tesla's innovation in ' Patents ', listing all his registered inventions. 

Furthermore, immerse yourself in the wisdom of Nikola Tesla with our ' Nikola Tesla Quotes ' section, a curated collection of his most inspirational and thought-provoking words that continue to resonate today. Navigate Tesla's world more intimately with our ' Tesla Map ', an interactive experience pinpointing the significant locations that shaped his life and legacy. From his birthplace to laboratories where history was made, each site invites you on a journey through Tesla's footsteps. Lastly, join our ' Forum ', a community space dedicated to discussions about Tesla's life, theories, and the ongoing impact of his work. Whether you're a seasoned researcher or a new admirer, our forum offers a welcoming platform for sharing insights and fostering a deeper connection with Tesla's enduring legacy.  Join us at Nikola Tesla Legend to celebrate the enduring impact of Nikola Tesla's work, inspiring curiosity and innovation across generations.

Chronological overview of important moments in Tesla’s life placed in the context of economic development and world events before, during, and after his life.

Already at an early age, Tesla shows insight and ambition. Here you can find an overview of verified facts and the most important moments from his life.

News Papers

Newspaper articles from Tesla’s time that were published in newspapers related to the latest advancements in the field of engineering and electrical engineering.

Photography

Nikola Tesla can be found in very few photographs. We offer you an overview of authentic photographs in which Tesla is recorded on various occasions throughout his life.

We offer you publicly available lectures that Tesla gave throughout America and in London. Take a look at their topics and content and get an idea of what his lectures looked like.

Correspondence

If you are interested in the way Tesla expressed himself in writing, you can find authentic records of this in the form of letters that he sent as well as inscriptions that were dedicated and sent to him.

Besides his autobiography "My Inventions," here you can find a list of books about Nikola Tesla, his inventions, and other topics related to his life and work.

Learn more about the controversial topic of missing documents after Tesla's death. Take a look at the original statements that the FBI declassified on September 21st, 2016.

In memory of this great inventor, we have created an overview of all his inventions. Here you can explore the details of Nikola Tesla's patents or view some of the patents that we have selected.

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Nikola Tesla's Biography

Authenticated Biography pdf format.

PREFACE --- TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Martin Book

Biographical and Introductory

Thomas Commerford Martin

As an introduction to the record contained in this volume of Mr. Tesla's investigations and discoveries, a few words of a biographical nature will, it is deemed, not be out of place, nor other than welcome.

Nikola Tesla was born in 1857 at Smiljan, Lika, a borderland region of Austro-Hungary, of the Serbian race, which has maintained against Turkey and all comers so unceasing a struggle for freedom. His family is an old and representative one among these Switzers of Eastern Europe, and his father was an eloquent clergyman in the Greek Church. An uncle is to-day Metropolitan in Bosnia. His mother was a woman of inherited ingenuity, and delighted not only in skilful work of the ordinary household character, but in the construction of such mechanical appliances as looms and churns and other machinery required in a rural community. Nikola was educated at Gospich in the public school for four years, and then spent three years in the Real Schule. He was then sent to Carstatt, Croatia, where he continued his studies for three years in the Higher Real Schule. There for the first time he saw a steam locomotive. He graduated in 1873, and, surviving an attack of cholera, devoted himself to experimentation, especially in electricity and magnetism. His father would have had him maintain the family tradition by entering the Church, but native genius was too strong, and he was allowed to enter the Polytechnic School at Gratz, to finish his studies, and with the object of becoming a professor of mathematics and physics. One of the machines there experimented with was a Gramme dynamo, used as a motor. Despite his instructor's perfect demonstration of the fact that it was impossible to operate a dynamo without commutator or brushes, Mr. Tesla could not be convinced that such accessories were necessary or desirable. He had already seen with quick intuition that a way could be found to dispense with them; and from that time he may be said to have begun work on the ideas that fructified ultimately in his rotating field motors.

In the second year of his Gratz course, Mr. Tesla gave up the notion of becoming a teacher, and took up the engineering curriculum. His studies ended, he returned home in time to see his father die, and then went to Prague and Buda-Pesth to study languages, with the object of qualifying himself broadly for the practice of the engineering profession. For a short time he served as an assistant in the Government Telegraph Engineering Department, and then became associated with M. Puskas, a personal and family friend, and other exploiters of the telephone in Hungary. He made a number of telephonic inventions, but found his opportunities of benefiting by them limited in various ways. To gain a wider field of action, he pushed on to Paris and there secured employment as an electrical engineer with one of the large companies in the new industry of electric lighting.

It was during this period, and as early as 1882, that he began serious and continued efforts to embody the rotating field principle in operative apparatus. He was enthusiastic about it; believed it to mark a new departure in the electrical arts, and could think of nothing else. In fact, but for the solicitations of a few friends in commercial circles who urged him to form a company to exploit the invention, Mr. Tesla, then a youth of little worldly experience, would have sought an immediate opportunity to publish his ideas, believing them to be worthy of note as a novel and radical advance in electrical theory as well as destined to have a profound influence on all dynamo electric machinery.

At last he determined that it would be best to try his fortunes in America. In France he had met many Americans, and in contact with them learned the desirability of turning every new idea in electricity to practical use. He learned also of the ready encouragement given in the United States to any inventor who could attain some new and valuable result. The resolution was formed with characteristic quickness, and abandoning all his prospects in Europe, he at once set his face westward.

Arrived in the United States, Mr. Tesla took off his coat the day he arrived, in the Edison Works. That place had been a goal of his ambition, and one can readily imagine the benefit and stimulus derived from association with Mr. Edison, for whom Mr. Tesla has always had the strongest admiration. It was impossible, however, that, with his own ideas to carry out, and his own inventions to develop, Mr. Tesla could long remain in even the most delightful employ; and, his work now attracting attention, he left the Edison ranks to join a company intended to make and sell an arc lighting system based on some of his inventions in that branch of the art. With unceasing diligence he brought the system to perfection, and saw it placed on the market. But the thing which most occupied his time and thoughts, however, all through this period, was his old discovery of the rotating field principle for alternating current work, and the application of it in motors that have now become known the world over.

Strong as his convictions on the subject then were, it is a fact that he stood very much alone, for the alternating current had no well recognized place. Few electrical engineers had ever used it, and the majority were entirely unfamiliar with its value, or even its essential features. Even Mr. Tesla himself did not, until after protracted effort and experimentation, learn how to construct alternating current apparatus of fair efficiency. But that he had accomplished his purpose was shown by the tests of Prof. Anthony, made in the of winter 1887-8, when Tesla motors in the hands of that distinguished expert gave an efficiency equal to that of direct current motors. Nothing now stood in the way of the commercial development and introduction of such motors, except that they had to be constructed with a view to operating on the circuits then existing, which in this country were all of high frequency.

The first full publication of his work in this direction—outside his patents—was a paper read before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York, in May, 1888 (read at the suggestion of Prof. Anthony and the present writer), when he exhibited motors that had been in operation long previous, and with which his belief that brushes and commutators could be dispensed with, was triumphantly proved to be correct. The section of this volume devoted to Mr. Tesla's inventions in the utilization of polyphase currents will show how thoroughly from the outset he had mastered the fundamental idea and applied it in the greatest variety of ways.

Having noted for years the many advantages obtainable with alternating currents, Mr. Tesla was naturally led on to experiment with them at higher potentials and higher frequencies than were common or approved of. Ever pressing forward to determine in even the slightest degree the outlines of the unknown, he was rewarded very quickly in this field with results of the most surprising nature. A slight acquaintance with some of these experiments led the compiler of this volume to urge Mr. Tesla to repeat them before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was done in May, 1891, in a lecture that marked, beyond question, a distinct departure in electrical theory and practice, and all the results of which have not yet made themselves fully apparent. The New York lecture, and its successors, two in number, are also included in this volume, with a few supplementary notes.

Mr. Tesla's work ranges far beyond the vast departments of polyphase currents and high potential lighting. The "Miscellaneous" section of this volume includes a great many other inventions in arc lighting , - transformers , - pyro-magnetic generators , - thermo-magnetic motors , - third-brush regulation , - improvements in dynamos , new forms of incandescent lamps , - electrical meters , - condensers , - unipolar dynamos , the conversion of alternating into direct currents , etc. It is needless to say that at this moment Mr. Tesla is engaged on a number of interesting ideas and inventions, to be made public in due course. The present volume deals simply with his work accomplished to date.

A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers

The present section of this volume deals with polyphase currents, and the inventions by Mr. Tesla, made known thus far, in which he has embodied one feature or another of the broad principle of rotating field poles or resultant attraction exerted on the armature. It is needless to remind electricians of the great interest aroused by the first enunciation of the rotating field principle, or to dwell upon the importance of the advance from a single alternating current, to methods and apparatus which deal with more than one. Simply prefacing the consideration here attempted of the subject, with the remark that in nowise is the object of this volume of a polemic or controversial nature, it may be pointed out that Mr. Tesla's work has not at all been fully understood or realized up to date. To many readers, it is believed, the analysis of what he has done in this department will be a revelation, while it will at the same time illustrate the beautiful flexibility and range of the principles involved. It will be seen that, as just suggested, Mr. Tesla did not stop short at a mere rotating field, but dealt broadly with the shifting of the resultant attraction of the magnets. It will be seen that he went on to evolve the "multiphase" system with many ramifications and turns; that he showed the broad idea of motors employing currents of differing phase in the armature with direct currents in the field; that he first described and worked out the idea of an armature with a body of iron and coils closed upon themselves; that he worked out both synchronizing and torque motors; that he explained and illustrated how machines of ordinary construction might be adapted to his system; that he employed condensers in field and armature circuits, and went to the bottom of the fundamental principles, testing, approving or rejecting, it would appear, every detail that inventive ingenuity could hit upon.

Now that opinion is turning so emphatically in favor of lower frequencies, it deserves special note that Mr. Tesla early recognized the importance of the low frequency feature in motor work. In fact his first motors exhibited publicly—and which, as Prof. Anthony showed in his tests in the winter of 1887-8, were the equal of direct current motors in efficiency, output and starting torque—were of the low frequency type. The necessity arising, however, to utilize these motors in connection with the existing high frequency circuits, our survey reveals in an interesting manner Mr. Tesla's fertility of resource in this direction. But that, after exhausting all the possibilities of this field, Mr. Tesla returns to low frequencies, and insists on the superiority of his polyphase system in alternating current distribution, need not at all surprise us, in view of the strength of his convictions, so often expressed, on this subject. This is, indeed, significant, and may be regarded as indicative of the probable development next to be witnessed.

Incidental reference has been made to the efficiency of rotating field motors, a matter of much importance, though it is not the intention to dwell upon it here. Prof. Anthony in his remarks before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, in May, 1888, on the two small Tesla motors then shown, which he had tested, stated that one gave an efficiency of about 50 per cent. and the other a little over sixty per cent. In 1889, some tests were reported from Pittsburgh, made by Mr. Tesla and Mr. Albert Schmid, on motors up to 10 h. p. and weighing about 850 pounds. These machines showed an efficiency of nearly 90 per cent. With some larger motors it was then found practicable to obtain an efficiency, with the three wire system, up to as high as 94 and 95 per cent. These interesting figures, which, of course, might be supplemented by others more elaborate and of later date, are cited to show that the efficiency of the system has not had to wait until the present late day for any demonstration of its commercial usefulness. An invention is none the less beautiful because it may lack utility, but it must be a pleasure to any inventor to know that the ideas he is advancing are fraught with substantial benefits to the public.

Preface --- Contents --- Next Chapter

To the Archive Page Discussion on Tesla's Technology

Lab-Tesla disclosures on the technology just presented

A new system of alternate current motors and transformers, paper by nikola tesla read to the american institute of electrical engineers on may 16, 1888, tesla's laboratory power.

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