Nikola Tesla - Etweening Quiz

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, and mechanical engineer.

Tesla died quietly and alone on Orthodox Christmas, January 7, 1943, in room #3327 on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker in New York City. He was 86 years old.

Tesla was born during a particularly violent lightning storm. According to family legend, midway through the birth, the midwife said the storm is a bad sign and that Tesla would be a “child of darkness.” Tesla’s mom immediately replied: “No. He will be a child of light.”

Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents on the 10th of July, 1856 in the village of Smiljan, part of the Austrian Empire (now Croatia). He had four brothers and sisters Dane, Angelina, Milka and Marica. Tesla's interest in electrical invention was spurred by his mother, Djuka Mandic, who invented small household appliances in her spare time. Tesla's father, Milutin Tesla, was a Serbian orthodox priest and a writer, and he pushed for his son to join the priesthood. But Nikola's interests lay in the sciences.

In 1895, along with George Westinghouse, Tesla built the first power plant to tap the hydroelectric potential trapped within Niagara Falls. The Niagara Falls Power Company marked the final victory of Tesla’s Poly-phase Alternating Current (AC) electricity, which powers the world today.

“Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God,” Nikola Tesla

Tesla filed more than 700 patents for everything from wireless communication to fluorescent lighting. He was an inventor who obtained around 300 patents worldwide for his inventions. There are a minimum of 278 patents issued to Tesla in 26 countries. Many of Tesla's patents were in the United States, Britain, and Canada, but many other patents were approved in countries around the globe.

He spoke eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

Tesla moved to France in 1882 where he worked on electrical equipment at the Continental Edison Company.

Tesla coil (1890) is one of Nikola Tesla's most famous inventions. Nikola Tesla dreamed of creating a way to supply power to the world without stringing wires across the globe. Radio (1897): In 1897, Tesla first sent a wireless transmission from his lab at Houston Street in New York City to a boat on the Hudson River -- 25 miles (40 km) away. Tesla`s patent of remote controlled model boat, was demonstrated in 1898. Tesla developed and used florescent bulbs in his lab some 40 years before industry "invented" them. Tesla's invention of the electric motor (1930) has finally been popularized by a car brandishing his name.