Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla. Tesla Experimental Station Colorado Springs. The Tesla Experimental Station was a laboratory built by Nikola Tesla in 1899 in an empty site on Knob Hill in Colorado Springs. The experimental lab stood north of this location on North Foote Avenue. The lab was operational from May 1899 to January 1900.

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Croatia and emigrated to the United States in 1884. He became a U.S. citizen in 1891, and that same year he invented the Tesla coil. Tesla coils are a type of electrical circuit used to generate low-current high-voltage electricity.

Tesla invented, predicted or contributed to development of hundreds of technologies that are part in our daily lives, such as the remote control, neon and fluorescent lights, wireless mechanisms, computers, smartphones, laser beams, x-rays, robotics and, most notably, alternating current, the basis of our present-day electrical system.

The Tesla Experimental Station possessed the largest Tesla coil ever built, over 49 feet in diameter. This coil reproduced the effects of lightning and its accompanying thunder. The lab's primary purpose was to conduct experiments with high frequency electricity, research into wireless transmission of electrical power, and attempts to send a signal from Pikes Peak to Paris, France.

Even though Tesla was in Colorado Springs for only 9 short months, he felt that he made some of his most significant discoveries at this lab. Several years later the building was torn down and the lumber reused. The laboratory equipment was sold at a sheriff's auction.