Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.
Tesla gained experience in telephony and electrical engineering before emigrating to the United States in 1884 to work for Thomas Edison
in New York City. He soon struck out on his own with financial backers,
setting up laboratories and companies to develop a range of electrical
devices. His patented AC induction motor and transformer were licensed by George Westinghouse, who also hired Tesla as a consultant to help develop a power system using alternating current.
Tesla is also known for his high-voltage, high-frequency power
experiments in New York and Colorado Springs which included patented
devices and theoretical work used in the invention of radio communication, for his X-ray experiments, and for his ill-fated attempt at intercontinental wireless transmission in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
Tesla’s achievements and his abilities as a showman demonstrating his seemingly miraculous inventions made him world-famous.
Although he made a considerable amount of money from his patents, he
spent a lot on numerous experiments. He lived for most of his life in a
series of New York hotels although the end of his patent income and
eventual bankruptcy led him to live in diminished circumstances.
Tesla continued to invite the press to parties he held on his birthday
to announce new inventions he was working on and make (sometimes
unusual) public statements.
Because of his pronouncements and the nature of his work over the
years, Tesla gained a reputation in popular culture as the archetypal “mad scientist“. He died on 7 January 1943.
Tesla’s work fell into relative obscurity after his death, but since the 1990s, his reputation has experienced a resurgence in popular culture. His work and reputed inventions are also at the center of many conspiracy theories and have also been used to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories and New Age occultism. In 1960, in honor of Tesla, the General Conference on Weights and Measures for the International System of Units dedicated the term “tesla” to the SI unit measure for magnetic field strength.