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Person

Nikola Tesla

A portrait of Nikola Tesla, wearing a black suit and bow tie, with a serious expression and neatly combed dark hair.

Serbian-American electrical engineer (1856–1943), trained at Graz and Prague, who arrived in New York in 1884 with four cents and a letter of introduction to Edison. His polyphase AC system, patented in 1888, made long-distance power transmission practical. Brilliant, eccentric, financially hopeless: he tore up a royalty contract worth millions to spare Westinghouse, and died owing rent at the Hotel New Yorker.

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