One afternoon around 1879, in the town of Budapest, a tall and awkward young man was enjoying the setting sun upon a park bench while reciting passages from the book Faust. In a sudden flash, he was struck by a vision; a vision that held an answer to a problem he’d long tried to solve. There before his eyes was a motor, simple and elegant, that could very well produce what we now know as “alternating current”. He quickly scribbled the design in the sand so that he would not forget and, without changing a thing, presented the real working model to The American Institute of Electrical Engineers six years later. Alternating current, or AC for short, was born and the world would never be the same. The boy's name was Nikola Tesla and he would go on to become one of the greatest and most profound inventors our world has ever known.

    Tesla’s most memorable invention, naturally, was the Tesla Coil: an electric generator capable of producing extremely high voltage with very low amperage. But Tesla’s contributions to society branched farther then just the invention that bore his name. If not for him, we would not be enjoying most all forms of artificial light, the use of the radio, and any technology utilizing remote control. However, like the Tesla Coil itself, Tesla’s work, although generating vast improvements to society, never generated the historic credit he so rightly deserved. Today he is remembered by most all highly educated scientists and historians, the people of his home country, and more recently as the character played by musician David Bowie in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Unfortunately, he is not a well-known figure to the general public and is scarcely mentioned in our history books at school. So how did a man so important to the modernization of our society become so overlooked? The answer lies in the midst of the struggles and successes of the man once hailed as “The Master of Lightning”.

    One can hardly think of electricity without the name Thomas Edison coming to mind. After all, we are taught that he is the father of electricity and the inventor of the light bulb. But to be more accurate, Edison was successful in the electricity industry and specialized in “direct current” or DC. DC, while still used today, is considered a more primitive use of electricity then alternating current. Like a battery, DC flows only one direction, from its negative to its positive end. This means that in order to transmit this type of electricity, a high-powered generator must send the current, high in both voltage and amperage, through a wire to its destination. But the current dissipates over the course of its flow therefore it has a limit to how far it can reach. Upping the power generated does little good as the dangerously high amperes in the current will heat and even melt the wires that house them. Despite the vast dangers DC presented, this was the first and most widely used form of electricity in the late 1800’s. New York was among the first of the major U.S. cities to be electrified with all that desired it, spaced close within range of Edison’s generator. Edison’s capitalization of this power made him both distinguishably famous and wealthy.

    In the year 1884, Edison brought into his employ a lengthy young immigrant from an area now known as Croatia. Nikola Tesla showed up in Edison’s doorway with nothing but ideas and a letter of recommendation from one of Edison’s offices in Europe. Edison was instantly skeptical of Tesla and his ideas and made little effort to be friendly. It was only by pure luck that Tesla became employed at all, as Edison was in need of someone with an extensive knowledge of electrical systems, upon hearing that one of his “junction boxes” was leaking electricity and had injured a carter and his horse. Over the course of his employment, Tesla argued constantly that his designs for an engine to produce alternating current were superior and could revolutionize the industry. But Edison would not hear of it, with good reason, for a breakthrough of that kind would cripple his business completely. Upon one occasion, Tesla boasted that the DC generators at Edison’s plant were not being used to their full potential and with enough work, their effectiveness could be maximized. Edison scoffed at the idea and promised Tesla $50,000 if he could manage to pull it off. After several months of work, Tesla had indeed increased the output of the machines and was ready to be paid. An astonished Edison brushed it off claiming his remark was only in jest and offered Tesla an extra ten dollars a week for his efforts. Tesla, offended that his employer would mistreat him in such a way, announced his withdrawal from Edison’s employ.

    Work was scarce and the poor immigrant was forced to work digging ditches in the streets, made more demeaning due to the fact that the ditches were to bury Edison’s power lines. But his reputation was beginning to precede him as word had traveled through many industrial circles that a man of remarkable ability was now “up for grabs” in New York City. Tesla was approached by investors with a chance to prove his genius and before he knew it, the first Tesla Electric Light company was established. Tesla got right to work and within time had his first working model of his alternating current motor. Nothing had been changed from the design originally granted him in his vision. His invention was a success and in 1887, he applied for several patents utilizing the technology he had invented. All were granted, as were many to come, without even a challenge from any one party. Tesla’s invention was gaining quite a following and the “War of the Currents”, as the media dubbed it, had begun. Suddenly Edison found himself competing with a man he easily could have benefited from only a few years earlier.

    The functioning of Tesla’s alternating current induction motors was both elegant and simple. Alternating current works by sending an electric signal, which bounces back and forth generating its own magnetic field. This can produce a staggering amount of power with high voltage and low amperage. Now the limits and risks of running electricity through direct current were no longer a problem. Through the use of transformers, alternating current could be utilized in countless ways over great distances without the dangers that DC brings. Some have compared Tesla’s great invention to that of the wheel in its importance on technology to come. Tesla had succeeded in revolutionizing the industry and his work was being utilized to bring light and power to new places across the globe. But the young inventor was far from finished as more breakthroughs in technology were beginning to float around in the mind of Nikola Tesla.

    On May 1, 1893 thousands of people from around the country flocked to Chicago for the Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair. Reporters say that the greatest thrill came on opening night when President Grover Cleveland flipped a single switch and ignited the entire fair ground with the largest array of electric lights the world had ever seen. Such was the astonishment of the crowd it even inspired children’s book author L. Frank Baum to create a similar look for the Emerald City in his book The Wizard of Oz. And at the center of all this electricity were Tesla’s AC motors. Tesla himself had been commissioned with the lighting of the fair through his investor, George Westinghouse and was granted a small area of fairground to dazzle audiences with his inventions. Other attractions at the fair included the world’s first long distance phone call, the first zipper, and the first Ferris wheel. One can imagine the shock patrons of the fair must have endured upon entering Tesla’s exhibit to find the lanky inventor calmly walking on stage and dousing himself in a mass of sparkling electricity ranging in the area of two million volts while being surrounded by a halo of electric flames. Tesla, unharmed, continued by astonishing fair-goers with an assortment of dazzling electric devices unlike anything ever seen before.

    In 1891, Tesla appeared before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers for the second time. Last time he had revolutionized an industry with his alternating current motor; the world was ready for his next great invention. Utilizing the same technology he had invented, Tesla presented a series of new devices that created vast amounts of energy, which could generate hundreds of thousands of volts. He called the device the Tesla coil. He continued by revealing he had since discovered that this energy could pass, wirelessly, through the air to be received by any manner of objects. At the conference, Tesla switched on one of his coils allowing the energy to pass through his body and be received by a small “carbon-button” lamp in his hand. The lamp illuminated with a light that was twenty times brighter than any other light in existence. The energy inside the lamp was so powerful it vaporized diamonds and rubies.

    In less than ten years Nikola Tesla, the strange man from Croatia, had travelled to America, revolutionized the modern world, discovered alternating current, invented the Tesla coil, phosphorescent light bulbs, and found a way to transmit energy through the very air itself. At 38 years old, Tesla was a celebrity and regarded as a genius who was welcome in most all intellectual circles. But the Master of Lighting was far from finished and this wizard was about to sweep the entire world off its feet.

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