In the Footsteps of Genius Page 17

winter evenings in the parental home and his special friend, “the magnificent Cat, the most beautiful of all cats in the world.”³⁵

When he was only three years old, through the Cat he first became acquainted with electricity. “People, walking through the snow, left a luminous trail behind them,” he wrote. “A thrown snowball sparkled like a light bulb…” Even then his eyes showed signs of extreme sensitivity to light.

“I enjoyed playing by pulling the Cat’s tail and looking at the long hair on its back. What I saw was a miracle which left me speechless.”

“… The Cat’s back was bathed in light, and my hand caused a fireworks of sparks whose crackling could be heard throughout the whole house.”

His father explained to him that the phenomenon was caused by electricity. His mother advised him to stop playing with the Cat, for in the end it would cause a fire. But the boy began to think about it differently.

“Is nature a great cat? If it is, who pulls its tail? It can only be God, I concluded.”

Later, when darkness would fill the room, the Cat would shake its paw as if shaking water from it, and around it the boy would see a golden halo, like in the paintings of saints. Day after day he wondered what electricity was and could not find an answer. By the time he wrote the letter eighty years had passed since then, and Tesla considered that he still had not found the answer.

Machines of flesh

Already in his youth Tesla adopted two understandings which, in quite different ways, were to play a crucial role in his later life. According to the first, human beings can be quite adequately defined as “machines of flesh.” If he was unsociable, and he was, this understanding probably served him as the basis for his relation to the people around him. The second, however, led him into a strange and magical world — to which he himself gave the name “teleautomatics” or robotics.

A tomb for a pet

“I loved feeding our pigeons, chicks and other small animals. I would take a pigeon into my lap, caress it and feed it. In New York, as he more and more withdrew from the busy world and acquaintances, his love for pigeons became almost perversely strong.”

One day in 1921 he fell seriously ill in his office on 40th Street and, as usual, refused to see a doctor. When it was evident that he would not be able to return to his apartment in the hotel, he whispered to his secretary to call the reception and ask the chambermaid on the 14th floor to feed the pigeon in his room — “a white pigeon with gray spots on its wings.”³⁶ He asked the secretary to repeat this urgent message to her. The chambermaid was instructed to feed the pigeon until Tesla’s return. In the room there was prepared a sufficient quantity of food.

Later, when he could not go to Bryant Park to feed his pets, he would hire a man to deliver telegrams and pay him to do it in his stead. White pigeons were especially dear to him. Because of all this his secretaries often thought that something was not in order with him.

After his recovery everything was forgotten — until the next day, when he telephoned to say that he could not come to the office because the pigeon was very sick. His secretary, Miss Skerit, recalls that he then stayed home for several days. Once the pigeon recovered, Tesla resumed his usual rhythm of life and work.

A year later one morning he came to work completely distraught with a small cloth bundle. He called his neighbor, Julius Cito, and begged him to allow him to bury the dead pigeon in his yard, so that he could watch over the grave. However, when a confused Cito returned home, the telephone rang. Tesla had changed his plan. “Please, bring it to the hotel,” he said, “I have thought of something else.” What he finally did with the pigeon, his associates never learned.

A medal instead of a salary

Three years after this event Tesla was completely without money, and his hotel bill had been unpaid for a long time. One afternoon people came to take his belongings, so that, according to a court order, they might settle at least part of the debt. Tesla nevertheless succeeded in postponing the enforcement for some time. When they left, he remembered that his two secretaries had not received their salary for more than two weeks. All that remained to him was a golden Edison medal. It was worth about a hundred dollars, he told the girls. He wished to cut it into two parts and give half to each.