tesla (T)		Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian inventor and electrical engineer who immigrated to the United States in 1884 and became a US citizen. He developed the first alternating current induction motor and demonstrated in 1893 the principles of modern radio. He was keenly interested in atmospheric electricity and studied the electrical characteristics of the global atmospheric electrical circuit (the combination of the Earth's surface and the atmosphere up through the ionosphere where various electrical effects are known to occur). As a result of these studies he proposed that the energy associated with atmospheric electricity could be harnessed and transmitted wirelessly over large distances through the use of the Earth itself as a sort of gigantic dynamo. Tesla's research interests extended to ideas about controlling the weather, but those ideas were never tested.

Tesla stayed in Colorado Springs in 1899 and 1900 to take advantage of its frequent thunderstorms, high altitude and dry air. He found these characteristics advantageous to his electrical experiments and continued his investigations into atmospheric electricity. He produced artificial lightning and tracked natural lightning through its atmospheric electrical disturbances. He also claimed to have produced and manipulated ball lightning, though there is no proof that he actually did so.

To honour his scientific work with electricity and magnetism, Tesla's name was given to the SI (International System of Units) unit of magnetic flux density. One tesla is equal to one weber per square meter.

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