A native of Yugoslavia,
Tesla came to the United States of America in 1884, where his many inventions, covered by more than 700 patents,
came to fruition in such diverse fields as electrical energy processing, thermodynamics, telegraphy, radio,
radio astronomy, aviation, physics, optics, mathematics, and chemistry.
Tesla invented the modern poly-phase Alternating Currents (AC) system. Today, that system is still unsurpassed in its efficient and economic generation, transmission, and usage of virtually all available electrical power, and is the single most important factor in the widespread use of electrical energy as we know it today. To make the transmitted poly-phase currents perform mechanical work, Tesla invented a revolutionary poly-phase AC motor, which is by far superior to the conventional Direct Current (DC) motor with mechanical commutators and brushes that wear out and require continuous maintenance. The rotating action in Tesla’s AC motor is obtained through its poly-phase stator windings which generate a rotating magnetic field, inducing currents in shorted-turn rotor windings, hence producing torque and rotation. Today Tesla’s revolutionary AC System together with his AC motor form the backbone of the modern industrial world.
In the days of the Wars of Currents, Tesla fought for his new AC power system and AC motor against Edison, who was backing DC power generation and transmission and DC motors. Tesla clearly won when Westinghouse Electric Company bought his patents and later on when General Electric acquired the patent rights from Westinghouse. Thus, the new electrical age was born.
Tesla demonstrated the first system of radio transmission, complete with transmitter, receiver, and electronic tube detection. His high-frequency, high-power experiments at Colorado Springs in 1893 still fascinate present-day scientists. In honor of his contributions to electrical sciences, a unit of magnetic induction bears the name tesla, joining other early pioneers of electrical engineering in having units named after them, such as the volt, ampere, ohm, henry, farad, and others.
One of his contemporaries, Mr. Behrend, himself an early electrical engineering contributor, spoke these words:
"Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla’s work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle... His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science. From that work has sprung a revolution."
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