Home > Biography of Nikola Tesla

1 Early years

Tesla on 100 Serbian Dinars in 2004. Photo courtesy of National bank of Serbia (www.nbs.org.yu) Tesla was born "at the stroke of midnight" with lightning striking during a summer storm. He was born in Smiljani near Gospic, Lika, (the a Military Frontier of Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Croatia). The midwife commented, "He'll be a child of the storm," to which his mother replied, "No, of light." Tesla was baptised in the Old Slavonic Church rite. His Baptism Certificate reports that he was born on June 28 ( Julian calendar; July 10 in the Gregorian calendar), and christened by the Serb orthodox priest, Toma Oklobdžija.

His Serb father, the Rev. Milutin Tesla , was a priest in the Orthodox Metropolitanate of Karlovci which gathered to Serbs of the "Greek-rite" as they were legally referred to in Austria-Hungary at the time. His father's church is made now parking lot in his hometown [1]. His mother, Duka Mandic, from a prominent Serb family of the Banija , made home craft tools. He was one of five children, having one brother and three sisters. His godfatherA godparent in Christianity, is someone who sponsors a child's baptism. A male godparent is a godfather and a female godparent is a godmother . Traditionally, the godparents were counted informally responsible for ensuring that the child's religious educa, Jovan Drenovac , was a Captain in the Krajina army. His family moved to Gospic in 1862Events January-March January 10 End of term for John Gately Downey, 7th Governor of California. He is succeeded by Amasa Leland Stanford. January 30 The first American ironclad warship, the USS Monitor is launched. February 1 Julia Ward Howe's " Battle Hy. Tesla went to school in KarlovacKarlovac is a city in central Croatia with 59,395 inhabitants (2001), center of the Karlovac county. Karlovac is located on the Zagreb- Rijeka highway and railway line, 56 km from Zagreb and 130 km from Rijeka. The Karlovac was founded in a fort built in (Austria-Hungary), then studied electrical engineering at the Austria Politechnic in GrazSchlossberg is in the center. Graz [graːts] ( Slovenian: Gradec , with a population of 305,000 (council census 2000) is the second-largest city in Austria and the capital of the province of Styria Steiermark in German). It has a long tradition of b, AustriaAustria is a landlocked country in Central Europe, a federation of nine states. Austria is bordered by Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the ( 1875Events January 12 Kwang-su becomes emperor of China. February 27 Newton Booth, 11th Governor of California resigns, having been elected Senator. Lieutenant Governor of California Romualdo Pacheco becomes acting Governor. He is later replaced by elected go). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. He also developed a telephoneThe telephone or phone is a telecommunications device that transmits speech by means of electric signals. Generally attributed to the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, the first was built in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1876. However, an Italian inventor Anton repeaterIn telecommunication, the term repeater has the following meanings: #An analog device that amplifies an input signal regardless of its nature (analog or digital). A digital device that amplifies, reshapes, retimes, or performs a combination of any of thes (or amplifier).

In 1881 he moved to Budapest to work for the telegraph company, American Telephone Company . On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the telephone company, later engineer to the Yugoslav government and the country's first telephone system. Tesla invented a precursor to modern wireless telephone , known as a telephone repeater (or sometimes an amplifier). The device could act as an audio speaker (not an audio transducer). The device had its resonance tuned to a particular frequency of other repeaters to communicate between each. In 1916, Tesla described the prior developed audio transducers. According to Tesla, it was the "... [S]implest ways [to detect the radiant energy ...] the low frequency gave audible notes. [... in a field, there was] placed a conductor, a wire or a coil, and then Tesla would get a note [...] characteristics of the audible note". The audible sounds were of the quality of the telephones diaphragms of that period of time. The invention was never patented nor released publicly (till years later by Tesla himself). The device also contained the characteristics of modern wireless telephones.

For a while he stayed in Maribor. He was employed at his first job as an assistant engineer. Tesla suffered a nervous breakdown during this time. In 1882 he moved to Paris to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company . He worked designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived of the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (for which he received patents in 1888). Tesla visualized the rotating fields and thereby designed the induction motor. Tesla hastened from Paris to his mother's side as she lay dying, arriving hours before her death in 1882. Her last words to him were, "You've arrived, Nidzo, my pride." After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in Gospic and Tomingaj . All his life, Tesla kept a home-spun embroidered travel bag from his mother.