Digital TeslaEverything you need to know about Nikola Tesla.
Tesla's laboratory building at Colorado Springs
Tesla's laboratory at Colorado Springs, 1899–1900 (underlying photograph pre-1930, public domain).

Timeline

Eighteen events, 1856–1943. Dates marked ● are firmly documented; ◐ rest partly on Tesla's own late-life account.

● 1856 — Born in Smiljan

10 July 1856 (28 June Julian): Nikola Tesla is born in Smiljan, in the Austrian Empire’s Military Frontier (today Croatia), fourth of five children of the Serbian Orthodox priest Milutin Tesla and Đuka Mandić Tesla. The birth date is documented in parish records; the “born at midnight in a lightning storm” detail is Tesla’s own later embroidery.

● 1873 — Cholera and a promise

Tesla contracts cholera and is bedridden for months. By his account, his father promises him engineering school if he recovers. The illness is documented; the promise is Tesla’s telling.

● 1875 — Enrolls at Graz

Begins electrical engineering studies at the Imperial-Royal Technical College in Graz. Excels initially, then stops attending, takes up gambling, and leaves in 1878 without a degree.

◐ 1881–82 — Budapest and the rotating field

Chief electrician at the Budapest telephone exchange. By his famous account, the principle of the rotating magnetic field comes to him in 1882 during a walk in the City Park with Anthony Szigeti, while reciting Goethe’s Faust — he sketches the induction motor in the sand with a stick. The employment is documented; the eureka scene is Tesla’s story.

● 1884 — Emigration to America

6 June 1884 (Tesla’s date): arrives in New York, by his account with four cents, carrying Charles Batchelor’s letter of introduction to Edison. Joins the Edison Machine Works; leaves after about six months. Tesla’s later claim of a promised-and-denied $50,000 bonus is uncorroborated — Edison’s side left no record of it.

● 1888 — The AC patents and Westinghouse

The core U.S. polyphase AC patents are granted (May 1888). George Westinghouse licenses them the same year — a lump sum (biographies report ~$60,000 in cash and stock) plus per-horsepower royalties. Tesla lectures on the system before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

● 1891 — U.S. citizen; the Tesla coil

Naturalized as a U.S. citizen, 30 July 1891. Patents the high-frequency resonant transformer — the Tesla coil — and delivers the celebrated Columbia College lecture on high-potential, high-frequency currents.

● 1893 — Chicago World’s Fair

Westinghouse’s AC system, built on Tesla’s patents, lights the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, outbidding Edison’s General Electric. Tesla demonstrates the Egg of Columbus and wirelessly lit lamps before huge crowds.

● 1895 — Laboratory fire

13 March 1895: Tesla’s Fifth Avenue laboratory burns down, destroying apparatus, notes, and years of work. He rebuilds within the year.

● 1896 — Niagara Falls power

The Adams Power Plant at Niagara Falls, built to the Westinghouse AC design on Tesla’s polyphase principles, begins operation — the first large-scale AC power system, and the practical vindication of Tesla’s system.

● 1898 — The radio-controlled boat

At the Electrical Exhibition in Madison Square Garden, Tesla demonstrates a radio-controlled boat — the first public demonstration of wireless remote control. The U.S. Patent Office initially rejects the patent as implausible; it is granted in 1900.

● 1899 — Colorado Springs

Builds an experimental station at Colorado Springs (May 1899 – January 1900) for high-voltage, high-frequency transmission experiments. Produces spectacular artificial lightning and voluminous notes; no workable wireless-power system results.

● 1901 — Wardenclyffe begins

With $150,000 from J.P. Morgan (March 1901, for a majority stake in Tesla’s wireless patents by the standard account), construction starts on the Wardenclyffe wireless station on Long Island — a 187-foot tower intended for transatlantic communication and, Tesla hoped, wireless power.

● 1904 — Radio patent priority reversed

The U.S. Patent Office reverses its earlier decision and awards key radio patent priority to Marconi over Tesla’s 1900 patent — a blow Tesla contests for the rest of his life.

● 1906–1917 — Wardenclyffe abandoned and demolished

Funds exhausted, construction halts in 1906. The tower stands unfinished until 1917, when it is demolished to satisfy creditors.

● 1919 — “My Inventions”

Tesla’s autobiography, “My Inventions,” is serialized in Electrical Experimenter — vivid, invaluable, and self-mythologizing; the principal first-person source for his life.

◐ 1915 — The Nobel rumor

Press reports claim Tesla and Edison will share the Nobel Prize in Physics; the prize goes to the Braggs. Whether Tesla was ever seriously considered is undocumented, and his reported refusal to share it with Edison is press anecdote, not record.

● 1943 — Death in New York

7 January 1943: Tesla dies of a coronary thrombosis, alone, in Room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel. Some 2,000 mourners attend his funeral on 12 January at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The Office of Alien Property seizes his papers; John G. Trump reviews them and finds nothing of military value. That same year the U.S. Supreme Court upholds Tesla’s priority over Marconi on key radio patents (Marconi Wireless v. United States).

Source notes