The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Tesla, Nicola

TESLA, tĕz'lä, Nicola: b. in Smiljan, province of Lika, Austrian Croatia, in 1857; early education in Gospich; graduated from Real Schule, Karlstadt, in 1873; studied at Polytechnic School, Gratz, capital of Croatia, with the intention of becoming a professor of mathematics and physics, but became interested in electricity and took up and completed an engineering course. He afterward studied philosophy and languages at Prague and Budapest, keeping up meantime his electrical and engineering studies. For some time he was employed in the government telegraph engineering department as an assistant and while there invented several improvements which attracted notice. Then he became engineer for a large lighting company in Paris and next turned his attention to the United States as a promising field for electrical talent and experience. Here he formed a connection with the Edison Company at Orange, N. J., but gave up this engagement in order to be entirely free in his electrical work. He has made himself well known by his many practical inventions and the boldness and brilliancy of his ideas as to the possibilities of electrical science. These ideas, which have aroused widespread interest, have also in some degree diverted attention from the many useful contributions of Tesla to the world's fund of scientific achievement, most of which have been developed in the Tesla laboratory in New York, which he established for the purpose of independent electrical research.

Tesla's researches in electrical oscillation created a new field of electrical investigation, the full possibilities of which have by no means been exhausted. He was the first electrician to conceive an effective method of utilizing the undulating current, converting electrical into mechanical energy more simply, effectively and economically than by the direct current. He invented the modern principle of the rotary magnetic field, embodied in the apparatus used in the transmission of power from Niagara Falls. He has also invented many new forms of dynamos, transformers, induction coils, condensers, arc and incandescent lamps, the oscillator combining steam-engine and dynamo, etc. Consult Martin, T. C., ‘Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nicola Tesla’ (1894) and the files of electrical trade journals.