At the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago, Tesla demonstrated the safety AC electricity was by passing high frequency AC power through his body to power light bulbs. He then was able to shoot large lightning bolts from his Tesla coils to the crowd without harm. Nikola Tesla was one of the most important engineers of his time. Although he never received a university degree, he was one of the pioneers of radio, took some of the first X-ray photographs, constructed the first radio-controlled robots, and built the first AC power system.

Tesla had few friends and remained reclusive. He never had a home in America, choosing instead to live in hotels. During the final few decades of his life he withdrew in a New York hotel, only granting interviews and making annual public appearances on his birthdays. At these press conferences Tesla proposed future inventions, but his accounts were frequently distorted by the popular press. After Tesla's death the Federal Bureau of Investigation took note of Tesla's proposals for advanced weapons systems and searched his papers for information about reports of his death ray machine.

Tesla's discovery of the rotating magnetic field produced by the interactions of two and three phase alternating currents in a motor winding was one of his most significant achievements of the century, and formed the basis of his induction motor for the generation and distribution of electricity. In 1882, before his arrival in America, Tesla went to work in Paris for the Continental Edison Company, and, while on assignment to Strassburg in 1883, he constructed his first induction motor. Tesla sailed for America in 1884, arriving in New York, with four cents in his pocket, a few of his own poems, and calculations for a flying machine. He first found employment with