Tesla - 155 years from his birth

Thunderstorm lightning in Athens, 28 June 2010 / Chris Kotsiopoulos

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter — for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.

Nikola Tesla, "Radio Power Will Revolutionize the World", in Modern Mechanics and Inventions (July 1934)

Nikola Tesla (Serbian: Никола Тесла; born 10 July 1856) was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. He was an important contributor to the birth of commercial electricity, and is best known for his many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor. This work helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.

Born an ethnic Serb in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić), in the Croatian Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire (modern-day Croatia), Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. Because of his 1894 demonstration of wireless communication through radio and as the eventual victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices as early as 1893, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

The SI unit measuring magnetic field B (also referred to as the magnetic flux density and magnetic induction), the tesla (T), was named in his honor (at the CGPM, Paris, 1960).

Nikola Tesla on the 100 Serbian dinar banknote, 2006 issue, front.