Tesla, Nikola

Tesla, Nikola (1856-1943), Croatian-born American electrical engineer and inventor, recognized as one of the outstanding pioneers in the electric power field.

Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia, and educated at the Polytechnic School in Graz, Austria, and at the University of Prague. After working for three years as an electrical engineer he emigrated (1884) to the United States, where he later became a naturalized citizen. For a brief period he was employed by Thomas Edison, but he left that position to devote himself exclusively to experimental research and invention.

In 1888 Tesla designed the first practical system of generating and transmitting alternating current for electric power systems. The American rights to this epoch-making invention were bought by the American inventor George Westinghouse, who demonstrated the system for the first time at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893). Two years later Tesla's alternating-current motors were installed at the Niagara Falls power project.

Tesla's many inventions include high-frequency generators (1890) and the Tesla coil (1891), a transformer with important applications in the field of radio communications.