In the Footsteps of Genius Page 16

In 1915, after more than a decade of hoping that he would nevertheless find a financier, Tesla had to abandon Wardenclyffe, and two years later the new owners (Tesla concealed their names) blew the tower into the air.

Nevertheless, Tesla until his death never abandoned his idea of a wireless system. In 1920 he proudly turned to Westinghouse for help, for at the time when they had granted him the patent for the system of alternating current they had said to him: “The Westinghouse Company will from now on accept all your projects.” However, they rejected him, even though Westinghouse had already begun to work on the development of a radio system whose foundations Tesla had laid, and then carelessly allowed Marconi to patent the invention before him.

The following year Westinghouse gravely insulted him by inviting him to the opening of their first radiophonic broadcasting system in New York, “with a request that he himself address the invisible public.”²⁸ Tesla politely reminded them that for years he had been working on the development of radio broadcasting:

“I will wait until I completely finish this idea before addressing the invisible public. Until then, I beg you to excuse me.”²⁹

In the same way, at that time, Tesla’s project for the commercial production of turbines was also rejected.

Just then, when it seemed to him that many saw in him only a possibility of making a good profit, he met two men, who later became great friends and who would restore his faith in people and in himself. The nineteen-year-old scientific journalist Kenneth Swezey appeared with a request to write something about Tesla’s inventions; and the sculptor Ivan Meštrović, a man of middle years and already well known in Europe, came to New York to present his works to America.

Tesla and Meštrović spent hours in reminiscences of their childhood in the hills and by the rivers of Yugoslavia. Both were poets at heart. They often met in New York and talked about everything and anything. Both worked late into the night and had similar problems. Meštrović moved from hotel to hotel seeking the most suitable place for his studio; Tesla, to his great disappointment, could no longer have his own laboratory. Thus they walked together for a long time, talking of the events in the Balkans, of their work, and sharing the joy of reciting the poetry of their people. Along the way Meštrović joined Tesla’s custom of stopping in the parks of Manhattan and feeding the pigeons.

A long time after Meštrović returned to Split, Tesla wrote to him, asking him to make a bust of him. He, however, could not go to Europe, and Meštrović was not planning a return to America. Still, the sculptor gladly accepted the request. He wrote to Tesla that he remembered him so well that it would be enough for him to send a photograph for him to set to work.³⁰ Tesla answered that he had no money to pay for the work, and Meštrović wrote back that it was not necessary. The great master completed the bust and cast it in bronze (today it is preserved in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade), with such likeness and power that it truly expresses the essence of Tesla’s genius.³¹

My mechanical self

After I had for years been reflecting on this, I finally decided to construct an automaton which would be my mechanical copy, and which, like me, but, of course, in a more primitive way, would be able to respond to all external influences. Such an automaton must have propulsive power, organs of movement, control mechanisms and one or more sensory organs.

The machine would perform the same tasks and in the same way as living beings, for for that purpose it would contain all the necessary elements and the main mechanical characteristics. There would still remain enough room for growth, improvement and, above all, for the establishment of the function of reasoning, by which the automaton would become complete.

… It is quite irrelevant whether the automaton would be built of blood and flesh or of wood and steel, provided that it was in a position to perform everything that an intelligent being usually can. Its mind, in that case, would have to be equipped with knowledge, reasoning and experience. I think that would not be difficult, for I could transfer into it my own intelligence and understanding.

Thus my new invention developed and thus the foundations were laid for the skill which I have called “teleautomatics.”

Nikola Tesla, “The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine,” June 1900.

Young Swezey, when he first saw Tesla in 1929, was surprised by the “tall, slender man of proud bearing,” who could walk for hours and concentrate on a problem, but who was also an exceptional man, “almost touchingly sensitive to all living creatures.”³²

The old man and the young man were often together from then on. Although Tesla worked diligently while others slept, he sometimes took a break for refreshment and went for long walks around the city. Swezey usually accompanied him on these nocturnal excursions.

I care only about the pigeon

Tesla introduced him also to his pigeons. One evening, while they were walking on Broadway, he was talking about his system for the wireless transmission of electrical energy, and then he suddenly stopped. “However, what worries me most at this moment,” he said, “is a small sick bird which has remained in my room. That worries me more than all my wireless problems together.”

A pigeon which he had found two days earlier in front of the library had a cancerous growth on its tongue and could not eat. Tesla saved it from a slow death, convinced that with careful care the pigeon would soon recover.

But not all the birds which he wished to save could remain in his room, for the chambermaids were already complaining of the dirt… “In a large cage in a bird store,” Swezey wrote, “we have several dozen more pigeons… Some have a broken wing, others a broken leg. I even succeeded in curing one of gangrene, although the doctors had already given it up.” If a pigeon was so injured that Tesla could not cure it, he would entrust the bird to professional care.

He and Swezey, as they walked, discussed Einstein, diet, exercise, fashion, marriage… “Tesla was married to his work and to the whole world,” Swezey wrote, “as Newton and Michelangelo were married to universal thought. He believed, like Francis Bacon, that the most enduring works were created by people — eternal children…”³³

Is nature a great cat?

Tesla confided to his young friend that the mental narrowness of people, the bitter commercial opposition and other conflicts greatly stimulated his productivity, and that today he would probably reach his peak if he had serious opponents in what he now preoccupied himself with. He also said that by his works he had earned over two million dollars. He might really have had them, he said, if he had received that promised million from Westinghouse for the alternating-current patent.³⁴

Because there exist so many unusual interpretations of Tesla’s love for pigeons, we present a letter which Tesla sent to the girl Polly Fotić, the daughter of the then Yugoslav ambassador to the United States, for in it Tesla most simply explains his devotion to the birds which always reminded him of his childhood. In the story which he called “A Story from Childhood,” Tesla describes