Nikola Tesla was an Austrian inventor, born in 1856 in Smiljan, a village of the Austrian Empire, which is now in present-day Croatia. He made several contributions to technological development. Among his main studies, we can cite radio transmission, robotics, remote control, radar, nuclear physics, computing, and alternating current.
Tesla was stimulated by his father from childhood and always demonstrated incredible logical reasoning. He also had a very good photographic memory.
In 1873, Tesla began his studies in electrical engineering at the Polytechnic Institute in Graz, Austria. Then he went to the University of Prague where he never finished his degree.
In 1881, Nikola Tesla began his engineering career by joining the Budapest telephone company, but it was in 1882 that Tesla discovered something that would mark a turning point in the lives of people at that time: the rotating magnetic field. It is a fundamental principle of physics, which is the basis for all devices that use alternating current.
At the same time, he began working at Edison Continental Company in Paris. A few years later, he was invited by Thomas Edison to work with him, and that's when Tesla moved to New York.
What seemed like an opportunity for Tesla's life ultimately turned out to be the beginning of a nightmare. Friction arose when opinions between Tesla and Edison began to diverge. Indeed, Tesla had developed the use of alternating current, which is a more efficient way of transmitting energy over long distances. On the other hand, Edison focused all his research on direct current, which was used at the time, and brought him profit through his patent on the technology.
To have light at home with Thomas Edison's system, a power plant would be needed every square kilometer: an unrealizable operation. Tesla's idea was powerful since it uses smaller wires, capable of reaching higher voltages, in addition to being able to transmit electrical energy over much longer distances. Thus, if Tesla made the efficiency and advantages of alternating current public, it would affect Thomas Edison's financial assets!
However, alternating current is much more dangerous than direct current. Edison then launched a major campaign against Tesla's "killer current." For this, he cruelly electrocuted several animals (cats and dogs in particular) with alternating current. The impact was enormous and this made the big investors lose all interest in the Tesla system.
However, years later, Edison ended up losing the electric current war! Ironically, his defeat occurred because of the financial interests of the big companies that realized that the Tesla system was much cheaper and more functional, becoming the global standard.
In 1894, Tesla received an honorary degree from Columbia University and a medal from the Franklin Institute. Eighteen years later, he refused to share the Nobel Prize in Physics with Edison. In 1934, he received a medal in Philadelphia for his polyphase energy system.
Nikola Tesla filed about 40 patents in the United States and 700 others internationally. He wanted everyone to have access to electricity and saw it as a means of improving people's quality of life. Unfortunately, the greed of some limited the desires of this genius, as many households still do not have access to electricity, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.