Profiles for Today: Nikola Tesla

This department doesn't know much about electrical engineering and it isn't going to stick its neck out by telling you just what Nikola Tesla invented. But his name is great in the electrical field, and we do know he is famous for the Tesla coil, which is pretty necessary and all that. More we hesitate to say.

We write about him because he's nearing 81. He still works, but he is beginning to admit he is not so spry as he used to be.

To an initiated few in New York City, where he lives quietly in a large hotel, he is well known. If you went to the front of the New York Public Library, where those two huge grinning lions squat, at about ten in the morning and 3:30 in the afternoon, you formerly could find Mr. Tesla: He'd be there with a huge bag of bird feed to feed the pigeons.

A flock of those birds make its stamping ground about the place and Mr. Tesla distributed five pounds of feed every morning and afternoon. He looked after all those who were ill and brought a small birdbath for those desiring to use it. (In the winter the fountains don't play and the pigeons have no Saturday night.)

For seventy-five years — three-quarters of a century famed Mr. Tesla has been interested in pigeons. He was a mere six in Austrian Croatia when the interest began. Now Mr. Tesla is not up to looking after his pigeons. The effort of toting ten pounds of feed daily is too much for him. The thought of the pigeons worried him, however, until he found a simple solution.

A messenger boy, hired by Mr. Tesla, now substitutes for him. Twice daily the boy looks after the pigeons Mr. Tesla once cared for, at the Public Library. And, because the lad is spry and the pigeons like him, Mr. Tesla has him feed two more famed flocks — one at St. Patrick's Cathedral and the other in Bryant Pa Park.