Nikola Tesla was born on 10 July 1856 in Smiljan, in what is today Croatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Of Serbian origin, he grew up in an educated family: his father, an Orthodox priest, was also a writer, while his mother, who was self-taught, was known for her remarkable talent for inventing and making household tools.
Scientific Beginnings
Tesla studied electrical engineering in Austria, then worked in Europe before moving to the United States in 1884. Upon his arrival, he briefly collaborated with Thomas Edison, but their differing scientific visions quickly led to a split.
Tesla is mainly recognised for promoting the use of alternating current (AC), which he considered far more efficient than the direct current (DC) defended by Edison. In partnership with the industrialist George Westinghouse, he contributed to the construction of the first major hydroelectric power station at Niagara Falls, based on his AC technology.
A visionary inventor
During his lifetime, Tesla filed around 300 patents covering nearly 125 inventions, several of which were unfairly attributed to Edison. He developed new approaches to energy conversion and remains considered one of the most brilliant and creative engineers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, Tesla preferred to see himself not as an inventor, but as a “discoverer”.
Always ahead of his time, Tesla conceived ideas that seemed impossible in his era, such as the wireless transmission of energy over long distances. To this end, he began the construction of a monumental tower: the Wardenclyffe Tower, built between 1901 and 1917 on Long Island, near New York. This ambitious project, intended to enable telephony, transatlantic wireless broadcasting, and energy transmission, was abandoned due to a lack of funding.
Tesla had also anticipated applications remarkably close to modern technologies such as the fax machine, geolocation, clock synchronisation, and the radio broadcasting of music and information — at a time when these concepts did not yet even exist.
End of Life and Posthumous Recognition
Nikola Tesla died on 7 January 1943, at the age of 86. He died alone in his hotel room, room 3327 at the New Yorker Hotel in New York, probably as a result of coronary thrombosis, or a heart attack.
Today, Nikola Tesla is celebrated as a genius ahead of his time, whose work profoundly shaped the modern world. The unit of measurement for magnetic field strength is named after him, the tesla, and the famous company Tesla, Inc., founded by Elon Musk, pays tribute to him.
Sources:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
https://www.nikolateslalegend.com/
By Napoleon Sarony — Marc Seifer Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30659157