Electrician and inventor, born in Herzegovina; studied engineering in the École Polytechnique, Paris; was engineer of the Edison Station, Paris, and was employed at Edison’s laboratory, near Orange, NY, leaving, after several years, to open a laboratory of his own for independent research. He believed that by causing matter to pass to a stage of luminous vibration, without remaining for any appreciable time in the stage of heat-vibration, it would cause light without heat, and in developing his theory he has made many striking experiments and discoveries, receiving a current of 200,000 volts in his body without harm, whereas a current of 2,000 volts is fatal. He hopes to set matter into vibration at a rate of 3,000,000 vibrations a second, and in the meantime has shown that electric lamps and motors can be operated on one wire without a circuit. In 1888 he invented the rotary field-motor, the multiphase system of which is used in the 50,000 horsepower plant built to transmit the water-power of Niagara Falls to Buffalo and other distant places. Mr. Tesla’s inventions and contrivances have caused him to take rank as one of the greatest living geniuses in the field of electrical research. Cutting loose from accepted ideas, and launching forth in quest of the undiscovered facts of an inadequately known science, he has already effected improvements which bid fair to revolutionize the accepted methods of utilizing electricity for industrial purposes. It is scarcely too much to assume, that in another decade his skill will have placed untold millions of additional horse-power at the disposal of man. Wherever there is water-power or cheap fuel obtainable, there his perfected methods of converting energy into power, light, and heat, transmissible at will over wide areas, will work still greater changes than have yet been witnessed.
