Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Main Index Alexander G Bell Charles Babbage Charles Goodyear Guglielmo Marconi John Logie Baird Hernry Ford Nikola Tesla Wright Brothers Archimedes Enro Rubik	The brilliant inventor and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current (AC) power system that provides electricity for homes and buildings. Nikola Tesla was granted more than 100 United States patents. Many of his discoveries led to electronic developments for which other scientists were honored. Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary, on July 9, 1856. He was often sick during his boyhood, but he was a bright student with a photographic memory. Against his father's wishes he chose a career in electrical engineering. After his graduation from the University of Prague in 1880, Tesla worked as a telephone engineer in Budapest, Hungary. By 1882 he had devised an AC power system to replace the weak direct-current (DC) generators and motors then in use. Nikola Tesla invented a high-frequency transformer, called the Tesla coil, which made AC power transmission practical. He also experimented with radio and designed an electronic tube for use as the detector in a voice radio system almost 20 years before Lee De Forest developed a similar device. Tesla lectured before large audiences of scientists in the United States and Europe between the years 1891 and 1893. Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison supposedly had been chosen to share a Nobel prize in physics. According to the report, Nikola Tesla declined his share of the award because of his doubt that Edison was a scientist in the strictest sense. Neither of them ever received the prize. During his later years he led a secluded, eccentric, and often destitute life, nearly forgotten by the world he believed would someday honor him. Nikola Tesla died on Jan. 7, 1943, in New York City. The Tesla Museum in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, was dedicated to the inventor. In 1956 the tesla, a unit of magnetic flux density in the metric system, was named in his honor.
	Compiled by Steve Dawson for fun!