Nikola Tesla spent much time learning to exert self-control over his will. Once an addicted gambler, he worked hard to rid himself of that destructive desire. Not leaving a trace of desire apparently extended to his views on marriage and celibacy.
The late William H. Terbo (the son of Tesla’s sister’s son) once suggested that “womanizing” may have contributed in part to Tesla never completing his studies in Graz. Yet despite the opinion of a professional palmist, who opined that Tesla’s hand revealed “a flirtatious streak,” Tesla purposefully chose celibacy throughout his life. This did not stop the media of the time (even the technical journals) from urging him to get married—after all, “important people were expected to procreate for the good of the country.” As young science writer and close friend Kenneth Swezey later put it, “Tesla’s only marriage has been to his work and to the world…he believes…that the most enduring works of achievement have come from childless men…” Swezey described Tesla as “an absolute celibate.” Tesla himself claimed that to be a great inventor one must not allow himself to be distracted by love. When asked if he believed in marriage, he replied that:
“for an artist, yes; for a musician, yes; for a writer, yes; but for an inventor, no. The first three must gain inspiration from a woman’s influence and be led by their love to finer achievement, but an inventor has so intense a nature with so much in it of wild, passionate quality, that in giving himself to a woman he might love, he would give everything, and so take everything from his chosen field. I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
While rumors abounded over Tesla’s relationship with Katharine Johnson, wife of The Century editor (and Sierra Club co-founder) Robert Underwood Johnson, he never did marry, hence why his grandnephew William Terbo was so active in keeping Tesla’s name alive.
[Adapted from my book, Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity]
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.
You also follow my author page on Facebook.
David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
“Many a deluded inventor has spent years of his life in endeavoring to harness the tides.” – Nikola Tesla
In 1882, Nikola Tesla’s time in Budapest was coming to an end. His close relationship with the Puskas brothers led him to Charles Batchelor, who was Thomas Edison’s man in Paris. Batchelor was an Englishman and mechanic supreme, having learned his trade in the textile mills of Manchester. But Batchelor was more than just a good technician; he was a natural salesman and organizer. Nearly single-handedly he had overseen the spread of Edison’s direct current system across Europe, mostly as isolated power plants for individual factories, hotels, shipyards, and railroad stations. This highlighted the big problem with direct current—it was limited to low voltages and could not be transmitted more than a short distance. Direct current power plants had to be installed every mile or so to light up a city, a logistical problem that meant despite his sales skills Batchelor was only able to install three central power stations, one each in the cities of Milan, Rotterdam, and St. Petersburg.
According to the Library of Congress’s Abraham Lincoln and Civil War expert Michelle Krowl, and quoting from the book On These Walls: Inscriptions & Quotations in the Library of Congress
During his illustrious scientific career, Nikola Tesla developed many inventions that changed the world, including his unique design for a rotating magnetic field motor that enabled the use of alternating current on a commercial basis, wireless communication across vast distances, and even early “shadowgraphs,” precursors to X-rays. He also made forays into areas that, while he did not succeed in commercializing, set the stage for future developments, including wireless remote control of boats and other devices (robotics). Tesla did make some grandiose claims that did not come to fruition, the biggest of which included the wireless transmission of power through the Earth, plus a directed energy weapon. He also claimed to have communicated with intelligent beings from the planet Venus or Mars.
When he was not 
Tesla had begun working on bladeless turbines when he was consulting with the Westinghouse Company in Pittsburgh, but this project, like so many others, was put on hold while he toiled on his alternating current designs of high potential and high frequency. But in 1906 he gave himself a fiftieth birthday present by demonstrating his bladeless turbine in public. The basic design of the turbine relies on the principle of boundary layer flow, that is, where the movement of the liquid or gas passes over a series of smooth disks. Some of the liquid or gas adheres to the disks, which creates a vortex that spirals toward the center and spins the turbine. Tesla described it in an interview with the New York Herald in 1911:
Thank you! Your endorsement will go a long way in showing that Wardenclyffe is of great value to the public as a site of historic, scientific and cultural significance.
