Nikola Tesla Books
with his parents and relatives who had been supporting him. Later, one of his acquaintances happened to find him in Maribor, where he was playing cards in a cafe. In Maribor he held a position with a salary of sixty forints per month.
After that, according to his autobiography, he went to Prague, but there are no documents of any kind indicating whether he enrolled at the University or at the Polytechnic. Accordingly, it is not known whether Tesla ever completed his studies and obtained the title of engineer. In any case, the name Nikola Tesla is worth more than all academic titles combined.
From Prague Tesla came to Budapest to seek help from his uncle Paja Mandic. Paja, as an Austrian officer, had been sent to Pest to attend a course for general staff officers, and he also married there the daughter of the great landowner Pera Lupa from Pomaz, near Pest, whose estate, they say, was so large that an express train traveled for half an hour across his property. The region around Szentendre, north of Pest, is known as the northernmost settlement of Serbs in Hungary. In Pest, Paja had a friend, Puskas, a former engineering-technical officer who, because of marriage, had to abandon his military career and who worked at the local Telegraph Office. Through Puskas' mediation, Tesla obtained a position at the same office, and later transferred to the Telephone Exchange. There he devised several inventions, among them a device for amplifying the voice, which helped him in his further career. He also engaged in installing telephones in private homes. During his stay in Pest, he suffered for a long time from nervous ailments. Great sensitivity and excessive work caused severe nervous shocks. After several months his health improved, and he again threw himself into the problem of the alternating-current motor. In his autobiography Tesla says about this:
