Photo: Napoleon Sarony, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smiljan, in what is now Croatia, to Serbian parents. He studied engineering in Graz and worked for telephone and electric companies in Budapest and Paris.
In 1884 he arrived in New York and briefly worked for Thomas Edison. They parted ways within months.
Alternating current
Tesla developed an induction motor that ran on alternating current. In 1888 George Westinghouse bought licenses to his patents.
Edison’s company backed direct current. The rivalry became known as the war of the currents. AC could be sent long distances far more cheaply, and it won. Westinghouse lit the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with AC. In 1896 a hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls began sending AC power to Buffalo.
Later years
Tesla worked on radio, X-rays and wireless power. He built a tower at Wardenclyffe on Long Island to send power and messages without wires, but funding ran out.
He lived in New York hotels and died in the Hotel New Yorker in 1943. The unit of magnetic flux density, the tesla, is named for him.
