This book is based on articles written by Tesla and published in the ELECTRICAL EXPERIMENTER magazine, February-June and October, 1919 issues.
Tesla was born to Serbian parents in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire near the town of Gospić, in the territory of modern-day Croatia.
Tesla went on to study electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current.In 1880, he moved to Budapest to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company, the National Telephone Company. In 1882 he moved to Paris, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment brought overseas from Edison's ideas. According to his autobiography, in the same year he conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.On 6 June 1884, Tesla first arrived in the United States, in New York City with little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor.
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project.