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Nikola Tesla

Original nameNikola Tesla

Serbian-Born Inventor, Founder of the Alternating-Current System

Those Who Lit a New Era · Pioneers

The Alternating-Current SystemThe Induction MotorThe "War of the Currents"

Who they are

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was an inventor and electrical engineer born in Serbia (then part of Austria-Hungary), who after emigrating to the United States worked briefly for Edison, then left to set up on his own over a dispute about promised pay. His most important contribution in life was systematically developing a complete power system based on alternating current, including the AC induction motor, polyphase transmission, and other key components, solving the earlier bottleneck of AC being "able to transmit efficiently over long distances but hard to directly drive a practical motor." In partnership with the industrialist George Westinghouse he brought this AC system to market, at last prevailing in the "War of the Currents" business duel against the direct-current system led by Edison — that the great majority of power systems worldwide today use the AC standard is the direct continuation of Tesla’s technical scheme. Tesla lived in hardship in his later years, absorbed in strikingly forward-looking but never-commercialized grand conceptions such as wireless power transmission, solitary of temperament and neglectful of patent defense and business, applying for nearly three hundred patents in his life yet never accumulating the considerable wealth of his contemporary Edison, and dying alone in a New York hotel room in 1943.

Primary sourcesTesla’s patent documents (the AC induction motor and others)Westinghouse Electric Company business archives

Key stories

From Edison’s Employee to His Greatest Rival

When Tesla first came to the United States he worked for Edison’s company, and by tradition Edison promised him a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus if he could greatly improve the company’s DC generator design, but when Tesla completed the task Edison refused to honor the promise, claiming it was only an "American joke"; Tesla resigned in anger and thereafter threw himself into developing the alternating-current technology he firmly believed superior, the two turning from an employment relation into direct rivals in the struggle over power-technology standards.

Westinghouse’s Bold Gamble

The industrialist George Westinghouse bought Tesla’s AC patents, and the two partnered to light the whole grounds of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair with the AC system, then won the contract to build the Niagara Falls hydroelectric station; these two public showings greatly proved the marked advantage of the AC system over DC in large-scale, long-distance transmission, at last establishing alternating current as the mainstream standard of the global power system in the "War of the Currents."

Version differences

Tesla’s historical reputation was relatively underrated for much of the twentieth century, rising markedly only in recent decades through popular culture and the history of technology rediscovering him, and this "rediscovery" process is itself a common case in the history of technology of "how historical evaluation changes with the times."

Relationships

Mentor

🧲Michael Faraday　The theory of electromagnetic induction Faraday established was the direct theoretical basis for Tesla’s design of the AC induction motor

Nemesis

💡Thomas Edison 📻Guglielmo Marconi

Echoes today

Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.

The electric-car brand "Tesla"The electric-car company Tesla, founded in 2003, is named for him in commemoration of his foundational contribution to AC and motor technology, and this brand naming greatly raised Tesla’s own fame among the contemporary public.

"Tesla" as the unit of magnetic flux densityThe SI unit of magnetic flux density, the "tesla" (T), is named for him, a common physical unit in the parameter labeling of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) equipment.

Appears in

The World Lit by Electric CurrentThe "War of the Currents": Edison vs. Tesla

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