The present volume is a simple record of the pioneer work done in such departments up to date, by Mr. Nikola Tesla, in whom the world has already recognized one of the foremost of modern electrical investigators and inventors. No attempt whatever has been made here to emphasize the importance of his researches and discoveries. Great ideas and real inventions win their own way, determining their own place by intrinsic merit. But with the conviction that Mr. Tesla is blazing a patli that electrical development must follow for many years to come, the compiler has endeavored to bring together all that bears the impress of Mr. Tesla's genius, and is worthy of preservation. Aside from its value as showing the scope of his inventions, this volume may be of service as indicating the range of his thought. There is intellectual profit in studying the push and play of a vigorous and original mind. Although the lively interest of the public in Mr. Tesla's work is perhaps of recent growth, this volume covers the results of full ten years. It includes his lectures, miscellaneous articles and discussions, and makes note of all his inventions thus far known, particularly those bearing on polyphase motors and the effects obtained with currents of high potential and high frequency. It will be seen that Mr. Tesla has ever pressed forward, barely pausing for an instant to work out in detail the utilizations that have at once been obvious to him of the new principles he has elucidated. Wherever possible his own language has been employed. It may be added that this volume is issued with Mr. Tesla's sanction and approval, and that permission has been obtained for the re-publication in it of such papers as have been read before various technical societies of this country and Europe. Mr. Tesla has kindly favored the author by looking over the proof sheets of the sections embodying his latest researches.
About the Author: As AN introduction to the record contained in this volume of Mr. Tesla' s investigations and discoveries, a few words of "a biographical nature will, it is deemed, not be out of place, nor other than welcome. Nikola Tesla was born in 1857 at Smiljan, Lika, a borderland region of Austro-Hungary, of the Serbian race, which has maintained against Turkey and all comers so unceasing a struggle for freedom. His family is an old and representative one among these Switzers of Eastern Europe, and his father was an eloquent clergyman in the Greek Church. An uncle is to-day Metropolitan in Bosnia. His mother was a woman of inherited ingenuity, and delighted not only in skillful work of the ordinary household character, but in the construction of such mechanical appliances as looms and churns and other machinery required in a rural community. Nikola was educated at Gospich in the public school for four years, and then spent three years in the Real Scliule. He was then sent to Carstatt, Croatia, where he continued his studies for three years in the Higher Real Scliule. There for the first time he saw a steam locomotive. He graduated in 1873, and, surviving an attack of cholera, devoted himself to experimentation, especially in electricity and magnetism. His father would have had him maintain the family tradition by Altering the Church, but native genius was too strong, and he was allowed to enter the Polytechnic School at Gratz, to finish his studies, and with the object of becoming a professor of mathematics and physics. One of the machines there experimented with was a Gramme dynamo, used as a motor.