The New Student's Reference Work/Tesla, Nikola

NIKOLA TESLA

Tes'la, Nikola, electrician, physicist and inventor, was born in Austria-Hungary in 1857, and studied at the polytechnic school at Gratz, the capital of Styria. For a time he was in the government telegraph engineering service, and in 1881 was employed at Paris in one of the large electric lighting companies of that city. In these employments he devoted himself to experiments in electricity and magnetism. On coming to the United States in 1884, he for a time was in the Edison works at Orange, N. J., but afterwards became electrician in the Tesla Electric-Light Company, and established a laboratory at New York for independent research. He is the inventor of the modern principle of the rotary magnetic field embodied in the apparatus used in the transmission of power from Niagara Falls; of new forms of dynamos, transformers, induction-coils, condensers, arc and incandescent lamps; and of the oscillator combining steam engine and dynamo. His researches in electrical oscillation have created a new field of electrical investigation; while he has made many startling innovations and inventions in using currents of high tension. He continues to reside in New York.