Timeline
July 10, 1856"Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Smilijan in the province of Lika in what is today Croatia...Family legend has it that a violent thunderstorm was raging at that moment, which frightened the village midwife. Fearful, the midwife said, 'He’ll be a child of the storm.' In response, his mother replied, 'No, of light.'" - W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla Inventor of the Electrical Age (2013) |
1862"We moved to the little city of Gospic nearby. This change of residence was like a calamity to me...In our new house I was but a prisoner...watching the strange people I saw throu (sic) the window blinds. My bashfulness was such that I would rather have faced a roaring lion than one of those city dudes who strolled about."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
1875-1877Attends the Joanneum Polytechnic School on scholarship.
"I was intended from my very birth for the clerical profession and this thought constantly oppressed me. I longed to be an engineer but my father was inflexible. He was the son of an officer who served in the army of the Great Napoleon and, in common with his brother, professor of mathematics in a prominent institution, had...singularly enough, later embraced the clergy in which vocation he achieved eminence."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
1878Scholarship declined, moves to Maribor, begins gambling.
"At a certain age I contracted a mania for gambling which greatly worried my parents. To sit down to a game of cards was for me the quintessence of pleasure."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
April 17, 1879"A few weeks after his fathers visit, Tesla was arrested by the police in Maribor as a 'vagrant' and deported to Gospic. Heartbroken to see his son brought back by the police, Milutin passed away on 17 April 1789 at the age of sixty." |
1881Moves to Budapest.
"In Budapest I could hear the ticking of a watch with three rooms between me and the time-piece. A fly alighting on a table in the room would cause a dull thud in my ear. A carriage passing at a distance of a few miles fairly shook my whole body. The whistle of a locomotive 20 or 30 miles away made the bench or chair on which I sat vibrate so strongly that the pain was unbearable. The ground under my feet trembled continuously." -Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
April 1882Moves to Paris, works for the Edison Company.
“I would go from the Boulevard St. Marcel, where I resided, to a bathing house on the Seine; plunge into the water, loop the circuit twenty- seven times and then walk an hour to reach Ivry, where the Company’s factory was located. There I would have a wood chopper’s breakfast at half past seven o’clock and then eagerly await the lunch hour, in the meantime cracking hard nuts for the Manager of the Works, Mr. Charles Batchelor, who was an intimate friend and assistant of Edison.”-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
June 6, 1884Immigrates to U.S.
"What I had left was beautiful, artistic, and fascinating in every way; what I saw here was machined, rough, and unattractive. A burly policeman was twirling his stick which looked to me as big as a log. I approached him politely, with the request to direct me. ‘Six blocks down, then to the left,’ he said, with murder in his eyes. ‘Is this America?’ I asked myself in painful surprise. ‘It is a century behind Europe in civilization.’ ”- Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
June 7, 1884S.S. Oregon departs after Tesla fixed dynamo system.
"I met Edison with Batchelor and a few others, as they were returning home to retire. ‘Here is our Parisian running around at night,’ he said. When I told him I was coming from the Oregon and had repaired both machines, he looked at me in silence and walked away without another word. But when he had gone some distance I heard him remark, ‘Batchelor, this is a good man."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
June 8, 1884Begins work for Edison; after six months, quits.
“I was amazed at this wonderful man who, without early advantages and scientific training, had accomplished so much. I had studied a dozen languages, delved in literature and art, and had spent my best years in libraries reading all sorts of stuff that fell into my hands, from Newton’s ‘Principia’ to the novels of Paul de Kock, and felt that most of my life had been squandered. But it did not take long before I recognized that it was the best thing I could have done.” |
December 1884The Tesla Electric Light and Manufacturing Co. begins.
"Mr. Tesla, the inventor, has obtained broad patents on the regulation of a dynamo machine on entirely novel principals...The company is now constructing a number of large machines, and is ready to go before the general public with an arc light system that will, no doubt, meet with greet favor"-Elmer Willyoung and H. Lyman Sayen, The Electrical Review (1886) |
Early 1886After Tesla's work is used to light Rahway, New Jersey, a a new company forms without him.
“I lived through a year of terrible heartaches and bitter tears, my suffering being intensified by material want...my high education in various branches of science, mechanics, and literature were a mockery.”-Nikola Tesla |
Fall 1887After forming the Tesla Electric Company, balances an egg with AC.
"This episode taught Tesla that invention would require a degree of showmanship in order to create the right illusion about his creations. People do not invest in inventions built out of tin cans; they invest in projects that capture their imagination. To draw people in, one often has to draw on metaphors, stories, and themes that have power in a particular culture— that’s what Tesla did by invoking the Columbus story."- W. B. Carlson, Tesla Inventor of the Electrical Age (2013) |
May 1, 1888AC patents issued.
"My alternating system of power transmission came at a psychological moment, as a long-sought answer to pressing industrial questions, and although considerable resistance had to be overcome and opposing interests reconciled, as usual, the commercial introduction could not be long delayed. Now, compare this situation with that confronting my turbine, for example. One should think that so simple and beautiful an invention, possessing many features of an ideal motor, should be adopted at once and, undoubtedly, it would under similar conditions."-Nikola Tesla, The E;ectrical Experimenter (1919) |
July 7, 1888Sells AC patents to George Westinghouse.
"With reference to the Tesla motor patents, the price we paid seems rather high... but if it the only practicable method for operating a motor of the alternating current, and if it is applicable to street car work, we can unquestionably easily get from the users of the apparatus whatever tax is put upon it by the inventors."-George Westinghouse |
June 21, 1891First power plant to use AC industrially for electricity becomes operational.
"This is the first example in this country of the installation of a large alternating motor, but the results already attained indicate that the simplicity, flexibility and wide range application of the alternating system, are likely to make it, at least for large enterprises, the system of the future." |
July 30, 1891Becomes an American citizen.
"On this occasion I would contradict the widely circulated report that the structure was demolished by the Government which owing to war conditions, might have created prejudice in the minds of those who may not know that the papers, which 30 years ago conferred upon me the honor of American citizenship, are always kept in a safe, while my orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other distinctions are packed away in old trunks."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
1891Tesla builds the Tesla coil.
"My progress was so rapid as to enable me to exhibit at my lecture in 1891 a coil giving sparks of five inches. On that occasion I frankly told the engineers of a defect involved in the transformation by the new method, namely, the loss in the spark gap. Subsequent investigation showed that no matter what medium is employed, be it air, hydrogen, mercury vapor, oil or a stream of electrons, the efficiency is the same. It is a law very much like that governing the conversion of mechanical energy."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
May 1, 1893World's Fair uses alternating current.
"While only the best informed electricians appreciated the supreme importance of the small working model of Tesla's AC system, thousands of fair visitors breathlessly pressed in around Tesla's other crowd pleasing exhibits in the Westinghouse section. There was the whirling Egg of Columbus...Far more flashy, but equally inexplicable to the general public was the eerie and almost occult darkened Tesla room. "-Jill Jonnes, Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World (2003) |
1894"In the field of lighting by phosphorescence we reach hitherto un-trodden ground. Phosphorescent light has been associated with the idea of —cold light,— or the property of becoming luminous with the omission of the intermediate step of combustion, as commonly understood... By means of the Teslaic currents phosphorescent light strong enough even to photograph by has been obtained; and Fig. 3, representing the inventor himself, is the first portrait or photograph of any kind ever taken by phosphorescent light." |
November 16, 1896Niagara plant powers Buffalo.
"There will be created a considerable city at Niagara Falls, and there will be a great development of Buffalo as a manufacturing centre. The considerable water powers in other sections of the country will be utilized so that the force of them can be converted into an electrical current and delivered for commercial purposes." |
December 8, 1898Demonstrates automaton.
"These automata, controlled within the range of vision of the operator, were, however, the first and rather crude steps in the evolution of the Art of Teleautomatics as I had conceived it. The next logical improvement was its application to automatic mechanisms beyond the limits of vision and at great distance from the center of control, and I have ever since advocated their employment as instruments of warfare in preference to guns."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
June 15, 1899"In order to advance further along this line I had to go into the open, and in the spring of 1899, having completed preparations for the erection of a wireless plant, I went to Colorado where I remained for more than one year. Here I introduced other improvements and refinements which made it possible to generate currents of any tension that may be desired. "-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
March 1, 1901Signs patents to J.P. Morgan.
"Although the development of these inventions has consumed years of effort, knowing that I have to deal with a great man, I do not hesitate to leave the apportionment of my interest and compensation entirely to your generosity."-Nikola Tesla |
December 11, 1901-1906Construction occurs on Wardenclyffe Tower.
“It is true, that some of them have had to do with wireless telegraphy and that in addition to the tower and poles there is a hole dug in the ground. This is 150 feet deep and is used in these experiments. The people about there, had they been awake instead of asleep, at other times would have seen even stranger things. Some day, but not at this time, I shall make an announcement of something that I never once dreamed of.”-Nikola Tesla, The New York Sun (1903) |
1916"Nikola Tesla, electrical wizard is so hard up that he cannot pay the city $935 personal taxes. He says so himself and states in effect that being a wizard isn't always a profitable business. That Mr. Tesla owes so much money he hasn't the slightest idea when he will be able to meet his obligations." |
May 18, 1917"Presentation of the Edison medal to Nikola Tesla and formal report upon the newly elected officers were the announced features at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York on the evening of May 18...The Edison medal is presented to Mr. Tesla for 'original work in poly phase and high frequency electric currents'" |
August 1917Develops idea for radar.
“I believe this magnetic method of locating or indicating the presence of an iron or steel mass might prove very practical in locating a hidden submarine. And it is of course of paramount importance that we do find a means of accurately locating the sub-sea fighters when they are submerged, so that we can...be ready to close in on them when they attempt to come to the surface. Especially is this important when several vessels are traveling in fleet formation."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1917) |
1919Autobiography, My Inventions published.
"I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labor, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours...In attempting to give a connected and faithful account of my activities in this series of articles which will be presented with the assistance of the Editors of the Electrical Experimenter and are chiefly addressed to our young men readers, I must dwell, however reluctantly, on the impressions of my youth and the circumstances and events which have been instrumental in determining my career."-Nikola Tesla, The Electrical Experimenter (1919) |
1920's"He became a recluse, spending much of his time walking the streets of Manhattan and feeding pigeons. He particularly liked the pigeons in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library, and today one end of the park... is officially designated 'Nikola Tesla Corner.' Tesla continued to live in hotel rooms, moving from one hotel to another when he could no longer pay the bill and after complaints that he was keeping too many pigeons in his room."-W.B. Carlson, Tesla Inventor of the Electrical Age (2013) |
July 11, 1934Announces creation of particle beam "death ray".
"I found that there was some virtue in the principal but the results did not justify the hope of important practical applications although, some years later, several inventors claimed to have produced a "death ray" in this manner. While the published reports to this effect were entirely unfounded, I believe that with the new transmitter to be built, this and many other wonders will be achieved." |
January 7, 1943"Nikola Tesla, one of the world's greatest electrical inventors and designers, was found dead last night in his suite at the Hotel New Yorker...According to the hotel staff, Dr. Tesla, who was 86 years old, had been failing in health for two years. Of vigorous temperament and with emphatic ideas on personal health as well as engineering, he had few visitors, according to the hotel management."-The New York Times (1943) |