Nikola Tesla

Author profile

born

July 10, 1856 in Smiljan (former Austrian Empire), Croatia

died

January 07, 1943

gender

male

website

http://www.tesla-museum.org/

genre

Science, Biographies & Memoirs

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Nikola Tesla was a genius polymath, inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He is frequently cited as one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth," and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electricity and magnetism 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 power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, Vojna Krajina, in the territory of today's Croatia, he was a subject of the...more Nikola Tesla was a genius polymath, inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. He is frequently cited as one of the most important contributors to the birth of commercial electricity, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth," and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electricity and magnetism 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 power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan, Vojna Krajina, in the territory of today's Croatia, he was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. After his demonstration of wireless communication (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. 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, but due to 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. Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.

The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field "B"), 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 wirelessly power electronic devices which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale (lightbulbs) as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial energy 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, and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio. Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and early New Age occultism.
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Books by Nikola Tesla

Average rating: 3.91 · 476 ratings · 65 reviews · 61 distinct works

	My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla 3.92 avg rating — 263 ratings — published 1982 — 30 editions	My rating:
	The Fantastic Inventions of Nikola Tesla 3.73 avg rating — 64 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Tesla Papers by Nikola Tesla, David Hatcher Childress (Editor) 4.08 avg rating — 26 ratings — published 2000	My rating:
	The Strange Life of Nikola Tesla 3.64 avg rating — 36 ratings — published 1935 — 3 editions	My rating:
	Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency 4.25 avg rating — 24 ratings — published 2002 — 22 editions	My rating:
	Complete Patents of Nikola Tesla by Nikola Tesla, Jim Glenn (Editor) 3.90 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 1994	My rating:
	Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla 3.78 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1995	My rating:
	On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena 4.86 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2005 — 6 editions	My rating:
	Problem of Increasing Human Energy 3.22 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 1990 — 13 editions	My rating:
	Tesla: The True Wireless 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:

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Quotes by Nikola Tesla

“The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
― Nikola Tesla

tags: insanity

64 people liked it

“The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
― Nikola Tesla

tags: future , present

56 people liked it

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
― Nikola Tesla

44 people liked it

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Nikola Tesla

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combine editionsBooks by Nikola Tesla

Quotes by Nikola Tesla

combine editions
Books by Nikola Tesla