Nikola Tesla (
Serbian: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an
inventor,
mechanical engineer, and
electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial
electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of
electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern
alternating current (AC)
electric power systems, including the
polyphase system of electrical distribution and the
AC motor, which helped usher in the
Second Industrial Revolution.
Born an ethnic
Serb in the village of
Smiljan,
Croatian Military Frontier in
Austrian Empire (today's
Croatia), he was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen.
[1] After his demonstration of wireless communication through
radio in 1894 and after being the victor in the "
War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.
[2] Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in
history or
popular culture,
[3] but because of his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a
mad scientist by many late in his life.
[4][5] Tesla never put much focus on his finances and died impoverished at the age of 86.
[6]
The
International System of Units unit measuring
magnetic field B (also referred to as the
magnetic flux density and
magnetic induction), the
tesla, was named in his honor (at the
Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the
Tesla effect of
wireless energy transfer to wireless powered electronic devices (which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale with
incandescent light bulbs as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial power levels in his unfinished
Wardenclyffe Tower project).
Aside from his work on electromagnetism and
electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of
robotics,
remote control,
radar, and
computer science, and to the expansion of
ballistics,
nuclear physics,
[7] and
theoretical physics. A few of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various
pseudosciences, anti-gravity and
UFO theories, early
New Age occultism and tele[trans]portation.