Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla (3 page)

Now, I must tell you of a strange experience which bore fruit in my later life. We had a cold [snap] drier than ever observed before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail. [As I stroked] Mačak’s back, [it became] a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks. My father remarked, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm. My mother seemed alarmed. Stop playing with the cat, she said, he might start a fire. I was thinking abstractly. Is nature a cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded.

I cannot exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.

N
IKOLA
T
ESLA
¹

N
ikola Tesla descended from a well established frontier
zadruga
whose original family name had been Draganic.
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By the mid-1700s the clan had migrated to Croatia, and the Tesla name arose. It was “a trade name like Smith…or Carpenter,” which described a woodworking ax that had a “broad cutting blade at right angles to the handle.”
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Supposedly, the Teslas gained the name because their teeth resembled this instrument.

The inventor’s grandfather, also named Nikola Tesla, was born about 1789 and became a sergeant in Napoleon’s Illyrian army during the years 1809-13. Like other Serbs living in Croatia, Nikola Tesla, the elder, was honored by fighting for an emperor who sought to unify the Balkan states and overthrow the oppressive regime of the Austro-Hungarians. He “came from a region known as the military frontier which stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the plains of the Danube including…the province of Lika
[where the inventor was born]. This so-called ‘corpus separatum’ in the Hapsburg monarchy had its own military administration different from the rest of the country, and therefore [they were] not subjects of the feudal lords.”
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Mostly Serbs, these people were warriors whose responsibility was to protect the territory from the Turks. And in return, unlike the Croats, Serbs were able to own their own land.

Shortly after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Nikola Tesla married Ana Kalinic, the daughter of a prominent officer. After the collapse of Illyria, the grandfather moved to Gospić, where he and his wife could raise a family in a civilized environment.
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On February 3, 1819, Milutin Tesla, the inventor’s father, was born. One of five children, Milutin was educated in a German elementary school, the only one available in Gospić. Like his brother Josip, Milutin tried to follow in his father’s footsteps. In his late teens he enrolled in an Austro-Hungarian military academy but rebelled against the trivialities of regimented life. He was hypersensitive and dropped out after an officer criticized him for not keeping his brass buttons polished.
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Whereas Josip became an officer and later a professor of mathematics, first in Gospić and then at a military academy in Austria,
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Milutin became politically active, wrote poetry, and entered the priesthood. Influenced by the philosopher Vuk Karadjich, Milutin promulgated the “Yugoslav idea” in editorials published in the local newspapers under the nom de plume Srbin Pravicich, “Man of Justice.” Tesla wrote that his father’s “style of writing was much admired…pen[ning] sentences…full of wit and satire.” He called for social equality among peoples, the need for compulsory education for children, and the creation of Serbian schools in Croatia.
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Through these articles, Milutin attracted the attention of the intellectual elite. In 1847 he married Djouka Mandić, a daughter from one of the more prominent Serbian families.
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Djouka’s maternal grandfather was Toma Budisavljevic (1777-1840), a regal, white-bearded priest who was decorated with the French Medal of Honor by Napoleon himself in 1811 for providing leadership during the French occupation of Croatia. Soka Budisavljevic, one of Toma’s seven children, followed the family tradition by marrying a Serbian minister, Nikola Mandić, who himself came from a distinguished clerical and military family. Their daughter, Djouka, who was born in 1821, was Tesla’s mother.
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Eldest daughter of eight children, Djouka’s duties increased rapidly, for her mother was stricken with failing eyesight and eventually became blind.

“My mother…was a truly great woman of rare skill and courage,” Tesla wrote. Probably due to the magnitude of her responsibilities, which
included, at age sixteen, preparing for burial the bodies of an entire family stricken with cholera, Djouka never learned to read. Instead, she memorized the great epic Serbian poems and also long passages of the Bible.
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Tesla could trace his lineage to a segment of the “educated aristocracy” of the Serbian community. On both sides of the family and for generations there could be found clerical and military leaders, many of whom achieved multiple doctorates. One of Djouka’s brothers, Pajo Mandić, was a field marshal in the imperial Austro-Hungarian army. Another Mandić ran an Austrian military academy.
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Petar Mandić, a third brother and later favorite uncle of Nikola’s, met with tragedy as a young man when his wife passed away. In 1850, Petar entered the Gomirje Monastery, where he rose in the clerical hierarchy to become the regional bishop of Bosnia.
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In 1848, through the help of the Mandić name, Milutin Tesla obtained a parish at Senj,
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a northern coastal fortress located just seventy-five miles from the Italian port of Trieste. From the stone church, situated high on austere cliffs, Milutin and his new bride could overlook the blue-green Adriatic Sea and the mountainous islands of Krk, Cres, and Rab.

For eight years the Teslas lived in Senj, where they sired their first three children: Dane (pronounced Dah-nay), born in 1849, the first son, and two daughters, Angelina, born the following year, who would later become the grandmother to the current honorary head of the Tesla Memorial Society, William Terbo, and Milka, who followed two years later. As with her other two sisters and like her mother, Milka would eventually marry a Serbian Orthodox priest.

Djouka was proud of her son, Dane, who used to sit with the fishermen on the shore and bring back stories of great adventure. Like his younger brother, who was yet to be born, Dane was endowed with extraordinary powers of eidetic imagery.
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Due to a profound sermon on the subject of “labor,” as a result of which Milutin was awarded a special red sash by the archbishop, the minister was promoted to a congregation of forty homes in the pastoral farming village of Smiljan,
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situated only six miles from Gospić. Milutin was returning home, where his father still lived. In 1855, the young minister, his pregnant wife, and his three children packed their oxcart and made the fifty-mile journey over the Velebit ridge through the Lika valley to their new dwelling.

In 1856, Nikola Tesla was born. He was followed three years later by Marica, mother-to-be of Sava Kasonovic, the first Yugoslavian ambassador to the United States, and the man most responsible for creating the Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

Smiljan was an ideal setting for the young boys to grow up in. Nikola, raised in large measure by his two older sisters, appears to have led an
Arcadian childhood, annoying the servants, playing with the local birds and animals on the farm, and learning inventions from his older brother and mother.

Down to the local creek the boys would go to swim or catch frogs in the spring or summer and to build dams in the autumn and early winter in vain attempts to stop the seasonal flooding of the land.
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One of their favorite recreations was a smooth waterwheel, a device which contained inherent concepts that would later form the basis of Tesla’s innovative bladeless steam turbines.

Other inventions included a cornstalk popgun, which contained principles that Tesla later adapted when he fashioned particle-beam weapons, a special fishing hook for catching frogs, snares for capturing birds, and a parasol used in an unsuccessful attempt to glide off the roof of the barn. Young Niko must have taken quite a leap, because his fall laid him up for six weeks.
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Perhaps the boy’s most ingenious creation was a propeller driven by sixteen May bugs glued or sewn four abreast onto the wooden blades. “These creatures were remarkably efficient, for once they were started they had no sense to stop and continued whirling for hours and hours…All went well until a strange boy came to the place. He was the son of a retired officer in the Austrian Army. That urchin ate May-bugs alive and enjoyed them as tho [
sic
] they were the finest blue-point oysters. That disgusting sight terminated my endeavors in this promising field and I have never since been able to touch a May-bug or any other insect for that matter.”
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Some of the inventor’s earliest memories, when he was three, were recalled when he was an octogenarian. Many years before pigeons, Tesla showered his affections on the family cat, Mačak, “the fountain of my enjoyment…I wish that I could give you an adequate idea of the depth of affection which existed between me and him.”

After dinner, Niko and his cat would rush out of the house and frolic by the church. Mačak would “grab me by the trousers. He tried hard to make me believe he would bite, but the instant his needle sharp incisors penetrated the clothing, the pressure ceased and their contact with my skin was as gentle and tender as that of a butterfly alighting on a petal.”

Tesla liked best to wallow in the grass with Mačak. “We [would] just roll…and roll…in a delirium of delight.”

In this peaceful setting, young Niko was introduced to the barnyard animals. “I would…take one or the other under my arm and hug and pet it,” he wrote, “[especially] the grand resplendent cock who liked me.”
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It was also at this time that the boy began to study flight, a topic of interest that caused him in later life to invent a variety of novel flying machines. His relationship with birds, however, was filled with contradictions.

My childhood…would have passed blissfully if I did not have a powerful enemy,…our gander, a monstrous ugly brute, with a neck of an ostrich, mouth of crocodile and a pair of cunning eyes radiating intelligence and understanding like the human…

One summer day my mother had given me a bath and put me out for a sun warming in Adam’s attire. When she stepped in the house, the gander espied me and charged. The brute knew where it would hurt most and seized me by the nape almost pulling out the remnant of my umbilical cord. My mother, who came in time to prevent further injury, said to me: “You must know that you cannot make peace with a gander or a cock whom you have taunted. They will fight you as long as they live.”
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Tesla had run-ins with other animals as well, such as a local wolf, who fortunately turned and ran from him; the family cow, which Tesla rode and one time fell off of; and the giant ravens, whom he claimed to have snared with his bare hands by hiding under the bushes and leaping out at them, as a cat would.

Tesla also liked to tell the story of his two homely aunts, who often visited his home. One, an Aunt Veva, “had two protruding teeth like the tusks of an elephant. She loved me passionately and buried them deep in my cheek in kissing me. I cried out from pain but she thought it was from pleasure and dug them in still deeper. Nevertheless,” Tesla recalled, “I preferred her to the other…[as] she used to glue her lips to mine and suck and suck until by frantic efforts I managed to free myself gasping for breath.”

One day when they came over and Tesla was still small enough to be held in the arms of his mother, “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.’”
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Tesla inherited his sense of humor from his father, who, for instance, once cautioned a cross-eyed employee who was chopping wood near the minister and his son, “For God’s sake…do not strike at what you are looking at but what you expect to hit.”

Father Tesla was known to talk to himself and even carry on conversations with different tones in his voice, a trait also noted in the inventor, especially in his later years.
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Milutin also trained his sons in exercises in developing memory and their intuitive faculties. Able to recite at length works in several languages, he often remarked playfully that if some of the classics were lost he could restore them. “My father…spoke fluently a great many languages and also ranked high as a mathematician. He was an omnivorous reader and possessed a large library from which it
was my privilege to gather a great deal of information during my years of life spent at home.”
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Texts from this library included works in German by Goethe and Schiller, encyclopedic works in French by D’Alembert, and other classics, probably in English, from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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The inventor’s colorful autobiography remains the primary source of information on his childhood. Although Dane and his parents appear prominently in the work, Tesla’s sisters are barely mentioned. Certainly he loved the girls—he exchanged letters with them regularly for the duration of his life—but they seemed not to have overtly influenced his upbringing. It was his mother whose untiring work habits and proclivity toward invention influenced the inventor-to-be.

Whereas Milutin ran the parish and published his articles, Djouka directed the servants and ran the farm. She had the responsibility of growing the crops, sewing all the clothes, and designing needlework, a practice that made her famous in the region. Tesla also ascribes his proclivity to invention to his mother; she conceived of many household appliances, including churns, looms, and “all kinds of [kitchen] tools. [My mother] descended from a long line of inventors.” Starting before dawn, she did not quit work until eleven o’clock at night.
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