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NIKOLA TESLA: ANECDOTES
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A YOUNG INVENTOR
``The child began when only a few years of age to make original
inventions. When he was five, he built a small waterwheel quite unlike
those he had seen in the countryside. It was smooth, without paddles,
yet it spun evenly in the current. Years later he was to recall this
fact when designing his unique bladeless turbine.
But some of his other experiments were less successful. Once he
perched on the roof of the barn, clutching the family umbrella and
hyperventilating on the fresh mountain breeze until his body felt
light and the dizziness in his head convinced him he could fly.
Plunging to earth, he lay unconcious and was carried off to bed by his
mother.
His sixteen-bug-power motor was, likewise, not an unqualified success.
This was a light contrivance made of splinters forming a windmill,
with a spindle and pulley attached to live June bugs. When the glued
insects beat their wings, as they did desperately, the bug-power
engine prepared to take off. This line of research was forever
abandoned however when a young friend dropped by who fancied the taste
of June bugs. Noticing a jarful standing near, he began cramming them
into his mouth. The youthful inventor threw up.''
Adopted from "Tesla: Man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981.
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SERBIAN POETRY
``Another anecdote about the inventor is told by the Reverend
Stijacic. On his first trip to America as a young writer for the
Serbian Federation, Stijacic had been surprised to find in the Chicago
Public Library, a book of poems, the author of which was the popular
Serbian poet, Zmaj-Jovan. The translator was Nikola Tesla. Later, when
Stijacic was taken by Dr. Rado to meet the inventor in his offices on
the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, he said, "Mr. Tesla, I
did not know that you were interested in poetry."
A look of wry amusement shone in the inventor's eyes. "There are many
of us Serbs who sing," he said, "but there is nobody to listen to
us."''
Adopted from "Tesla: man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981.
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AUNTS
``I had two old aunts with wrinkled faces, one of them having two
teeth protruding like the tusks of an elephant which she buried in my
cheek every time she kissed me. Nothing would scare me more than the
prospect of being hugged by these as affectionate as unattractive
relatives. It happened that while being carried in my mother's arms
they asked me who was the prettier of the two. After examining their
faces intently, I answered thoughtfully, pointing to one of them,
"This here is not as ugly as the other."''
Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart
Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter
magazine in 1919.
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bogdan@neuronet.pitt.edu