Welcome to the Tesla Memorial Society of New York Website

Nikola Tesla holding a gas-filled phosphor-coated light bulb which was illuminated without wires by an electromagnetic field from the "Tesla Coil".

Nikola Tesla was inducted into the National Inventor's Hall of Fame for his invention of the Electro-Magnetic Motor -  Alternating Current in 1975

Above:  Hall of Fame Inventor Profile

The following below can be found at Nikola Tesla's Hall of Fame Inventor Profile

Nikola Tesla
Born Jul 10 1856 - Died Jan 7 1943

Electro-Magnetic Motor
Alternating Current
Patent Number(s) 381,968

Inducted 1975

Nikola Tesla invented the induction motor with rotating magnetic field that made unit drives for machines feasible and made AC power transmission an economic necessity.

In 1887 and 1888 Tesla had an experimental shop at 89 Liberty Street, New York, and there he invented the induction motor. He sold the invention to Westinghouse in July 1888 and spent a year in Pittsburgh instructing Westinghouse engineers.


Invention Impact

Inventor Bio

Born in Smiljan Lika, Croatia, the son of a Serbian Orthodox clergyman, Tesla attended Joanneum, a polytechnic school in Graz and the University of Prague for two years. He started work in the engineering department of the Austrian telegraph system then became an electrical engineer at an electric power company in Budapest and later at another in Strasbourg. While in technical school, Tesla became convinced that commutators were unnecessary on motors; and while with the power company he built a crude motor which demonstrated the truth of his theory. In 1884, Tesla came to the United States and joined the Edison Machine Works as a dynamo designer.

Telsa obtained more than 100 patents in his lifetime. Despite his 700 inventions Tesla was not wealthy. For many years he worked in his room at the Hotel New Yorker, where he died.

Above: One of the original Tesla Electric Motors from 1888 which is today the main power of for industry and household appliances.  Tesla's Electric Motor is one of the ten greatest inventions of all times.

Above: Tesla's Alternating Current Motor found at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.  (For more information go to: Smithsonian Institution  (Museum) in Washington D.C. pays tribute to Nikola Tesla)

Above: United States Postal Stamps- "A Tribute to American Inventors" - Nikola Tesla and his induction motor.

Tesla's Alternating Current Motor is considered the top 10 discoveries of all times

Tesla Motors - Westinghouse Photo Collection