Nikola Tesla Biographical Sketch

Nikola Tesla.

Each passing year has brought to our shores, as to a land of hope and promise, a flood tide of the peoples from the many principalities of Europe some of high station, some of low estate, but most with life before them and success to win or lose.

Nikola Tesla is one of those favored few, who, by their own efforts and endowments have reached a pinnacle of fame unscaled by most.

Sixty-six years ago he was born in Austria Hungary at a place called Smiljan, in Lika. Twice the world was nearly deprived of his electrical genius, for it was first intended that he should follow the profession of his father, though Nikola was not enamored with this prospect; later, after the completion of his preparatory education he was stricken with Cholera, and for months was dangerously ill. Successful recovery permitted him his choice of colleges and he elected to study engineering at the Polytechnic Institute at Graz. Later he studied languages and philosophy at Prague and Budapest. 1882 saw the completion of Tesla's academic life and his installation as electrician of a telephone company.

During his Graz days he had conceived the idea of a motor with a rotating field, and in 1882, he constructed one using alternating current. Unsuccessful in an attempt to introduce his practice in Europe, he came to the United States in '84, where he immediately secured employment in the design of dynamos and motors.

Tesla's particular contribution to the electrical world is his alternating current motor and revolving field generator, important links in the long distance transmission and use of electric power. His other discoveries and inventions are many, principally connected with apparatus for the use and transmission of power, and include the polyphase generator and transformer, split-phase motor, oscillation transformer, high frequency machines and coils, Tesla tubes, lamp and other high-potential, high-frequency apparatus.

Nikola Tesla has won a place in the Hall of Fame of Electrical Engineers.