Biography

Nikola Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 to Serbian parents in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia). His father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian Orthodox priest. Tesla's mother, Đuka Tesla , whose father was also a Serbian Orthodox priest, had a talent for making home craft tools, mechanical appliances, and the ability to memorize Serbian epic poems. Nikola credited his eidetic memory and creative abilities to his mother's genetics and influence. Tesla's progenitors were from western Serbia, near Montenegro. Tesla was the fourth of five children. He had an older brother named Dane and three sisters, Milka, Angelina and Marica. Dane was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five. Some accounts say that Tesla caused the accident by frightening the horse. In 1861, Tesla attended the "Lower" or "Primary" School in Smiljan where he studied German, arithmetic, and religion. In 1862, the Tesla family moved to Gospić, Austrian Empire, where Tesla's father worked as a pastor. Nikola completed "Lower" or "Primary" School, followed by the "Lower Real Gymnasium" or "Normal School". In 1875, Tesla enrolled at Austrian Polytechnic in Graz, Austria, on a Military Border scholarship. During his first year, Tesla never missed a lecture, earned the highest grades possible, passed nine exams (nearly twice as many required), started a Serbian culture club, and even received a letter of commendation from the dean of the technical faculty to his father, which stated, "Your son is a star of first rank". Tesla claimed that he worked from 3 a.m. to 11 p.m., no Sundays or holidays excepted. He was "mortified when [his] father made light of [those] hard won honors". After his father's death in 1879, Tesla found a package of letters from his professors to his father, warning that unless he were removed from the school, Tesla would be killed through overwork. During his second year, Tesla came into conflict with Professor Poeschl over the Gramme dynamo, when Tesla suggested that commutators weren't necessary. At the end of his second year, Tesla lost his scholarship and became addicted to gambling. During his third year, Tesla gambled away his allowance and his tuition money, later gambling back his initial losses and returning the balance to his family. Tesla claimed that he "conquered [his] passion then and there," but later he was known to play billiards in the US. When exam time came, Tesla was unprepared and asked for an extension to study, but was denied. He never graduated from the university and did not receive grades for the last semester. In 1882, Tesla began working for the Continental Edison Company in France, designing and making improvements to electrical equipment. In June 1884, Tesla relocated to New York City. During his trip across the Atlantic, his ticket, money, and some of his luggage were stolen, and he was nearly thrown overboard after a mutiny broke out on the ship. He arrived with only four cents in his pocket, a letter of recommendation, a few poems, and the remainder of his belongings. Tesla was hired by Edison to work for his Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison Company's direct current generators. In 1885, Tesla claimed that he could redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy. According to Tesla, Edison remarked, "There's fifty thousand dollars in it for you—if you can do it"—this has been noted as an odd statement from an Edison whose company was stingy with pay and who did not have that sort of cash on hand. After months of work, Tesla fulfilled the task and inquired about payment. Edison, claiming that he was only joking, replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor." Instead, Edison offered a US$10 a week raise over Tesla's US$18 per week salary; Tesla refused the offer and immediately resigned. In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The company installed electrical arc light based illumination systems designed by Tesla and also had designs for dynamo electric machine commutators, the first patents issued to Tesla in the US. In April 1887, Tesla started a company, the Tesla Electric Company, with the backing of New York attorney Charles F. Peck and Alfred S. Brown, the director of Western Union. They set up a laboratory for Tesla at 89 Liberty Street in Manhattan so he could work on his alternating current motor and other devices for power distribution, with an agreement that they share fifty-fifty with Tesla any profits generated from patents. It was here, in 1887, that Tesla constructed a brushless alternating current induction motor, based on a rotating magnetic field principle he claimed to have conceived of in 1882. He received a US patent for the motor in May 1888. At that time, many inventors were trying to develop workable AC motors because AC's advantages in long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. The rotating magnetic field induction motor seems to have been an independent invention by Tesla, but it was not a unique discovery at the time. Italian physicist Galileo Ferraris published a paper on rotating magnetic field based induction motor on 11 March 1888, a working model of which he may have been demonstrating at the University of Turin as early as 1885. In 1888, a month before Tesla demonstrated his AC induction motor, Westinghouse engineer Oliver B. Shallenberger invented an induction meter that was based on the same rotating magnetic field principle, and during Tesla's demonstration English engineer Elihu Thomson stated he was working on an induction motor. In 1888, the editor of Electrical World magazine, Thomas Commerford Martin (a friend and publicist), arranged for Tesla to demonstrate his alternating current system, including his induction motor, at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE). Engineers working for the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company reported to George Westinghouse that Tesla had a viable AC motor and power system—something that Westinghouse had been trying to secure. In July 1888, Brown and Peck negotiated a licensing deal with George Westinghouse for Tesla's polyphase induction motor and transformer designs for $60,000 in cash and stock and a royalty of $2.50 per AC horsepower produced by each motor. Westinghouse also hired Tesla for one year for the large fee of $2,000 a month to be a consultant at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs. In August 1917, Tesla first established the principles of frequency and power level for the first primitive radar units.