Nikola
Tesla (Serbian:
Никола Тесла;
10 July
1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor, mechanical
engineer, and electrical engineer.
He was an
important contributor to the birth of commercial
electricity, and is best
known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's
patents and theoretical work
formed the basis of modern alternating
current (AC) electric
power systems, including the polyphase
system of electrical
distribution and the AC motor.
This work helped usher in the Second
Industrial Revolution.
Born an ethnic Serb
in the
village of Smiljan
(now
part of Gospić),
in the Croatian
Military Frontier[1]
of the Austrian
Empire (modern-day Croatia),
Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an
American citizen.[2]
Because of
his 1894 demonstration of wireless communication through radio
and as the eventual victor
in the "War of
Currents", he was widely
respected as one of the greatest
electrical engineers who worked in America.[3]
He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries
were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this
time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in
history or popular culture.[4]
Tesla
demonstrated wireless energy
transfer to
power electronic devices as early as 1893, and aspired to
intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his
unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower
project.
Because of his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and
sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological
developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad
scientist by
many late in his life.[5]
Tesla died
with little money at the age of 86 in a hotel suite in New York City.[6]
The SI
unit measuring magnetic
field B
(also referred to as the magnetic
flux density and magnetic
induction), the tesla,
was named in his honor
(at the CGPM,
Paris, 1960). |
Links:
www.teslasociety.com
www.biography.com
www.pbs.org |