Nikola Tesla Dies at 85 Alone in His Hotel Suite

Celebrated Inventor, Born in Yugoslavia, An Electrical Wizard

Nikola Tesla, 85, inventor of the Tesla coil, the induction motor and hundreds of other electrical devices, died last night in his suite at the Hotel New Yorker. According to hotel officials, he had been in failing health for two years.

The world-famous inventor, who lived alone, was found dead in bed by a maid. She called a hotel physician.

The hotel management started a search for friends or relatives. It was believed a nephew is living in the city but his whereabouts are not known.

Nikola Tesla was born in Smiljan, Yugoslavia, in July, 1856. His father, a Greek Orthodox Church minister, was a noted writer, orator, linguist and mathematician. His mother, Georgina Mandic, was an inventor.

Came Here in 1884.

Tesla studied at the Graz Polytechnic Institute and the University of Prague after preparatory work at the Realschules of Lika and Carlstadt. He came to the United States in 1884, and became a naturalized citizen.

In 1888 he designed the alternating system. Two years later he invented the Tesla motor and designed a plan for the transmission of alternating current. The following year he presented plans for electrical conversion and distribution by oscillatory discharges.

His high frequency studies and development of the transforming coil bearing his name occurred from 1888 to 1891. From then on to 1900 his discoveries and inventions included such fields and appliances as wireless communication, electrical oscillation, radiant power and radioactive matter.

Communications and wireless power transmission occupied most of his research after that. He worked at the laboratories of Thomas Edison at Orange, N. J., specializing in motor design.

Fed Crumbs to Pigeons.

During recent years Mr. Tesla had been seen, but seldom recognized, on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in front of the Public Library and in Gramercy Park, invariably carrying a bag of crumbs which he fed to the pigeons.

Mr. Tesla’s only military invention was a method in which he only alluded but never fully described. It was a means whereby an impenetrable “wall of force” could be erected about a nation’s borders which would render helpless any military attack. He disclosed existence of the plan in 1934, and said he intended to present it to the Geneva Conference. The problem referred to it afterward.

In 1936, when he was 80, he said his original plan to live to be 135 had been changed with the repeal of prohibition and he would live to be 140 instead.

He was decorated by the Yugoslav and Czech governments. He wept when he met King Peter of Yugoslavia here last July.