Nikola Tesla

Who is Nikola Tesla?

Nikola Tesla was an inventor and electrical engineer born in the village of Smiljan, in the Croatian Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire (present-day Croatia), to an ethnic Serb family. He studied engineering in Graz and Prague before emigrating to the United States in 1884, where he briefly worked for Thomas Edison. Tesla is best known for his pioneering work on alternating current (AC) electrical systems, including the AC induction motor and polyphase power distribution, technology later commercialized through his collaboration with George Westinghouse and used to power the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls. He also invented the Tesla coil, conducted early experiments in wireless power transmission and radio-frequency technology, and held more than one hundred patents across his career. Later in life he pursued increasingly ambitious and speculative projects, including the unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower intended for wireless global communication, and he died in New York in 1943 having spent his final years in financial difficulty. Tesla's birthplace in Smiljan, Croatia, is preserved as a memorial center, and he is honored there and internationally as a foundational figure of the modern electrical age.

Sources: Nikola Tesla, My Inventions (autobiography, 1919) · Smithsonian Institution, Nikola Tesla biographical archive · Nikola Tesla Memorial Center, Smiljan, Croatia