Nikola Tesla : The Electric Magician Part : 1

Nikola Tesla was a brilliant Siberian-American inventor, electrical & mechanical engineer and physicist born and raised in Smiljan, Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He has been well known for the revolutionizing invention of Alternating-Current(A.C.) supply system or in simple words electricity. Nikola Tesla has to be given credit for the current supply in our home.

Nikola Tesla was born on 10th of July in 1856 and died on 7th of January 1943 at the age of 86. This Noble prize winning inventor has always been reported to be a bright and sharp student right from his childhood. His father was a priest in the Serbian Orthodox church and his mother managed the family’s farm. In 1863 Tesla’s brother Daniel was killed in a riding accident. The shock of the loss unsettled the 7-year-old Tesla, who reported seeing visions—the first signs of his lifelong mental illnesses.

Tesla studied studied math and physics at the Technical University of Graz and philosophy at the University of Prague. Tesla eventually withdrew from polytechnic school and ended up working for the Continental Edison Company, where he focused on electrical lighting and motors. 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. Tesla once also worked in Manhattan headquarters of Thomas Edison’s as an engineer but after solving an electrical problem that the company faced he was reportedly entitled to 50,000$, but Edison demurred, saying, “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor.” Tesla quit soon after.

Tesla founded Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing with the help of two businessmen. He filed a number of electrical patents, which he assigned to the company. When his partners decided that they wanted to focus strictly on supplying electricity, they took the company’s intellectual property and founded another firm, leaving Tesla with nothing.

In 1887 Tesla with the help of other 2 inventors again brought up the Tesla electrical company. He set up a laboratory in Manhattan, where he developed the alternating current induction motor.

Stay tuned for the next part to know more about The Electro man !!