# Nikola Tesla | Biography, Facts, & Inventions  ## Metadata - Author: [[Inez Whitaker Hunt]] - Full Title: Nikola Tesla | Biography, Facts, & Inventions - Category: #articles - Summary: Nikola Tesla, (born July 9/10, 1856, Smiljan, Austrian Empire [now in Croatia]—died January 7, 1943, New York, New York, U.S.), Serbian American inventor and engineer who discovered and patented the rotating magnetic field, the basis of most alternating-current machinery. He also developed the three-phase system of electric power transmission. He immigrated to the United States in 1884 and sold the patent rights to his system of alternating-current dynamos, transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. In 1891 he invented the Tesla coil, an induction coil widely used in radio technology. Tesla was from a family of Serbian origin. His father was - URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nikola-Tesla ## Highlights - American inventor and engineer who discovered and [patented](https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/patented) the rotating [magnetic field](https://www.britannica.com/science/magnetic-field), the basis of most [alternating-current](https://www.britannica.com/science/alternating-current) machinery. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k1ss5cjczxdkrz73vah6fs62)) - was quite impractical in financial matters and an [eccentric](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eccentric), driven by compulsions and a progressive germ phobia. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k1sscnzxvjvp0w79t57rsqyz)) - Three Nobel Prize recipients addressed their [tribute](https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/tribute) to “one of the outstanding intellects of the world who paved the way for many of the technological developments of modern times.” ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01k1ssf8yrfen906327fnck5zc))