Nikola tesla
Nikola teslaNikola Tesla was a Yugoslav-American inventor who pioneered in radio and invented the alternating-current motor. He also invented a system that made the universal transmission and distribution of electricity possible. He was born in Smiljan, Croatia, on July 10, 1856. His father was a clergyman of the Serbian Orthodox Church and his mother an expert needle worker and an inventor of home implements. Tesla received a technical training at the polytechnic school in Graz and the University of Prague. In 1881 he began work for the newly founded telephone company in Budapest, and in late 1882 he joined the Continental Edison Company in Paris.
Tesla went to the United States in 1884 because he was unable to interest European engineers in a new alternating-current motor he had invented. For nearly a year he redesigned dynamos for Thomas Edison in New York City. He began an impressive career of research and invention when he established his own laboratory in 1887. He became a U.S. citizen in 1891. By the turn of the century Tesla’s accomplishments had made his name as world famous as Thomas Edison’s.
Tesla's first and probably greatest achievement was his discovery of the rotating magnetic field. This was a magnetic whirlwind produced in a motor winding by the interaction of two or more alternating currents. He developed this along with his brilliant variation of it to his induction motor and polyphase system for the generation, transmission, and distribution of electric power. The combination of this motor and this system, which was finally patented in 1888, provided the first realistic means for generating large amounts of electricity of a single kind in one place and transmitting it economically over long distances for use at another place. It made the original large-scale harnessing of Niagara Falls possible and furnished the key that soon changed the era of local electric lighting in large cities to one of electric light and power wherever needed.
Today practically all the electricity used in the world is generated and transmitted by means of the 3-phase form of the Tesla polyphase system and is turned back into mechanical power by updated models of 3-phase and split-phase motors originally covered by...
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