Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was a Yugoslav-American inventor who pioneered in radio and invented the alternating-current motor. He also invented a system that made the universal transmission and distribution of electricity possible. He was born in Smiljan, Croatia, on July 10, 1856. His father was a clergyman of the Serbian Orthodox Church and his mother an expert needle worker and an inventor of home implements. Tesla received a technical training at the polytechnic school in Graz and the University …

…by radio, and in 1917 he accurately forecast radar. Among many honors, Tesla received degrees from Columbia and Yale Universities, the Elliott Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute, and the Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. In 1956, as part of international commemorations of the centennial of his birth, the term "tesla" (T) was adopted as the unit of magnetic flux density in the MKSA system. He died in New York City on Jan. 7, 1943.