Epochs 1856–1884 1885–1893 1893–1900 1900–1917 1917–1943 1943 onward

Timeline

Dates carried by documents, not by retellings. Where a month is given without a day, the document does not fix the day.

Filing dates and grant dates are both listed for the patents, because they are routinely confused and because the gap between them is sometimes the story: one wireless application below sat in prosecution for nearly thirteen years while the plant it described was being mortgaged. Every article on this site is filed to one of these six epochs.

Smiljan to New York

1856–1884

10 July 1856Born at Smiljan, in the Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire. The village is in present-day Croatia.
1875Enters the Imperial-Royal Technical College at Graz to study engineering. He leaves without a degree.
1881Works at the Central Telegraph Office in Budapest.
1882Joins the Continental Edison Company in Paris, and works on installations in France and Germany.
June 1884Arrives in New York and takes work with the Edison Machine Works.

The polyphase patents and the current war

1885–1893

6 May 1885Files his first United States application, on commutators for dynamo-electric machines. It is granted on 26 January 1886 as US 334,823.
12 Oct 1887Files the applications that become US 381,968 and US 382,280.
1 May 1888US 381,968, US 382,279 and US 382,280 are granted on the same day. What they claim, and what they do not.
16 May 1888Reads A New System of Alternate Current Motors and Transformers to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers at Columbia College, New York.
July 1888Westinghouse Electric licenses the polyphase patents, in cash, stock and a royalty on horsepower.
6 Aug 1890William Kemmler is executed at Auburn Prison in the first use of the electric chair. How it came to be an alternating-current machine.
20 May 1891Lectures to the Institute at Columbia College on high-frequency currents and their use in lighting.
23 June 1891US 454,622 granted, one of the documents behind the coil that carries his name.

Chicago, Niagara, Colorado Springs

1893–1900

1 May – 30 Oct 1893The World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago is lit under a Westinghouse alternating-current contract.
13 Mar 1895Fire destroys the laboratory at 33–35 South Fifth Avenue, New York, with its apparatus and records.
Aug 1895The Adams station at Niagara Falls goes into operation, built around polyphase generation.
2 Sept 1897Files the application that becomes US 645,576, granted 20 March 1900.
1 July 1898Files US 613,809, on controlling the mechanism of moving vessels without wires. Granted 8 November 1898.
Nov 1898Demonstrates the remotely controlled boat at the Houston Street laboratory; the press describes it from 8 November. No evidence places it at the Madison Square Garden exhibition, which ran the previous May. What the mechanism actually was.
May 1899 – Jan 1900Operates the experimental station at Colorado Springs and keeps daily notes, which survive. What the notes record.

Wardenclyffe

1900–1917

20 Mar 1900US 645,576 granted. US 649,621 follows on 15 May.
Mar 1901J. P. Morgan agrees to advance $150,000 against transatlantic wireless telegraphy.
End of July 1901Closes on about two hundred acres at Shoreham, Long Island. The site.
Dec 1901Marconi reports receiving a transatlantic signal at St John's, Newfoundland, with apparatus costing a fraction of the Shoreham plant.
18 Apr 1905US 787,412 granted, the document that states the earth-conduction premise most plainly.
6 May 1913The turbine and pump patents, US 1,061,206 and US 1,061,142, are granted.
1 Dec 1914US 1,119,732 granted. It was filed on 18 January 1902 and renewed on 4 May 1907; the grant comes twelve years and ten months after the original filing.
18 May 1917The Edison Medal of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, awarded to him in December 1916, is presented at the Institute's annual meeting in New York.
4 July 1917Demolition of the Wardenclyffe tower begins for scrap; the work runs into September.

The late years

1917–1943

1919My Inventions appears in instalments in The Electrical Experimenter. It is the single source for several of the most repeated stories about him, and this publication marks them as such. How to read it.
3 Feb 1920US 1,329,559 granted, the valvular conduit — a check valve with no moving parts.
3 Jan 1928US 1,655,114 granted, the last of his United States patents.
July 1934The New York press reports his description of a charged-particle apparatus he called teleforce, which became known as the death ray. No working device was ever produced.
7 Jan 1943Dies at the Hotel New Yorker in Manhattan, aged 86.

The record since

1943 onward

21 June 1943Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co. of America v. United States, 320 U.S. 1, is decided, five months after his death. What the Court actually held.
5 Dec 1952The Yugoslav government resolves to establish the Nikola Tesla Museum. It opens in Belgrade on 20 October 1955 and holds his papers and effects.
1960The General Conference on Weights and Measures adopts the tesla as the unit of magnetic flux density.
2 May 2013The Wardenclyffe property is bought for $1.6 million by a non-profit, after an online fundraising campaign and a matching New York State grant.
21 Nov 2023Fire tears through the roof of the Wardenclyffe laboratory. Damage is put at more than $3 million.
11 July 2026A new visitor building at Wardenclyffe is dedicated. Current status of the site.