SOURCE: "Nikola Tesla, 1856-1943: Electrical Genius," in Great Immigrants, Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1973, pp. 133-161.

In the following excerpt, Neidle describes conditions affecting many southern Slavs' migration to America, then turns to a specific examination of Tesla as an immigrant whose life was a mixture of American success story and American tragedy.

He was a scientist to whom Walt Whitman might have addressed the words: "to you the first honors always: / Your facts are useful and real." Arriving here with an invention that hastened the rapid transmission of power, he brought about a revolution in electrical science. That invention was alternating current. Beside alternating current Thomas Edison's direct current was as slow as the tortoise's progress beside that of the hare.

His genius foresaw other developments that were too fantastic to be believed. Had he succeeded he would have brought some of nature's functions under control. Because of the...