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Inventors and Inventions

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 9 to 12
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   9.92

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    self-disciplined, uneducated, error, accurate, generator, strict, practical, extremely, current, coils, based, direct, process, poetic, lower, suspect
     content words:    Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Both General Electric, Since AC

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Nikola Tesla
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Nikola Tesla was born in 1856 in Croatia. Growing up, he had a practical side and a poetic side. He has been described as a poet and a dreamer, but he was also self-disciplined and accurate. Since his father was a priest -- a very strict one -- and also a writer, we might suspect that he got some of those qualities from his father. Nikola's mother was an uneducated woman, but she was smart. She was a hard worker and would use her creative talents to find ways to make housework easier. Nikola inherited some of her qualities too, especially her creativity.
 
2     When Nikola Tesla became a young man, he studied for a career in engineering in Austria. He began working on his ideas for building motors. Tesla began to hear about the great work being done in the field of electricity by Thomas Edison. In 1884, he sailed to America and began to work with Edison. Just about the only things he brought with him were some of his poems and some plans for new inventions.
 
3     It turned out that Edison had one good way of working on his experiments, which involved a lot of trial and error. Tesla had another good way of coming up with new ideas, which involved working out everything first in his head and then building a finished product. It must have been hard for them to work together; eventually Tesla moved on to a new job.

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