Technical Museum of Slovenia Collections

The Man Who Tamed the Electricity

On the first floor there is an extended exhibition entitled The Man who Tamed the Electricity, which is dedicated to the work and inventions of the Croatian-born US physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943). The working models made by Ljubljana University’s Professor Marij Osana – the pioneer of Slovene radio – are an early demonstration of the principles of threephase electrical current, which is today the standard for most mains electrical supply around the world

Further on the visitors can familiarise themselves with high-frequency high-voltage currents, which were the subject of Nikola Tesla’s research for much of his life. His induction coil experiments were, amongst a number of other applications, responsible for the further evolution of wireless telegraphy and radio technology. Furthermore, Tesla’s transformer is today an indispensable exhibit in any museum of electrical engineering worthy of the name. The most attractive part of the demonstration though, which makes a regular part of the museum tour but can also be executed upon prior notice, is the lightning simulator, creating electrical discharges up to a meter in length from Tesla’s electrical transformer.