The Secret of Tesla's Vitality

During the last decades of his life, Tesla was quite solitary. He lived in large hotels, on the highest floors. City noise did not bother him in his work. When he wanted to relax, he would go to the theater or cinema, but his favorite pastime was feeding pigeons in front of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. Onlookers watched with delight as he always, at the same time every evening, brought food to the pigeons, and how flocks of pigeons gathered around him. It often happened that he would take sick pigeons to the hotel, where he would cure them, which gave him particular satisfaction.

When he reached 60 years of age, the renowned electrical engineer Hugo Gernsback visited him. On that occasion, he described Tesla and his way of life with these words:

"The doors open and through them emerges a tall man, over six feet, lean and erect. He approaches the visitor slowly and with dignity. One immediately senses a personality of a higher order. Tesla comes closer and shakes my hand vigorously, which is astonishing when one considers that he is over 60 years old. A pleasant smile from deep, penetrating, and clear blue-grey eyes captivates the visitor, who immediately feels as if at home. Tesla leads me into his workroom, in which you cannot see a speck of dust. On the desk, documents and papers are in perfect order, which reveals a person neat and precise in every respect. He wears a long coat, but without any adornment. You cannot see a ring on him, nor a watch chain. His voice is high-pitched; he speaks quickly and convincingly, and this voice is captivating. During our conversation, I could not take my eyes off him. Only when he converses with others does one have the opportunity to observe his head, on which one immediately notices a high forehead with a bulge between the eyes, which represents a sure sign of extraordinary intelligence. You then notice a long and beautifully shaped nose, characteristic of a scientist. What does this man do, who has created so many works, to maintain his youthful vigor and surprise the world with new and new inventions, even more so as he enters old age? How is this youth of 60 years, who is a professor of mathematics, a great mechanical and electrical engineer, and the greatest inventor of all time, able to preserve his physical and spiritual freshness? Let me say immediately. Tesla is Serbian by birth. He comes from a resilient family, in which many of his ancestors lived over 100 years. Therefore, he hopes, if no unfortunate accident occurs, that he will live to a very old age. The main reason for his youthful vigor is moderation in food and drink. Tesla learned the great truth that people get sick due to excess in food or because they eat food that does not suit their needs. Because of this, they die early. He is cautious. When he determined that tobacco and black coffee were harmful to him, he immediately gave up both. He is a great selector when it comes to food: he eats little, but what he eats must be prepared in the best possible way. After each meal, he eats a large apple. He is an extraordinary connoisseur of food. Just as he is a great discoverer and inventor in science, so too is he, like a servant in his own home, an excellent cook, who invented many delicious dishes. His only fault is generosity. From his inventions, he earned millions of dollars, but he spent them as quickly as he earned them. Nikola Tesla is an idealist of the highest order, and for such people, money means nothing."¹)

The Nikola Tesla described by Gernsback was the same even when he turned seventy. At that time, his nephew, Sava Kosanović, visited him and on that occasion published a lengthy article about Nikola Tesla, from which we quote:

"As I approach with reservation, I observe him. An unusually elegant, distinguished gentleman, in a jacket with a top hat, with gloves and a slender cane in hand. Refined modesty and unassumingness. Without any jewelry. Straight, upright as a candle, slender, elastic, without a trace of age. His head is bony, as if sculpted. His nose is large, straight, with fine lines, like Schiller's. Thin, pressed lips, high forehead, arched above the eyes. And his eyes? Whoever sees them once will never forget them! A gentle, yet deep and penetrating gaze, that looks into your soul! Full of some mercy and melancholy. Nikola Tesla has the eyes of Christ.

From afar, he recognizes me. He approaches quickly, shakes hands firmly, with a strong, bony hand, accustomed to work. After the first words with which he addresses you in the most beautiful, purest Serbian language, shyness disappears. The great Nikola Tesla does not allow you to notice how small the one who speaks with him is. You feel warmth, and the longer you talk with Nikola Tesla, the more this feeling overwhelms you. It is far harder to unravel a conversation with some small dignitary than with Nikola Tesla...

"If there were no mirrors, I wouldn't know I'm getting old," Nikola Tesla tells me. And even a mirror, I would say, cannot show him his years. His face is etched with the furrows of bottomless thoughts, traces of the paths of a spirit without limits, but not of age. His hair is not yet completely gray. His eyes do not betray him... His hearing is keen and most sensitive...

Nikola Tesla attributes his physical preservation, apart from the inherited resistance of a healthy race – although he was extremely weak in childhood – to his way of life...

"Morality, above all, of the highest degree, uncompromising morality, which conquers and destroys age. Such was Nikola Tesla, a youth, a man, an old man. He suppressed all passions with incredible willpower, and there are no moments of weakness in his life...

"Every rudeness, baseness, selfishness felt by those he meets in life causes him pain. Nobility, magnanimity, beauty of feeling evokes a resonance of joy, satisfaction, warmth in his soul."²

Even in his eightieth year, Nikola Tesla had not changed, according to reports from journalists and many other visitors who used the celebration of his eightieth birthday to interview him and discuss with him the great achievements of his youth and the intentions and projects he would have in the coming years of his life. And even then, judging by these statements, Nikola Tesla was still in full vigor, without any sign of senile decay. He spoke not only of his great works, which were already well known in the widest circles, and acknowledged by experts who for a long time had shown an antagonistic attitude towards Nikola Tesla, but also of his plans which, to his listeners, seemed no longer like the dreams of a dreamer, but like the plans of an extraordinary genius, about whom future generations would be able to say the decisive word.

Perhaps Nikola Tesla would have lived to see those plans realized, had not a tragic accident befallen him in 1939, which prematurely cut short his life.¹

¹) Hugo Gernsback: Nikola Tesla, Electrical Experimenter. February 1919.
²) Sava N. Kosanović: With Nikola Tesla, 1927.