Born July 10th, 1856, in Smiljan, Croatia, Nikola Tesla paved the way for the creation of almost all household appliances that we use today.  A speaker of six languages, Tesla studied engineering at the University of Prague.  The inventor of the Electro-Magnetic AC motor and transformer, 3-phase electricity, and the Tesla coil, Tesla rivaled Thomas Edison at the turn of the 20th Century and even surpassed his world-renown.  After coming to the United States and actually working for Edison, Tesla broke away to work on his own ideas for a motor that would use an alternating current, as opposed to Edison’s direct current model.  He eventually sold his design to the Westinghouse engineering group, which marketed the innovation in household appliances.  In fact, the appliances we use today still use almost exactly the same model Tesla designed in the early 20th Century.  Nikola Tesla also worked on models for radio transmission which led to the use of his Tesla coil design in future radio and television innovation.  Over his lifetime, Tesla created more than a hundred patented inventions.

*posted July 11 - July 15, 2005