Sirs: Your account of Nikola Tesla on his 75th birthday [TIME, July 20] was one of the finest things I’ve ever seen in your magazine. It is all too seldom that Dr. Tesla gets adequate publicity. . . .
Your story interested me especially because I have had a slight acquaintance with him when I was employed in the Technology Department of the New York Public Library and have written a biographical sketch of him for Winston’s Encyclopedia.
From his manner of life one might think of him as a scientific saint. His care for the sick pigeons among the flocks roosting on the facade of the Public Library is possibly less well-known than it deserves to be. For this purpose he makes frequent trips up Fifth Avenue in all kinds of weather. All crannies about the portico are carefully peered into. Among some of the loiterers in the entranceway it is known that a helpless bird carried to Dr. Tesla will bring 75¢. It was Tesla who insisted that the water in the fountains should be kept running, in order to provide drinking water and bathing facilities for his feathery friends. . . .
