Nikola Tesla Books
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
At the stroke of midnight in the village of Smiljan, Lika, Nikola Tesla was born between July 9th and 10th, 1856. During this time, Smiljan was under the jurisdiction of Austria-Hungary. It is now part of Yugoslavia.
His father was the Reverend Milutin Tesla, a priest of the Serbian Orthodox faith. His mother's name was Djouka, and came from the household of Mandich. She was an inventor in her own right, creating many household devices.
Early schooling was in Smiljan and Gospic, and upon reaching the age of fifteen, Nikola was sent to the Higher Real Gymnasium at Karlovac, Croatia. Until this time it was planned by his family that he become a minister. Tesla then experienced an extended illness, during which his father consented to the son's wishes to study in the field of mathematics and physics. At the age of nineteen, Tesla started his higher education at the Polytechnic School at Gratz, Austria. It was at Gratz that a demonstration of a Gramme dynamo exhibited the flaw of arcing brushes. The germ of the idea of a motor without a commutator was now created.
Nikola was an outstanding student, and early in his schooling demonstrated the ability to work complex mathematical problems in his mind, arriving at an answer almost as soon as the problem was presented. This ability was to expand into even greater mental capabilities, almost beyond comprehension.
In 1880, Nikola went to Prague, carrying out his father's wish to complete his education at the university. The next year he took a position as chief electrician of a newly formed telephone company in Budapest. Following another illness, he was employed by the Continental Edison Company in Paris. It was during this period that the concept of an alternating current motor, based upon the rotating magnetic field principle, came to him in a flash of inspiration.
Tesla next accepted an offer to work with Thomas A. Edison and, upon arriving in New York on June 6, 1884 (became naturalized citizen July 30, 1891), went to work designing direct current dynamos. Tesla quit immediately after failing to receive promised pay for design work. Backers for a new system of electric lighting were then secured, but at the end of a year he was richer by stock certificates of little value. By 1887, Tesla had obtained capital for a laboratory in which he produced working models of motors he had mentally devised. On May 16, 1888, he read a paper entitled "A New System of Alternate-Current Motors and Transformers," before a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York in which he announced his recently patented polyphase system of power transmission. Soon after, the patent rights were purchased by The Westinghouse Electric Company.
