THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY SINCE THE DEATH OF NIKOLA TESLA

Motif: the portrait of Nikola Tesla with the symbols of electrical energy and telecommunications. Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of all times, gave his name to tesla, unit of magnetic induction in the metre-kilogram-second system of physical units. One tesla (T) equals one weber per square metre. Tesla was born on July 9/10, 1856, in Smiljan (Lika). He attended elementary school in Gospić, high School at Karlovac, and the prestigious Technical University at Graz. At Graz he first saw the Gramme dynamo, which operated as a generator and, when reversed, became an electric motor; and he conceived a way to use alternating current to advantage. He went to work in Budapest and Paris, in 1883 he constructed his first induction motor. Unable to continue with the electric motor development in Europe he emigrated to the U. S. in 1884. In 1887 he sold the patent rights to his polyphase system of alternating-current dynamos,transformers, and motors to George Westinghouse. His success was a factor in winning him the contract for installing the first electric power machinery at Niagara Falls, which bore Tesla’s name. It precipitated a power struggle between Edison’s direct-current system and the Tesla-Westinghouse alternating-current approach, which eventually won. Tesla left 112 different patents: electric motors, transformers, transmitters of electric energy, high frequency techniques, radio techniques, telemechanics, turbines, hydromechanics, and a number of non-announced patent rights. His almost unexplored inheritance houses his papers and 70 - 100 000 of his labaratory notes written by his own hand. Nikola Tesla belongs to the humanity. He was the recepient of many awards, and he refused them; among others awards, he rejected the Nobel Prize, too. He died in New York City (1943). The stamp was printed in sheets of 20 pieces each. HPT put on sale the commemorative envelope of the first day (FDC) and a commemorative sheet, too.