Nikola Tesla was a brilliant Serbian-American engineer and inventor who discovered the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. Tesla moved to the United States in 1884, where he worked for Thomas Edison, who quickly became a rival because he had invested heavily in the inferior DC power transmission system. In 1885, George Westinghouse bought the patent rights to Tesla’s alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors. The transaction started an epic power struggle between Edison's direct-current systems and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won out. Westinghouse used Tesla's system to light the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. This exhibition helped Westinghouse win the contract to install the first power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla's name and patent numbers. In 1893, Tesla performed his first experiments with high frequency electric currents, thought to be the first demonstration of wireless communication. In 1900, he receives a patent on radio communication. Although Marconi often is called the “father” of radio, in 1943, the Supreme Patent Court of the USA upheld the primacy of Tesla’s original claim. Tesla also invented the Tesla coil, a transformer with an air core, used for producing high voltages at high frequencies.

Sources

• Cleveland, Cutler (Lead Author); Peter Saundry (Topic Editor). 2008. "Tesla, Nikola." In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth March 19, 2007; Last revised July 24, 2008; Retrieved September 2, 2009]. <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Tesla,_Nikola>