Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 - January 7,1943), was an American electrical engineer, physicist, scientist, and was a world-renowned inventor in groundbreaking technological discoveries. He made revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Tesla helped ushered in the Second Industrial Revolution. Tesla's patents on alternating current (AC), including the polyphase system, electric motor, radio, and the Tesla coil, with major contributions in establishing radar, remote control, robotics, and adding to the expansion of theoretical physics and nuclear physics. Tesla's inventions included the AC hydroelectric power system, fluorescent lighting, and wireless communication.
Tesla was born in a village of Smiljan, part of the Austrian Empire of 1856 known as Croatia, today in southeast Europe. Ever since he was a child, Tesla was very fascinated by electricity and nature. He often studied both subjects greatly. His father was a priest and he was the fourth of five children. He was often sick and suffered from depression. Tesla studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz. He went to several universities in Europe and excelled as a top student. He proclaimed to have photographic memory and was constantly receiving flashes of inspiration and was able to visualize in detail how things really worked. Tesla was fluent in many languages: Serbian, English, Hungarian, Czech, German, Latin, French, and Italian.
Tesla was becoming famous in Europe before coming to America in 1884. In Budapest, Tesla became the chief electrician to the National Telephone Company in 1881. While there he developed a device as a telephone amplifier, making this the first loudspeaker.
In Paris, France by 1882, Tesla was working for the Continental Edison Company, as an engineer making improvements to Edison's ideas on the electric equipment brought from America overseas. Tesla also conceived and held patents on the makings of the "induction motor" and the machines that could benefit from using rotating magnetic fields. In 1884, Tesla arrived in New York City. Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work greatly improved many of the Edison's company most complicated electrical engineering problems. Tesla was a total visionary and his work was groundbreaking.
Edison was intimidated by Tesla. Edison's inventions were the light bulb, phonograph, and the microphone in telephones. Tesla's ideas of AC power were shout down by Edison (who didn't know how to create AC), especially when Tesla noticed how inefficient Edison's direct current (DC) power system could not be sent out to the masses without hundreds of electrical generators every few miles. Tesla redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, and gave the Edison Company quite a few profitable new patents that both improved and benefited the company. In 1885 when Edison refused to pay Tesla the extra money owed to him for his tireless work, Tesla quickly resigned. Out of a job Tesla tried to form his own company but investors didn't believe his AC ideas. He fell on hard times and tried to raise capital for his electrical innovations.
Thomas Edison's major rival was George Westinghouse, who was also seeking to develop AC to rule the monopoly of electrical current. Only Nikola Tesla held US patents for AC polyphase transmission and AC motor in 1887 and 1888. Both are used today worldwide as the planet's main power transmissions. In 1888 Westinghouse hired Tesla to work in the Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse was more open-minded and bought into Tesla's ideas with enthusiasm. As early as 1891 Tesla had invented what he called the "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity. This is totally revolutionary considering it's what we use today 100 years later. His princelples could effect communication and simple lighting of homes and building without wires if fully utilized.
Tesla became an American citizen that same year in July 1891 at the age of 35. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology. Tesla's patent on the fundamental circuitry for radio for global communication is contested by another radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi. (Later in 1909, Marconi is awarded a shared Noble Prize in Physics with Karl Braun for contributions to radio communications.) This was an outrage to Tesla who's patents clearly proves he was first with radio. The battle for credit would go to the Supreme Court over the next 50 years.
Tesla had that same year made patents on the Electro-Magnetic Motor, Alternating Electric Current Generator, and Electric Incandescent Lamp. Tesla created the Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46E. Houston Street. In 1891 he was experimenting on his electro-mechanical oscillators to generate a resonance frequency. The result caused a small earthquake, with only the surrounding buildings shaking. Tesla generated a resonance of several buildings nearly a block long causing complaints to the police to investigate. Tesla heighten the frequency and his own building began to shake uncontrollably. Realizing the imminent danger he had no option but to hit the machine with a sledgehammer to end the wayward experiment just as the police arrived. People today have tried to recreate this effect, but have done so on buildings that are earthquake proof, and not made from 1891 specifications.
At the World's Fair of 1893 in Chicago, Tesla and Westinghouse successfully demonstrated to visitors that AC power could fully illuminate the Exposition. Among the electrical exhibits were Tesla's fluorescent lamps and impressing everyone on lighting lamps which had no wires connected to them. Showing how electrical power could easily be transmuted through the air, wireless energy! Within three years, Tesla had sold some 40 patents on a electrical power system to Westinghouse. Together, they used the AC power system to hardness the energy of Niagara Falls into electricity. Tesla was an environmentalist and this fit right into his clean energy idea. Nothing was cleaner and free than using hydroelectric power that was non-polluting and renewable.
Greatly respected now as pioneer of his time Tesla kept busy with more inventions and spending time with personal friends like Mark Twain and Stanford White. An example of Tesla's vision of free power for all and less greed, when in 1897, Westinghouse was going bankrupt having spent so much money trying to beat Edison, Tesla decided to break contract with Westinghouse, and give up his patent royalties in effect saving the company from going under. This was a fatal flaw for Tesla not being a very good businessman. He could have been a billionaire with his patent rights.