Tesla

Tesla Tesla, Nikola (b. July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Croatia--d. Jan. 7, 1943, New York City), Serbian-American inventor and researcher who discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He emigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse the following year. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology. Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was an Orthodox priest; his mother was unschooled but highly intelligent. A dreamer with a poetic touch, as he matured Tesla added to these earlier qualities those of self-discipline and a desire for precision. Training for an engineering career, he attended the Technical University at Graz, Austria, and the University of Prague. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor, and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. Later, at Budapest, he visualized the principle of the rotating magnetic field and developed plans for an induction motor that would become his first step toward the successful utilization of alternating current. In 1882 tesla, tesla's, first, york, westinghouse, power, patent, new, laboratory, edison, alternating-current, work, way, system, rights, proved, motor, later, invented, induction, electrical, current, coil, alternating, year, world, without, wires, widely, university, united, transformers, states, scientific, rotating, regarded