TESLA: PHYSICIST, INVENTOR, ELECTRICAL ENGINEER

By Michael Burgan

An excellent new short but well appointed biography has been published this year by Compass Point Books of Minneapolis Minnesota that describes the drama, personality and accomplishments of the great, but often under appreciated, electrical genius, Nikola Tesla (1856-1943.) The book is the latest addition to the Compass Point series Signature Lives, special lives in American history that become Signature Lives.

This technically and historically accurate biography offers a comprehensive introduction to the life of Nikola Tesla, the creator of the modern system of generation, transmission and utilization of Alternating Current and the first to invent the elements of modern radio transmission. The book traces the early life of a talented son of a Serbian Orthodox minister in Austrian Croatia to work in Paris and immigration to America to work for Thomas Edison and to ultimately defeat Edison and his Direct Current in the Battle of the Currents by joining with George Westinghouse.

Tesla’s inventive mind was so fertile that many of his ideas and patents were too far ahead of his time and the wealth and fame that attended his forties were a burden in his later years. His work in high-frequency electricity (Tesla Coil) never brought him a continuing stream of wealth even though so many modern devices from radio, TV and even automobiles use its fundamentals without thought. Tesla’s legacy is not fame and fortune but the improvements in the lives and futures of all society.

The book is an excellent read for all ages but has been crafted to be of special value to students of middle school through college. Of special interest to Society friends and members is our policy of assisting young students in projects focusing on Tesla and the areas of his specialties. In this manner we can start each new generation in recognizing the debt the current society owes to the improvements in work and leisure due to the accomplishments of a man so many years ago.

Tesla: Physicist, Inventor, Electrical Engineer was written by Michael Burgan, an award winning author of fiction and nonfiction books. The Content Adviser was William H. Terbo of the Tesla Memorial Society, Inc. and closest living relative of Nikola Tesla. The Reading Adviser Alexa Sandmann, Ed.D. Professor of Literacy, Kent State University. The book contains over 65 photos and images in 112 pages of text.

The Tesla Memorial Society, Inc. is the oldest U.S. based international organization in continuous operation honoring and perpetuating the memory and ideals of the great electrical scientist and inventor, Nikola Tesla. The Society supports various cultural activities, participates in appropriate academic conferences and provides a source for an accurate representation of Nikola Tesla for the media. The Society is a non-political, non-profit, all volunteer membership organization founded in 1979, incorporated in 1980, operating under Section 501 (c) (3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.