Who Was Nikola Tesla? Paperback – Illustrated, December 4, 2018

Great for biography report!My students had a hard time choosing whom they wanted to write about.Nikola Tesla was a great option

Enjoyed this book very much. I plan to have my grandchildren read it also.

Relative

All the "Who Was?" books are great but I love how they authors find truly interesting things about people and weave it into a biography. I've read all the ones we own, before my kids do, and have learned so much about people I thought I already understood. The ending (spoiler alert) about this super-genius man feeding pigeons, essentially forgotten by so many, just really broke my heart. I had no idea.

Great book! My 2nd grader is doing a project on Tesla, and he really enjoyed this book. He went to bed willingly each night, because he was so excited about his evening reading time. He finished reading it in three nights. I highly recommend this book; even though it’s geared for a younger audience, it would be great for younger or older kids...I even read and enjoyed it!

good book easy for kids to read

I really enjoyed this little book. The print was easy to read, and the wordingwas not difficult to decipher. This is a great book, and would be a great giftand primer for young children and adults.

Who Was…? biography series for middle grade aw-inspires with the story of Nikola Tesla who was one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of all time, whose experiments with electricity, remote control, and wireless communication changed the world.Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was born in Smiljan, now Croatia. His family was Serbian. Nikola from childhood had a natural instinct for figuring things out. His mother was not educated but she had an inventive side.When he was four, he followed his mother’s example by experimenting and coming up with his own ideas.When he was five, he created a spinning wheel on a stream, which showed him how energy was created to spin the wheel.When he was seven, his family moved to Gospic town. Nikola didn’t like the city. He missed his village where he experimented with his waterwheels. To fill the void, he became an avid reader, reading through the night. In one of the books, he read about Niagara Falls. It became his dream to create a giant waterwheel to create power.At school, he proved to be very good at math. He could easily solve an equation in his head.At Gymnasium, he liked electrical and mechanical experiments the most.At Higher Gymnasium (High School), he was impressed with his science classes and experiments. He always had a thousand questions after an experiment.His heart was set on research and made up his mind to become an electrical engineer, but his father wanted him to become a priest. It was during a time when cholera broke out and Nikola got sick. When Nikola was fighting for his life, his father agreed for him to study electrical engineering.Nikola went to university in Gratz, Austria. As always, he worked tirelessly. He slept only four hours a night. In his second year, a machine arrived from Paris which forced an electrical current to move in only one direction. Nikola argued it would be better to let the current flow back and forth, but it was never done to power a motor. He couldn’t get it work and got frustrated and dropped out in his third year.When his father died, he felt an obligation to help in supporting his mother. Thus, he looked for a job. His uncle’s friend built a telephone exchange in Budapest, Hungary. Nikola worked as its chief engineer. He made many improvements. Meanwhile, he was still thinking about alternating current (AC).One day, when he walked in a park with his friend reciting poetry, it came to him. The answer were the magnets to reverse the direction of an electric current.In 1882, Nikola went to Paris to work for Edison Company. In his spare time, he built a model, but he couldn’t find an investor to build an entire system. His boss suggested that he went to New York to work for Edison Company.In New York, he worked long hours as Thomas Edison himself. When Nikola completed a project and didn’t receive a promised bonus, he left Edison.He was broke and hungry. He went to dig ditches which turned out to be his big break. The foreman overheard him talking about his AC (Alternating Current) motor, and he knew an expert electrician, who was Alfred Brown.Nikola and Alfred opened a laboratory in NYC in 1886 to develop patents on AC technology. His patent ideas got an attention of George Westinghouse, the owner of the Westinghouse Electric Company, who was a competitor of Thomas Edison. Westinghouse offered a huge amount for the patents and Nikola accepted.Now, Nikola had freedom to open his own laboratory and work on his ideas.Westinghouse Corporation was awarded contract to build turbines and generators for Niagara Falls using Nikola’s patents and AC technology.Nikola’s next goal was wireless communication. His ideas were way ahead of his time, but technology had to catch up to his ideas.Later, his ideas were getting stranger.Nevertheless, after his death, his reputation grew and he continued to be honored for his brilliance and his many scientific developments.This biography exhibits a man who was way ahead of his time. His mind was influenced by his mother’s curiosity to experiment. From childhood, that propelled Nikola to explore his natural instinct with experiments, mostly the ones exploring energy that led to electricity as it fascinated him the most. Despite some challenges, he never lost his fuel for his passion.