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Library of Congress LC-DIG-ggbain-04851
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Nikola Tesla
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TESLA, Nikola
(1856–1943), American electrical engineer and inventor,
recognized as one of the outstanding pioneers in the electric power
field.
Tesla was born in Smiljan, Croatia, and educated at the Polytechnic
School in Graz, Austria, and at the University of Prague. After
working for three years as an electrical engineer he immigrated
(1884) to the U.S., where he later became a naturalized citizen.
For a brief period he was employed by Thomas Edison, but he left
that position to devote himself exclusively to experimental research
and invention.
In 1888 Tesla designed the first practical system of generating
and transmitting alternating current for electric power. The American
rights to this epoch-making invention were bought by the American
inventor George Westinghouse, who demonstrated (1893) the system
for the first time at the World’s Columbian Exposition
in Chicago. Two years later Tesla’s alternating-current
motors were installed at the Niagara Falls power project.
Tesla’s many inventions include high-frequency generators
(1890) and the Tesla coil (1891), a transformer with important applications
in the field of radio communications.