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Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла) (10 July 1856 ? 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Tesla was born in the village of Smiljan near the town of Gospić, in Croatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He was an ethnic Serb subject of the Austrian Empire and later became an American citizen.^[2] Tesla is often described as the most important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who \"shed light over the face of Earth\".^[3] He is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla\'s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution. Contemporary biographers of Tesla have regarded him as \"The Father of Physics\", \"The man who invented the twentieth century\"^[4] and \"the patron saint of modern electricity.\"^[5]

After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1894 and after being the victor in the \"War of Currents\", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.^[6] Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla\'s fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture,^[7] but due to his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist.^[8][9] Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.

The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B), the tesla, was named in his honour (at the Conf?rence G?n?rale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the Tesla effect of wireless energy transfer to wirelessly power electronic devices which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale (lightbulbs) as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial energy levels in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.

Aside from his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla has contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics,^[10] and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio.^[11] Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and early New Age occultism.

Tesla is honored in Serbia and Croatia, as well as in the Czech Republic and Romania. He was awarded the highest order of the White Lion by Czechoslovakia.

George Belden Trinkaus (tring\' kis), writer, publisher. Born (1936) Pittsburgh. In his youth, a basement electrical experimenter and a novice-class ham. Formally educated at Mercersberg Academy, at Colgate University, (BA, 1959), and at New York University (where his pursuit of an MA yielded to a \"grand tour\" of Europe). In New York he was a free-lance medical writer, and writer for the Encyclopedia Americana (where he wrote short entries in a telegraphic style honored here). Held various staff editorial and administrative posts at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, at Harcourt Brace, at Random House, and at Macmillan. Editorial areas included electronics, industrial technology, linguistics, lexicography. Macmillan transferred him to California (1971), and he remains on the West Coast.

He is the author (as George Belden) of an early consumerist book, Tactics of the Bill Collector and How to Fight Back (Grosset & Dunlap, 1974). The book was attacked by the Massachusetts Bar, reviewed as a social phenomenon by The New Republic, and as news by UPI; also it was grist for the radio-TV media mill, was serialized in Family Circle, and was a mass paperback from Ace. He was a book-review writer for The L.A. Free Press and the book-review editor at The Hollywood Daily News. He was a founder and director of Bookswest, the L.A. Book Fair, and editor and publisher of BooksWest Magazine, an alternative magazine of the book industry, in which he published many leading writers of the time and for which he wrote \"The Title Glut,\" on overproduction and market control in the book industry, which was nominated for article of the year 1978 by the American Library Association\'s Intellectual Freedom Committee. Moved from L.A. to Ojai, California (1980). Arrested four times in civil disobedience actions on nuclear and war issues, defendant in the \"Pt. Mugu 12\" trial, a media spokes to the world press at the Diablo Canyon nuke blockade of 1981. He was a community spokes for the Ojai resistance to the USA Petrochem refinery expansion and the community rep on the Ventura County EIR committee on this issue (which was ultimately resolved by the shut-down of the refinery). Campaign manager for candidate for Ojai City Council. Many public speeches and radio interviews as a spokes for all the above projects.

In mid-1980\'s Trinkaus came upon a collection of Nikola Tesla\'s U.S. patents which someone had xeroxed at the National Archives. This prompted his study of Tesla\'s electric technology. Rediscovered long-neglected scientific passions, set up an electrical lab, and, over the years 1986-2000, researched, wrote, and published Tesla the Lost Inventions, Tesla Coil, Son of Tesla Coil, and Radio Tesla. Also edited Tesla\'s The True Wireless and the U.S. Navy\'s Magnetic Amplifiers. All are in print from his High Voltage Press (www.teslapress.com) and are being published in e-book by Wheelock Mountain Press (www.tesla-ebooks.com). In Oregon since 1989, he was a founder of the Portland Tesla Technology Roundtable. A skeptical fascination with the workings of modern media prompted his writing and publishing, under the imprint Counter-Propaganda Press, the documentary critiques called How the Chronicle Invented AIDS (www.whatisaids.com) and NBC Spins 911.

\"Trinkaus was the editor of a series of electronics books for the schools for a major New York publisher. But now he confesses that he never really understood how electricity works until he studied Tesla. He is the author of a series of Tesla titles published by High Voltage Press.\" - Amazon

\"The series by George Trinkaus is the only systematic treatment of Tesla Technology for the electrical nonexpert I have found. All of the booklets are written in clear English, well illustrated, and use a minimum of math. Easy to understand, I have personally seen one novice build a Tesla Coil using the Tesla Coil booklet... and junk parts! I give it THUMBS UP!\" - Steve Elswick

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