Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American inventor and engineer who helped shape the modern world of electricity. He lived from 1856 to 1943. His ideas led to the kind of electric power that flows through the walls of homes and schools today. He is also remembered for his work on radio, motors, and wireless energy.

Tesla was born in a small village in what is now Croatia. As a boy, he had a powerful imagination. He could picture machines in his head and run them through every step before building anything. He studied engineering in Austria and later worked for telephone companies in Europe. In 1884, he sailed to New York City with four cents in his pocket and a letter of introduction to Thomas Edison.

Tesla worked for Edison briefly, but the two men did not get along. Edison believed in a kind of electricity called direct current, or DC. Tesla believed in alternating current, or AC, which can travel much farther through wires without losing power. The fight between them became known as the War of the Currents. Tesla teamed up with businessman George Westinghouse, and together they won. In 1893, their AC system lit up the Chicago World's Fair with around 100,000 light bulbs. Soon after, AC power lit homes across America.

Tesla invented the AC motor, which still spins inside fans, washing machines, and electric tools today. He also worked on early radio. For many years Guglielmo Marconi got the credit for inventing radio, but in 1943, the United States Supreme Court decided that Tesla's patents had come first. Some of his ideas sounded like science fiction. He talked about sending electricity through the air without wires. He even imagined a worldwide system that could send messages and power across oceans.

Not all of his dreams worked. Tesla started building a giant tower on Long Island called Wardenclyffe, hoping to send wireless power around the planet. He ran out of money, and the tower was torn down. He spent his later years living in New York hotels, feeding pigeons in the park, and writing about future inventions. He died alone in 1943, with little money left.

Today his name is everywhere. A unit used to measure magnetic fields is called the tesla. An electric car company carries his name. Statues of him stand at Niagara Falls, where his AC system was first used to turn the falling water into power for whole cities.