Tesla, Nikola

{tes'-luh}

The electrician and inventor Nikola Tesla, b. Croatia, July 9, 
1856, d. Jan. 7, 1943, made practical the use of alternating 
current.  After emigrating (1884) to the United States, he worked 
briefly for Thomas Edison.  In 1888 he demonstrated how a magnetic 
field could be made to rotate if two coils at right angles were 
supplied with alternating current of different phases (90 degrees 
out of phase with each other).  Tesla patented his alternating-
current motor, which was purchased by George WESTINGHOUSE and made 
the basis for the Westinghouse power system.

After 1903, Tesla did noteworthy research on high-voltage 
electricity, transformers, telephone and telegraph systems, and 
plants for power transmission without wires.

Bibliography:  Cheney, Margaret, Tesla: Man out of Time (1982);  
Hunt, Inez, and Draper, W. W., Lightning in His Hands:  The Life 
Story of Nikola Tesla (1977;  repr. 1986); O'Neill, John J., 
Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (1944;  repr. 1986).