He also built a wirelessly controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.

His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed.Īttempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. īorn and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. Nikola Tesla ( / ˈ t ɛ s l ʌ/ Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла, pronounced 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. The Medal of the University St Clement of Ochrida, Sofia, Bulgaria (1939).Order of the White Lion, I Class, Government of Czechoslovakia (1937).Order of the White Eagle, I Class, Government of Yugoslavia (1936).Sava, I Class, Government of Yugoslavia (1926) Sava, II Class, Government of Serbia (1892)

The autobiography of nikola tesla