Portrait, daeger photographic, nikola tesla, 10 july 1856 – 7 january 1943, was a serbian-american inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (ac) electricity supply system, born and raised in the austrian empire, tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at continental edison in the new electric power industry, anatomically correct proportional human hands