This is a documentary about the scientist and inventor Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest figures in history. Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smilian in what became Lika, Yugoslavia. His father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian Orthodox priest, and his mother, Djuka Mandic, was an inventor of household appliances herself. Tesla studied at the Graz Institute of Technology in Austria and the University of Prague. He started his career in 1881 as an electrical engineer at a telephone company in Budapest.
Before going to America, Tesla joined the Continental Edison Company in Paris, where he designed electric generators. While in Strasbourg in 1883, he privately built and successfully operated a prototype of an induction motor. Unable to interest anyone in Europe in promoting such a radical device, Tesla accepted a job offer from Thomas Edison in New York.
The young Nikola Tesla came to America in 1884. Tesla would spend his productive next 59 years in New York. Tesla set out to improve his line of generators while working at Edison’s laboratory in New Jersey. This is where his disagreement with Edison over direct current vs alternating current began. This disagreement culminated in the Battle of Currents, as Edison fought a losing battle to protect its investment in DC equipment and facilities.
Direct current always flows in one direction; alternating current changes direction 50 or 60 times a second and can be boosted to very high voltage levels, minimizing power loss over long distances. The future belongs to alternating current. Nikola Tesla developed a polyphase AC system consisting of generators, motors, and transformers and held 40 U.S. essential patents, and George Westinghouse decided to supply Tesla to the U.S. after acquiring the system system. In February 1882, Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, a fundamental principle of physics that underlies nearly all devices that use alternating current.
Tesla’s AC induction motors are used worldwide in industrial and home appliances. This engine sparked the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the century. Thanks to his invention, it is now possible to generate electrical energy, transmit it and convert it into mechanical energy. Tesla’s greatest achievement was its polyphase AC system, which now lights up the entire planet.
