One of the world’s greatest minds, Nikola Tesla, whose inventions laid the foundation and direction for the scientific and technical development of humanity in the 20th century, died alone on Christmas 1943 in New York.
He lived in this city for six decades, and a few days after his death, 2,000 people attended a commemoration at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
One of the two most influential Tesla biographers in the world, Marc Seifer, told Tanjug that Tesla’s death was sad news for First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as well – the wife of the 32nd president, Franklin Roosevelt, who headed the USA for the longest time in history – from 1933 until his death in 1945.
The cathedral dedicated to Saint John, located on the east side of Manhattan about seventy blocks from the Hotel “New Yorker,” where Tesla passed away, is one of the largest and most impressive church buildings in the world, although its construction began at the end of the 19th century and was never finished.
It is also famous for its imposing Gothic interior and large stained-glass windows, as well as for its biblical garden with plants mentioned in the Bible and the magnificent Peace Fountain.
”After Tesla (1856-1943) died, about 2,000 people attended his commemoration and funeral. There were many Nobel Prize winners who were either publishing articles about Tesla at the time or attended his funeral,” said Seifer, who turned decades of studying Tesla’s life into a doctoral dissertation and numerous books, including “Wizard,” which was also published in Serbia.
“There was also a wonderful letter from Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of the President of the USA,” Seifer stated.
According to him, the inventor of AM and FM radio, Edwin Armstrong, was one of those who carried Tesla’s coffin at the funeral, which was attended by many famous people.
There, as he says, was also David Sarnoff, the head of NBC television.
The Mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, the Tesla biographer added, read a beautiful funeral oration on the radio written by Louis Adamic – a Slovenian writer, essayist, and translator.
“Louis Adamic was an admirer of Tesla – Tesla was a huge hero to him. It is a wonderful oration and can be listened to in its entirety on the internet,” said Seifer.
He says that although it was a sad time, the oration read by the Mayor of New York made that moment truly magnificent in history.
”Here in New York, last Wednesday, a man died in his hotel room. His name was Nikola Tesla. He died poor, but he was one of the most successful people who ever lived. His achievements are enormous, and as time passes, they will become even greater,” La Guardia read on the radio.
He added that Tesla could have become the richest man in America but simply did not want to.
“He wanted success, which he intended for others. He loved people, he was a genius, a poet of science. Money did not interest him, and everything he did, he did in accordance with his natural gift, which was bestowed upon him in his native land by his mother,” read Adamic’s words one of the best mayors in US history, after whom the New York airport LaGuardia is named.
Seifer emphasizes that even then it was evident that there were still a large number of people who understood how important Tesla was.
This year as well, on the first Saturday after Christmas, the international conference “In the Spirit of Tesla” will be held at the Hotel “New Yorker,” organized by the Tesla Science Foundation from Philadelphia.
Tesla died in the Hotel “New Yorker,” which was his home for the last 10 years of his life. According to Marc Seifer, in the years toward the end of his life, Tesla also spoke with the highest American and British officials.
”Although many at that time saw him as an old man feeding pigeons, it is important to know that in the last years of his life, Tesla spoke with Churchill’s and Roosevelt’s most powerful people about ending the Second World War,” Seifer told Tanjug.
He says that, by studying Tesla, he is constantly learning something new.
“I have been studying Tesla for 50 years and I am still discovering new things, because he is a man of the future,” said Seifer, who is just one of a dozen Tanjug interlocutors recorded in the USA in the series ”Tesla Man of the Future” on the occasion of the 170th anniversary.
The commemoration, which the New York Times also wrote about, was held on January 10 and was broadcast by Radio New York.
Tesla’s friends also included the writer Mark Twain and the French actress Sarah Bernhardt.
He began his career in 1878 in Maribor as an assistant engineer, but that year, due to his father’s death, he enrolled in university to fulfill his father’s wish.
After his studies, he began working in Budapest at the Central Telephone Office, and then in Paris at the Edison Continental Company.
Two years later, he reached Edison himself, then the most significant figure in the field of technology in America.
He filed his first patent in 1884 after leaving Edison’s company and founding “Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing.”
He is credited with 700 patents, of which more than 300 are protected in 27 countries on five continents, and among those he never tried to protect is the application of high-frequency currents for medical purposes.
For half a century, Tesla has been in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, side by side with Thomas Edison and US President Abraham Lincoln.
His achievements are also presented in Washington at the largest museum-educational and research complex in the world – the Smithsonian.
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Source: Tanjug; Photo: Društvene mreže