Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla
      We all use electricity every day. Many everyday items that use electricity would not be possible without the inventions and genius of Nikola Tesla.
      Nikola Tesla was born in Smilijan, Lika in Croatia. He was born on July 10, 1856. His father was a priest and his mother was an inventor. Even at an early age, Tesla had an amazing mind, he had a photographic memory and memorized entire books. Starting in his childhood and continuing on through adulthood, Tesla was plagued by a condition where he would be blinded by brilliant flashes of light. Growing up, Tesla was fascinated with electricity and in 1881, he became an electrical engineer. While there, he thought of ideas for the induction motor. In 1884, at the age of 27 Tesla came to the United States.
      Tesla found work under Thomas Edison, another famous American inventor. Edison said that he would pay Tesla a large sum of money to work out the bugs in his system of transferring electrical energy called direct current or “DC”. After working tirelessly on the matter, Tesla finally invented and perfected the method of alternating current or “AC”.. The difference between the two was that in direct current electricity moves in only one direction, while in alternating current the flow of electricity changes periodically, conserving energy better over long distances. What followed was what is referred to as the “Current Wars” the battle between direct and alternating current. During this time, Edison was outspoken and made many campaigns against the use of AC. Edison spread misinformation about AC and appealed to state legislatures, things got so out of hand that Edison was even publicly killing animals with the use of AC to show how dangerous it was. Edison also in an attempt to show that alternating current was more deadly than direct current, paid a man to build the first electric chair for the state of New York. When Edison realized that Tesla’s method worked better, he refused to pay...