- published: 01 Sep 2015
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Nikola "Nick" Nobilo (1913 – 28 August 2007) was a New Zealand winemaker and founder of Nobilo Wines. Nobilo was originally from Croatia.
Nikola Nobilo was born in present day Croatia in 1913. His family's home village was Lumbarda, located on the island of Korčula. His family had worked in the winemaking industry in Croatia for 300 years before Nobilo moved to New Zealand. Nobilo worked as a stonemason before his emigration.
Nikola Nobilo was ordered by his uncle to move to New Zealand in the 1930s. His uncle feared the signs of what would become World War II in Europe.
Nobilo and his family arrived in New Zealand in 1937 and settled in Huapai. Huapai is located west of the city of Auckland. Nikola Nobilo and his family began planting grapes in Huapai in 1943. Gradually the Nobilos led New Zealand's wine industry away from hybrid grapes to an emphasis on classic grape varieties which produce higher quality wines.
Nikola Nobilo came to head the family company, which grew to become on of New Zealand's largest winemakers. In 1998, the company, then called Nobilo Vintners, purchased another award winning New Zealand winemaker, Selaks. The Nobilo family company was, in turn, acquired by BRL Hardy, one of Australia's largest winemakers, 2000. BRL Hardy merged Nobilo with its Constellation Brands wines in 2003.
Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла; 10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, physicist, mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and futurist. He was an important contributor to the use of commercial electricity, and is best known for developing the modern alternating current (AC) electrical supply system. His many revolutionary developments in the field of electromagnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were based on the theories of electromagnetic technology discovered by Michael Faraday. Tesla's patents and theoretical work also formed the basis of wireless communication and the radio.
Born in the village of Smiljan (now part of Gospić, present day Croatia), Tesla was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen. Because of his 1894 demonstration of short range wireless communication through radio and as the eventual victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America. He pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. In the United States during this time, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture. Tesla demonstrated wireless energy transfer to power electronic devices in 1891, and aspired to intercontinental wireless transmission of industrial power in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.