Category: Book

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Wireless and Wardenclyffe – Nikola Tesla’s Coil

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Nikola TeslaWith his huge Tesla coil ready to go, Tesla was eager to try some large scale experiments way beyond the scope that he could have accomplished in his little New York City laboratory. This new lab in Colorado Springs was perfect. His long-time assistant, Kolman Czito, had made all the preparations. The primary device was a fence-like wall seventy-five feet in diameter, around which were wound “the turns of the giant primary coil.” Inside was a secondary coil “about ten feet in diameter,” also wound with wire. In the center of this coil stood a 200-foot tall mast stretching through the open roof into the crisp Colorado sky, a three-foot copper ball gracing its point.

As instructed by Tesla, Czito closed the switch for one second exactly as Tesla watched the coil from the open doorway. Electrical charges glistened around the secondary coil, then immediately were gone as the switch was opened again. Satisfied that all was working after another short test, Tesla told Czito to close the switch on his command and then hold it closed until Tesla told him to open it. Once Tesla got outside where he could watch the copper ball on the tip of the mast, the command was given:

“Czito, close the switch—now!

As with the brief contacts, the secondary coil became immersed in electrical fire. But now with the extended contact the electricity crackled and popped with energy. Soon the crackling turned to sharper snapping like rifle fire, then roars like cannons. “The thunder was terrifying and the thunder shook the building in a most threatening fashion,” Tesla would write in his notebook.

Outside, Tesla stood in awe of his own device. Streaks of lightning shot from the ball. First extending only about 10 feet, then 20 feet, then 30…40…80 feet. Finally, bright blue bolts of lightning more than 135 feet long were shooting out from the ball further than the length of the building itself. Tesla was even creating thunder.  It was the most spectacular sight, even to the someone who had been creating electrical charges nearly all his life. Tesla marveled at all that this accomplishment could do for bettering the lives of mankind throughout the world.

And then as suddenly as a bolt of lightning, nothing. The whole apparatus went dead. No lightning, not even the slightest spark. The entire lab was dark. There was no power in the lab at all.

Furious, Tesla called up the Colorado Springs powerhouse to complain about having his power cut off. Only then did he realize that not only his lab, but the entire city, had lost power. Tesla’s experiments had knocked the city’s generator offline, and worse, it was on fire.

Tesla had overstayed his welcome. Worse, the city later charged him for all of the “free electricity” that had been promised when he agreed to move to Colorado. Feeling both elated by his discoveries and dejected by how he was treated, Tesla made plans to return to New York.

And from New York – to Wardenclyffe.

[The above is an adaptation modified for the purposes of this short space. Much more will be in my forthcoming book: Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star.]

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Tesla Backers Raise Cash to Buy Wardenclyffe and Make it Into a Museum

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Nikola Tesla WardenclyffeA most amazing thing has happened in the past week or so. Matthew Inman, who is the creator and creative genius behind a web cartoon called “The Oatmeal,” has hooked up with a nonprofit group called the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, to raise funds to buy the Wardenclyffe property and make it into a Nikola Tesla Museum. In just a few short days, and some really funny begging for cash, the combined efforts pulled in pledges exceeding the $850,000 goal.

As the Oatmeal puts in on facebook:

“Someone jumped in at the last minute and donated $33,333. WE JUST HIT OUR GOAL: $873,169! With the matching grant from NY state, this puts us at $1.7 million raised in 6 days!”

[For those who don’t know, Tesla had an obsession with numbers divisible by three, hence the normally odd $33,333 amount]

Who would have expected that so many people would rush to remember a largely forgotten electrical scientist who died in poverty nearly 70 years ago? But they do. In an article published on the CNN website, Inman explains it this way:

“Tesla is an unsung hero, and there are very few monuments to him in the United States. I feel like that’s something we need to fix,” Inman said. “I made a comic about Tesla on my site. It got the most ‘likes’ on Facebook that I’ve ever seen in my career. Combine (the fact) that I’ve got this army of Tesla fans and the experience and success with my other fund-raiser, I felt like I was the ideal person to step in to control.”

The site is what is left of Wardenclyffe, the “World Wireless” facility built by Nikola Tesla over 100 years ago. He had planned on making it the focal point of wireless communication (radio) and electrical power. Besides the 94-foot by 94-foot laboratory building it featured a “187 feet high tower, having a spherical terminal about 68 feet in diameter.” Unfortunately, funding dried up and it fell into disuse. In 1917 the tower was demolished for scrap and Nikola Tesla became more and more reclusive before his eventual death in 1943.

For nearly 50 years the site would house a film processing company, after which it became a Superfund site, but has since changed hands several times and “has now been cleaned up and is no longer harmful.”

While the money has been raised to buy the property there is still some uncertainty as to whether the seller will agree to the sale. And if the Tesla Science Center is successful in acquiring the property it would still need to raise additional money to clean up and restore it for use as a museum. Jane Alcorn, President of the group, “expects it will be a couple of years before the museum opens, while additional funding and exhibits are arranged.”

Those wanting to donate further to the effort can go the Indiegogo site. Inman’s The Oatmeal can be found on Facebook and his website.

More information on The Tesla Science Center can be found here.

More information on Nikola Tesla: Scientific Rock Star can be found here.

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Tesla, Edison, Westinghouse, and the Electric Chair

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Nikola TeslaDuring the “War of the Electric Currents,” the battle was waged over whether Direct Current (DC) would hold off Alternating Current (AC) for the future of America’s electricity. Nikola Tesla invented the system and components that made it possible to transmit alternating current to virtually unlimited distances, a limitation that had plagued direct current. Tesla teamed up with George Westinghouse, which shot them to the forefront of the race to get lucrative contracts lighting the Chicago World’s Fair and getting hydroelectric power from Niagara Falls.

Edison’s reaction to the teamwork of Westinghouse and Tesla was immediate. He had pamphlets printed and mailed to reporters and lighting utilities that accused Westinghouse and other Edison competitors of being in violation of his patents. Edison also started pushing the idea of the dangers of alternating current at high voltages versus the safety of his low voltage direct current.

The technical battle was mostly the dry stuff of scientists and argued deep inside the technical journals and scientific meetings.  Most of this was not visible, and certainly not understandable, to the general public.  But one thing that was understandable was the occasional death by electrocution.  And with cities like New York strung tight with hundreds of electrical wires from a dozen electric light utilities, the public feared the occasional might become more frequent.

Edison got some help in this regard from a few grizzly electrocutions that occurred over a short period of time. One such occasion was the unfortunate circumstance of an electrical repairman named John Feeks, who fell into a spider web of charged wires and was slowly incinerated as the horrified pedestrians on the street below gazed up at the gruesome scene. Needless to say this bolstered Edison’s case that alternating current current was too dangerous to be used while direct current – on which his own systems were based – was perfectly safe.

But a few accidents weren’t going to be enough to convince the public that alternating current should be banned from all use. It would take a lot more death to do that.

Ever the opportunist, Edison enlisted the help of Harold Pitney Brown, an electrician with a decade of experience and a bit of a mean streak.  Brown set up shop in Edison’s laboratory and proceeded to electrocute stray dogs – which he paid neighborhood kids to acquire – with alternating current electricity. Edison called these animal executions getting “Westinghoused” because of the use of the alternating current system that his main competitor, using Tesla’s technology, was developing. Later the term “Westinghoused” would be applied to the first execution by electrical current. On August 6, 1890, New York State accomplished the first execution using the new alternating current electric chair. William Kemmler had murdered his philandering wife with an axe and then calmly asked his son to contact the local police. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. Edison had convinced the board that Kemmler’s death would be rapid and painless because of the incredibly high voltages by the dangerous alternating current.

When the day came, however, the execution did not go smoothly. No, it did not go smoothly at all.

[The above is an adaptation modified for the purposes of this short space. Much more (and the riveting execution) will be in my book: Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity.]

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Nikola Tesla Invents the 20th Century

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Nikola TeslaFor months Tesla fought his own demons, both psychological and physiological.  Convulsions periodically wracked his body and mental fatigue drained him of the will to live.  On top of his ailments Tesla was also besieged with his continued failure to solve the problem of the commutatorless AC motor – a problem that had first become his obsession in Prof. Poeschl’s lecture hall back in Graz.  Likely the pursuit of this solution was what kept him going.

Part of his therapy, if you will, was to take daily walks, something that his friend Anton Szigeti had insisted upon.  It was during one of these walks that Tesla was to make the discovery that would change his life and eventually put the world on the path to modern electricity.  In 1882, Budapest was less than a decade past the official merging of the twin capital cities of Buda and Pest, along with Obuda (ancient Buda).  Construction of the now imposing parliament building that dominates the Pest side of the Danube River wouldn’t be started for another three years, while high on the hill of the opposite bank the centuries-old Buda Castle was undergoing yet another remodeling as the city grew to accommodate its new role in the autonomous Hungarian government.  Electric lighting – by direct current – had been installed in the city center in 1878.

It was here that Tesla walked one evening with Szigeti as the sun slowly settled down over the horizon.  The glistening sunset reminded Tesla of one of the many poems that he had memorized – from the tragic play Faust by the German writer and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.  Tesla fell into a near trance as he recited aloud Goethe’s famous lines in its original German*:

“Sie ruckt und weicht, der Tag ist uberlebt,
Dort eilt sie hin und fordert neues Leben.
Oh, dass kein Flugel mich vom Boden hebt
Ihr nach und immer nach zu streben!

Ein schoner Traum indessen sie entweicht,
Ach, zu des Geistes Flugeln wird so leicht
Kein korperlicher Flugel sich gesellen!”

[The glow retreats, done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!

A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.]

Tesla suddenly stopped.  Then, as he relates in his autobiography:

“As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.  I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams…The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him: ‘See my motor here; watch me reverse it.’ I cannot begin to describe my emotions.  Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved.  A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.”

The AC motor was invented, if only in his magnificently detailed mind’s eye.  It would be another six years before Tesla, by then working in New York City, would be cajoled by Thomas Commerford Martin into presenting the design in an address to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. For now the invention that would change the world remained in Tesla’s head, in such intense detail that for the next several years he modified and improved on the device entirely through visualization.  As Tesla later describes in My Inventions:

“For a while I gave myself up entirely to the intense enjoyment of picturing machines and devising new forms.  It was a mental state of happiness about as complete as I have ever known in life.  Ideas came in an uninterrupted stream and the only difficulty I had was to hold them fast.  The pieces of apparatus I conceived were to me absolutely real and tangible in every detail, even to the minute marks and signs of wear.  I delighted in imagining the motors constantly running, for in this way they presented to mind’s eye a more fascinating sight.  When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven-league boots.  In less than two months I evolved virtually all the types of motors and modifications of the system which are now identified with my name.”

Still, it would be years later before his new invention would be actually put into use.

[Adapted from my book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity. For more, check out the links below]

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David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His next book, Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, is scheduled for release in summer 2017.

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Tesla Goes to the Movies

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Nikola TeslaFor a guy that died penniless in 1943, Nikola Tesla has sure become a modern day pop figure. Besides the usual documentaries, Tesla has made appearances in several mainstream movies.

For example, Tesla is a key character in the movie “The Prestige,” starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson and Michael Caine.  In keeping with his rock star status, Nikola Tesla is played by none other than iconic rock star David Bowie.  The Prestige centers on the competing lives of two turn of the 20th Century magicians, each vying for fame and fortune in the emerging yet surprisingly cutthroat world of magic.  Each tries to outdo the other in developing new tricks and when one rival is seemingly able to be in two places at once, the other seeks out the mysterious Nikola Tesla, then working in his remote Colorado Springs laboratory.  At first, the “magic” of Tesla’s electronic machine seems not to be found, or was it?  Soon the secret is revealed to the magician and Tesla alike, but not to the filmgoing audience.  Now two magicians can seemingly be in two places at once, and the rivalry expands through deaths of loved ones – and the trial of one magician for apparently murdering the other.  But as with all magic and deceitful twists and turns, not is all what it seems.  And Tesla’s magic seems the most amazing of all, a magic that neither magician could replicate on his own.

Another movie due out in 2013 is “Fragments from Olympus: The Vision of Nikola Tesla.” In it, “the enigmatic life of electrical genius Nikola Tesla unravels through a posthumous F.B.I. investigation into his particle beam research, including a new super weapon called the “death ray”.” [More on the conspiracy theories surrounding Tesla in my book.]

Even more intriguing is the recent announcement by the Facebook site “Nikola Tesla,” which reported that “at fall begins the filming of a movie about the great Serbian scientist, Nikola Tesla.” The film is expected to be filmed, at least in part, in Chicago, home of the famous Columbian Exhibition that featured Tesla’s massive generators as commercialized by George Westinghouse. Slated to play Telsa is none other than Christian Bale of “Batman” fame – and to the Prestige movie noted above.

Bale not “Hollywood” enough for you. The same Tesla site on Facebook has revealed that Nicholas Cage (!) will play Thomas Edison, one-time employer and then arch-rival of Nikola Tesla. Also being considered for roles are Croatian actor Rade Serbedzija, and Hollywood luminaries Martin Sheen, Megan Fox and Jessica Alba.

The tentative title is “Tesla, Ruler of the World,” and reportedly “will revolve around a modern-day technological crisis that somehow ties back to Tesla’s life.”  According to the Tesla Facebook page:

The first stage recorders are going to take place in Serbia, and then the team is going to move to Chicago. For the purposes of the film, our country will build the whole “New York” scenery as well as the scenery of the other cities which are important in the biography of Nikola Tesla. A prominent weekly magazine “Hollywood Reporter” also wrote about this film ten days ago. They state that this is a Serbian-American cooperation, that the film will include an international actors team, and that the story about Tesla will reach the audience through a partnership with a major film studio. Renowned “Universal Studios” will partially finance the filming, but will also be responsible for promoting the movie and its distribution in the world. As the “Hollywood Reporter” said even before the shooting, this movie is seen as a “first pick” of prestigious awards.”

If all goes well the movie will come out roughly around the time of my book “Nikola Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity,” i.e., June 20, 2013.

Follow developments here or on my Facebook page.

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Happy Birthday, Nikola Tesla – A Scientific Rock Star is Born

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Happy birthday Nikola TeslaToday is Nikola Tesla’s birthday.

Right out of central casting the storm arrived as Djouka Tesla went into labor.  Praying for an easy delivery of her fourth child, the roar of the thunder drowned out her muffled, yet experienced, cries of pain.  At precisely midnight the cries transferred from Djouka’s lips to those of the newly born Nikola.  In an omen that couldn’t have been scripted more eloquently, a lightning bolt crackled from the sky and lit up the small house just as Nikola entered this world.

Startled, the midwife turned to the young mother and said “Your new son is a child of the storm.”

“No,” responded Djuka, “He is a child of the light.”

And so it seems that from the beginning Nikola Tesla was destined to electrify the world with his discoveries.

That warm July 9th into 10th of 1856 took place in Smiljan, a small village located in what was then the Austrian Empire but now is part of present day Croatia. Being born exactly at midnight led to some uncertainty as to what date his birthday should be celebrated, but in practice Tesla’s birthdays were rarely celebrated much at all, at least until his later years when he was world famous.  Then his birthdays (officially July 10th) became celebrated affairs complete with press coverage.  But that was much later.  For now he was just the son of a Serbian Orthodox priest in a tiny country hamlet.

In contrast, his 75th birthday party was something of a marvel for Tesla, who by that time had become largely secluded in his New York hotel room. A young science fiction writer whom he had befriended, Kenneth Swezey, arranged to have famous engineers and scientists from all over the world send something to Tesla. Letters and tributes flooded in, including those from several Nobel laureates. Even a note from Albert Einstein, who congratulated Tesla on his contributions to the field of high-frequency currents. Time magazine put Nikola Tesla on the cover.

Science editor and publisher Hugo Gernsback nearly gushed his praise, writing:

“If you mean the man who really invented, in other words, originated and discovered – not merely improved what had already been invented by others – then without a shade of doubt Nikola Tesla is the world’s greatest inventor, not only in the present but in all history…His basic as well as revolutionary discoveries, for sheer audacity, have no equal in the annals of the intellectual world.”

All was good for Tesla. Unfortunately, over the remaining dozen years of his life he would become largely forgotten as others – notably Edison, Westinghouse and Marconi – got tactic credit for Tesla’s actual contributions. Tesla died in 1943 just a few months before the Supreme Court upheld his original patent and gave Tesla credit for invention of the radio (for which Marconi had received a Nobel Prize in 1909 after having “borrowed” Tesla’s ideas).

More on Tesla from the Tesla Society of USA and Canada.

In case you missed it, check out the two Tesla statues at Niagara Falls.

Nikola Tesla – The Book

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

 

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Two Views of Nikola Tesla at Niagara Falls

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Nikola Tesla and his alternating current system enabled the harnessing of hydroelectric power at Niagara Falls, the first great electrical power generation and transmission system in the country. To honor his contributions there are now two statues of Tesla at Niagara.

The first one was installed on Goat Island on the American side in the 1970s. The bronze statue is a copy of one sitting at the University of Belgrade in Belgrade, Serbia. It shows him sitting in a chair studying blueprints.

Nikola Tesla Niagara Falls American side

The second was installed in 2006 in Queen Victorian Park overlooking the Horseshoe Falls on the Canadian side. Here he is standing, a dashing young man in a long formal coat, holding an elegant cane, and a fancy top hat.

Nikola Tesla Canadian side

Which statue do you like best?

I’ll have more on Tesla’s contributions to the generation of electricity at Niagara in the book.

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Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of Tesla: Wizard of Electricity are Done!

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Nikola TeslaTonight I finished Chapter 3 of the Nikola Tesla book. Chapters 1 and 2 were finished in previous weeks.  I also have parts of other Chapters finished. I’m on schedule to have the first draft of the book done by the end of July/first week of August.  Which is good, because I have a September 1st deadline to deliver the book to my editor at Sterling Publishing.

As before, “Done,” of course, doesn’t actually mean done.  I will still need to do significant editing, pull out sidebar quotes (it will be a very visually appealing book), and obtain the photos to be used.  But the substance for at least three chapters is complete.

Given Tesla’s obsession with numbers divisible by three, having three chapters done would tickle his fancy.

Okay, back to work. Only 6 more chapters to finish. 🙂

See other Tesla posts here.

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Nikola Tesla the Germaphobe

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Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla was more than a little germaphobic. Before eating he would use one of his required 18 napkins* to gently wipe the germs off of each piece of silverware, china and glassware. He commonly wore soft leather gloves and refused to shake hands with anyone. On the rare occasions that he was unable to avoid a handshake he would quickly excuse himself and rush off to the washroom to cleanse the offending germs off his hand.

How did he get this way?

Prone to idiosyncratic behavior, Tesla’s fear of germs began after he observed through a microscope the many microscopic creatures found in normal drinking water. About the experience Tesla would later write to Robert Underwood Johnson:

“If you would watch only for a few minutes the horrible creatures, hairy and ugly beyond anything you can conceive, tearing each other up with the juices diffusing throughout the water – you would never again drink a drop of unboiled or unsterilized water.”

After reading that, I’m not so sure I can look at a glass of water the same way again.

* Tesla was also obsessed with doing everything in multiples of three, hence the 18 napkins, 27 laps around the pool, 3 times around the block, etc., etc., etc.

The passage above is a modified excerpt from Chapter 3: The Odd Mr. Tesla in my book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity. The book is now into its 8th printing with translations around the world.

See other Tesla posts here.

David J. Kent is an avid science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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Nikola Tesla and the White Pigeon

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Nikola TeslaNikola Tesla was a wonderfully eccentric man when he wasn’t busy discovering new inventions.  One of his many oddities was his fascination – okay, let’s call it an obsession – with pigeons.

Always dressed impeccably, Tesla nonetheless could be occasionally found standing in Bryant Park, arms outstretched, bird feed at his feet, and covered in pigeons.  He was a sight to behold, and passersby chuckled at the idea of the great scientist enamored of what most would agree are not the cleanest or most appealing of birds (some would go so far as to call them “rats with wings”). But here he was…mingling with the feisty foul just steps from his scientific laboratory.

On other occasions Tesla would wander the streets of New York City, head down, gazing intently, on the alert for the injured pigeon who mistook the windowed glass of the slowly rising skyscrapers of New York for a passageway (or a possible mate, one might imagine).  Rushing to any bird he observed, Tesla gently lifted his new-found charge and brought it back to his hotel room to nurse it back to health.

Such an odd paradox was this man.  Desperately germophobic to the point of avoiding human contact, here he is covered in bird feathers…and worse. And when he took ill and couldn’t tend to his rounds he would order his assistants to go out looking in his stead.  Giving them careful instructions on where to look and how to handle the birds, they were to bring them back and care for them if Tesla could not.

One particular white pigeon became a personal friend when Tesla was most in need of friendship.  One day the pigeon showed up on his windowsill looking, to Tesla at least, forlorn.  Tesla knew the pigeon had come to tell him it was dying.

In the end, both the pigeon and Tesla died alone.

For an interesting rendition of “Tesla’s Pigeon” performed by Jessica Lennick and Daniel Paul Lawson, check out this YouTube clip.

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, now available. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

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