CHAPTER r.

Biographical and Introductory.

As an introduction to the record contained in this volumeof Mr. Tesla’s investigations and discoveries, a few words of abiographical nature will, it is deemed, not he out of place, norother than welcome.

Nikola Tesla urns horn in 1857 at Smiljan, Lika, a borderlandregion of Austro-Hungary, of the Serbian race, which has main-tained against Turkey and all comers so unceasing a struggle forfreedom. His family is an old and representative one amongthese Switzers of Eastern Europe, and his father was an eloquentclergyman in the Greek Church. An uncle is to-day Metropoli-tan in Bosnia. His mother was a woman of inherited ingenuity,and delighted not only in skilful work of the ordinary householdcharacter, but in the construction of sncli mechanical appliancesas looms and churns and other machinery required in a ruralcommunity. Nikola was educated at Gospieh in the publicschool for four years, and then spent, three years in the RealScliule. He was then sent to Carstatt, Croatia, where he con-tinued his studies for three years in the Higher Real Scliule.There for the first time he saw a steam locomotive. He gradu-ated in 1873, and, surviving an attack of cholera, devoted him-self to experimentation, especially in electricity and magnetism.His father would have had him maintain the family tradition byentering the Church, but native genius was too strong, and hewas allowed to enter the Polytechnic School at Gratz, to finishhis studies, and with the object of becoming a professor of math-ematics and physics. One of the machines there experimentedwith was a Gramme dynamo, used as a motor. Despite his in-structor’s perfect demonstration of the fact that it was impossibleto operate a dynamo without commutator or brushes, Mr. Teslacould not be convinced that such accessories were necessary ordesirable. He had already seen with quick intuition that a waycould be found to dispense with them ; and from that time he may