Nikola Tesla - New York, NY - Citizen Memorials on Waymarking.com

Nikola Tesla (July 10, 1856 – January 7, 1943) was a Serbian-American electrical and mechanical engineer and a prolific experimenter and inventor. He is best known today for the invention and his advocacy of the alternating current system of supplying electricity. He had many battles with Thomas Edison who has a vested interest and insisted on retaining the less efficient and useful direct current system.

Tesla's main goal in life was to develop a a worldwide wireless system for distribution of electricity. His work was not understood in his time and he was the subject of severe ridicule, ultimately he became the archetype model for the Dr. Frankenstein type "mad scientist".

Tesla poured all his assets into his experiments and, as a result, he spent last few decades of his life in debt. He wound up living a reclusive life in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan, where he died on January 7, 1943.

The Yugoslav-American Bicentennial Committee wished to honor this great scientist during the American Bicentennial. In 1976 they created a plaque to honor him and wished to attach it to the New Yorker Hotel, on the anniversary of his death in 1977. However, the hotel was sold to Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, who refused to accept the plaque. The organization had to wait until the hotel was resold. In 2001, the new management eagerly accepted the sign in 2001. It can be found 7 feet up on the the 34th Street side of the hotel, west of 8th Avenue.

The plaque has a relief of Nicola Tesla in the upper left corner and is inscribed:

HERE DIED ON JANUARY 7, 1943
AT THE AGE OF 87, THE GREAT
YOUGOSLAV-AMERICAN SCIENTIST-INVENTOR,
NIKOLA TESLA, WHOSE DISCOVERIES
IN THE FIELD OF ALTERNATING ELECTRIC
CURRENT ADVANCED THE UNITED STATES
AND THE REST OF THE WORLD INTO THE
MODERN INDUSTRIAL ERA.

YOUGOSLAV-AMERICAN BICENTENINIAL
COMMITTEE, JANUARY 7, 1977