He was known as the Master of Magnetism and the Lord of Lightning. Bitter rival of the equally brilliant Thomas Edison, he brought the world the power of alternating current, and very nearly achieved the dream of electrical power that could be broadcast through the air itself. He was Nikola Tesla. Read on to find out more about his life and contributions to the field of electrical engineering.

	+ Enlarge
	Nikola Tesla is one of the most famous electrical engineers of all time. (Photo credit: Wikipedia Commons)

In his time, he was considered to be one of the greatest inventors in America, lauded by his peers and the public alike. Part visionary, part mad scientist, even today he is honored for his hundreds of contributions to the then-infant field of electrical engineering.

Early Life

Tesla was born in the Serbian city of Smiljan on July 10, 1856. His father was the local priest, and his mother was herself known as a talented inventor of household gadgets. She was also a strong influence on the young Tesla. As a student at the Realschule in Karlstadt, Austria, Tesla became fascinated by electrical engineering, continuing his studies in this area at the Austrian Polytechnic Institute in Gratz. Upon graduating in 1878, Tesla moved to Slovenia, where he worked as an electrical engineer, a job that was interrupted by an additional year of electrical engineering study at the University of Prague.

Career

In 1881, Tesla moved to Budapest and began work as an electrical engineer at the National Telephone Company. During this time, he is reputed to have invented the first practical loudspeaker. By 1887, he had moved to Paris to work at the Continental Edison Company, once again in electrical engineering. It was at CE that he began his fundamental work on the first electrical induction motor, the design of which he patented in 1885. Tesla's work so impressed his manager at CE that he was recommended to Edison himself, which lead to a job at the Edison Machine Works in New York City.

Tesla and Edison soon fell into a lifelong feud over the merits of alternating versus direct current that would culminate in the so-called War of the Currents in later years. Unwilling to sacrifice his investment in his existing direct current infrastructure, Edison snubbed Tesla's contributions, and is rumored to have reneged on a $50,000 payment he had promised to Tesla in exchange for the Serbian's redesign of Edison's inefficient direct current dynamos and generators. In any case, after falling out with his employer, in 1886 Tesla left the Edison Works to start his own company (Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing), but did not achieve any success until 1888, when he demonstrated a working brushless AC induction motor to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now the IEEE). This demonstration brought him to the attention of fellow electrical engineering pioneer George Westinghouse, who subsequently licensed several of Tesla's patents for his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company.

The War of the Currents

Telsa's alliance with Westinghouse only served to exacerbate the developing feud between him and Edison. Edison's prior investment in direct current kept him from even considering Tesla's more powerful alternating current systems. For years, the two men battled both in print and in person, but in the end, Tesla's superior polyphase motors won out, culminating in Westinghouse and Tesla establishing the first hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls in 1895. From that point on, the fate of direct current was sealed, and alternating current went on to become the dominant power system in the world today. Edison never forgave Tesla for his success, and although in later years he lamented that he should have listened to his protégé, Edison later refused to even share the Nobel Prize with him (as did Tesla in turn).

Astounding Inventions

Over the next two decades, Tesla's genius gained him worldwide acclaim. In 1887, he developed a single node vacuum tube that many consider to be the first functional X-Ray machine. In 1888, he expanded his research into electrical power transmission and developed his most iconic invention, the sparking lightning generator known as the Tesla Coil. In 1893, addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Tesla demonstrated the basic elements of radio communication, cementing his claim of discovering radio before Marconi. That same year, Tesla (in partnership with George Westinghouse) astounded the world by using AC power to light the entire Chicago World's Fair, as well as by introducing America to fluorescent lights and simplified broadcast power.

Nikola Tesla greatly affected the future of the field of electrical engineering.

During this same period, Tesla is also credited with having designed the first radio-controlled device (a boat), which he saw as a prototype for future radio-guided weapons and robots. In 1898, Tesla designed the ''electrical igniter,'' essentially the ''spark plug'' now used in internal combustion engines worldwide. From his Fifth Avenue laboratory (and later his lab on New York City's Houston Street), the brilliant (and some say eccentric) inventor entertained and amazed the world with his electrical engineering creations, including such luminaries as Mark Twain, the kaiser of Germany, and financier J.Pierpont Morgan (who later became Tesla's business partner). In 1906, at the Waterside Power Station in New York, Tesla demonstrated a 200-horsepower bladeless turbine that would become the prototype for turbine engines in everything from electrical power systems to jet engines.

Wireless Power

In 1899, Tesla moved his laboratory to Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he began work on the project that became his ultimate obsession: the transmission of electrical power without wires. Studying the interaction of electricity and magnetism, he developed his theories until, in 1900, he was ready to put them into practice. Moving back to the East Coast, he began the construction of the massive Wardenclyffe Tower facility, where he hoped to create a working broadcast power station. 187 feet high and capped by a 68-foot copper domed transmitter, the Tower would use high frequency electricity to project power in unlimited amounts anywhere on earth. Dubbed ''Tesla's million-dollar folly'' by the press, the Wardenclyffe Tower project fell apart when the principal investor, J.Pierpont Morgan, pulled out, claiming, ''If anyone can draw on the power, where do we put the meter?'' Tesla refused, however, to be thwarted and later developed a similar project at Sayville, Long Island, which was eventually seized and torn down at the start of WWI by the US government, which feared it could be used by German spies.

In his later years, plagued by bad investments and an ongoing war with Marconi to recover the patent rights to the invention of radio (he was successful in 1943), Tesla was regarded as an eccentric. Living alone in his rooms at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, his restless mind led him to even more visionary concepts: RADAR in 1917, patents on VTOL aircraft and ocean thermal energy conversion, and even experiments in directed energy death rays, ion-powered flying saucer craft, and the manipulation of space-time.

Achievements

Tesla died alone and nearly penniless at the age of 86 of a heart attack on January 5, 1943. Yet the many inventions he developed became the foundation of modern electrical engineering; it has been said by many that this brilliant man was the ''Father of Physics'' and ''the man who invented the 20th century.'' Honored by statues in his native Serbia and the United States; the subject of numerous biographies, magazine articles, and films; awarded the IEEE's prestigious Edison award as well as doctoral degrees from Columbia and Yale, the legacy of Nikola Tesla as the ''patron saint of electrical engineering'' will stand for as long as humanity turns on a light, starts up a motor, or listens to a radio.

Do Not Commit Yourself to One Job Site: Investigate Jobs on 50,000+ Websites Instantly

Assert your independence in a logical way: Discover engineering jobs from over 50,000 websites on EngineeringCrossing. It is not rational for you to be confined to jobs on one website. As an independent individual who is always able to find solutions to a wide variety of problems, you know that job openings are scattered on the websites of tens of thousands of companies, organizations and other job sites. By putting this tremendous variety of jobs in one place, our site empowers you to rapidly take action on your terms, and find the job of your choice. We do not accept any money from advertisers for job postings so that we can provide you with unbiased research about every job opening. You are going to love the variety on our "engineering jobs only" site and the new experiences you will have using it.

Tell us where to send your access instructions: Your Email: