Lecture

By: Nikola Tesla

Date: 1904

Source: Tesla, Nikola. Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1904, 3–4.

About the Author: Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was born in Smiljan, Croatia, and immigrated to the United States in 1884. The next year he sold his patent rights to his alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil used in radio.

Introduction

Chemical cells produced the first electric currents, but they were an expensive way of generating voltage, making long-distance electrical transmission out of the question. Physicists spent much of the nineteenth century trying to find an inexpensive alternative. In 1820 Dutch physicist Hans Christian Oersted deflected a compass needle by passing an electric current...