Jett McMillan

Mrs. Montgomery
Cultural studies
3/7/18

Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Yugoslavia (now modern-

day Croatia), in the family of an Orthodox priest and a talented mother who

was an inventor of household appliances. Tesla received fundamental

technical education at the Polytechnic School of Graz, and then received a

degree in Prague University. The first job Tesla ever had was the position

of an electrical engineer in a telephone company, located in Budapest; later

on, he moved to Paris to work for a branch of Thomas Edison’s company.

In these years, Tesla made his first discovery – an induction motor

powered by alternating current, and was actually trying to attract investors.

However, the investors in Europe were reluctant to support his idea, and in

1884 Tesla made a decision to move to America.

He started working for Edison, and shared his ideas with him, though

Edison found his ideas terrible. However, Edison appreciated Tesla’s

outstanding engineering talent, and suggested him to improve Edison’s DC

motors for $50,000. Tesla desperately wanted to earn money to construct a

working prototype of his discovery, but after he managed to task, Edison

turned his promises into a joke. Since that time, they have become

opponents, and these tensions continued throughout all their lives. Edison

tried to disprove Tesla’s ideas, but alternating current became the standard

in a decade.

When Tesla found a sagacious investor, George Westinghouse, he

developed a system to generate alternating current, and to transmit it to

long distances. A very important contribution of Tesla’s into today’s modern

technology was the creation of a hydroelectric generation station at Niagara

Falls. The system transmitted the generated power using alternating

current. Tesla’s systems were showed to the public at a World Exposition in

1893, and since that time, his fame has become worldwide.

During the course of his life, Tesla received numerous awards and

honors: honor degrees of Yale University and Columbia University, the

Edison Medal, and other awards. He never received the Nobel prize,

although he was nominated for it, along with Edison. Since both of them did

not agree to receive the prize together, and both were trying to diminish the

competitor’s achievements, the prize was not awarded to any of them.

Work sited

 https://www.biography.com/people/nikola-tesla-9504443