Nikola Tesla was a brilliant and eccentric scientist who made important contributions to the fields of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla was born in 1856 in what is now Croatia and received an education in engineering and physics. He later immigrated to the United States, where he worked for the Edison Machine Works and the Westinghouse Electric Corporation before establishing his own laboratory in New York City. At the turn of the century, Tesla made a number of important discoveries that would shape the course of modern electricity. He designed the Tesla coil, a high-voltage transformer that is still used today in radio technology and other applications. He also conducted pioneering work in the development of the radio, X-ray, and wireless communication. Despite his many achievements, Tesla struggled financially and was often overshadowed by his contemporaries, including Thomas Edison. He died in 1943 at the age of 86, but his legacy lives on as a pioneer in the field of electricity and as a symbol of scientific genius.
