One of the greatest minds of the 20th century, Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla, was born on this day, July 10, 1856, in Smiljan, Lika, and died in Manhattan, at the “New Yorker” hotel, on Christmas Day 1943, at the age of 87.
The unit for measuring magnetic field strength (magnetic flux density) is named after Tesla, and his legacy was inscribed in the UNESCO register in 2003.
Since 1994, the corner of 40th Street and 6th Avenue in New York, where his laboratory was located, has been named Nikola Tesla Corner.
He is credited with 700 patents, of which over 300 are protected in 27 countries across five continents.
New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, after whom one of New York’s three main airports is named, read a eulogy at Nikola Tesla’s funeral, written by Louis Adamič, a Slovenian writer, essayist, and translator.
“Here, in New York, a man died in his hotel room last Wednesday. His name was Nikola Tesla. He died poor, but he was one of the most successful men who ever lived. His achievements are enormous, and as time passes, they will become even greater.”
Before the funeral service, LaGuardia said on the radio about Tesla that he could have become the richest man in America, but he simply did not want to.
“He wanted success, which he intended for others. He loved people; he was a scientist – a genius, a poet of science. Money did not interest him, and everything he did, he did in accordance with his natural gift, which his mother bestowed upon him in his homeland,” said the then-Mayor of New York.
His friends included writer Mark Twain and French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Several films have been made about him, and in “The Prestige,” Tesla’s character is portrayed by David Bowie.
He began his career in Maribor as an assistant engineer in 1878, but that year, due to his father’s death, to fulfill his wish, he enrolled in college.
After studying in Prague, he began working in Budapest at the Central Telephone Exchange, and then in Paris at Edison’s Continental Company.
Two years later, he reached Thomas Edison himself, who was then the most significant figure in technology in America.
He filed his first patent in the USA in 1884, after leaving Edison’s company and founding “Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing.”
He also created a large number of inventions that he never sought to patent, such as the application of high-frequency currents for medical purposes.
The urn with Tesla’s ashes was transferred from New York to Belgrade in 1951 and is located in his Museum in Krunska Street.
Lived in a Hotel for Precious Time
The unofficial archivist of the “New Yorker” hotel, Joseph Kinny, who for decades led visitors through “Tesla’s hotel” from 1933 to 1943, said that hardly a day goes by without someone coming and asking to see rooms 3327 and 3328 on the 33rd floor, where Tesla lived. One was a bedroom, the other a workspace.
He chose hotel life so he wouldn’t have to worry about house cleaning, laundry, or preparing meals, allowing him to dedicate precious time to achieving his scientific goals. He chose the “New Yorker” because it was close to his laboratory, and also because it was a hotel with the most modern technological solutions of that era, about which “Popular Science” magazine wrote four pages in 1930, Kinny said.
Inventions That Changed the World
Tesla discovered the rotating magnetic field, the three-phase system for transmitting electrical energy, the induction motor, generator, and transformer, the phenomenon of electromagnetic resonance, and patented a series of inventions on which modern electronics are based, without which technical civilization, especially the transmission of electrical energy, would be unimaginable.
He is also a pioneer of radio technology, wireless telegraphy, and radar. His polyphase alternating current system demonstrated its value at the first hydroelectric power plant at Niagara Falls.
He patented about 700 inventions in the fields of alternating current, telecommunications, acoustics, and mechanical engineering, many of which found widespread application.
After completing his studies in electrical engineering in Graz and a brief internship in Budapest and Paris, he moved to the USA, becoming a citizen in 1884, but maintained close contacts with his homeland until his death in New York on Orthodox Christmas in 1943.
In the USA, by delving into the secrets of oscillatory movements of electricity and matter, he accomplished his greatest scientific endeavors.
On the centenary of his birth in 1956, the unit for measuring high voltage was given Tesla’s name, which also named the unit for magnetic field strength.
Remained Serbian Even Across the Ocean
Nikola Tesla was born as the fourth child of Milutin and Đuka Tesla in a priestly Orthodox family, in the Serbian village of Smiljan in Lika.
The great inventor and scientist emphasized his Serbian origin.
When he arrived in Belgrade in June 1892, he was awarded the Order of Saint Sava, Second Degree.
He visited the National Museum and the Great School, where he spoke about his work to students and professors, and discussed the ongoing construction of the first electric power plant in Belgrade with Serbian physicist Đorđe Stanojević.
“As you see and hear, I remained a Serb even across the sea, where I am engaged in research. You should be the same and raise the glory of Serbianism in the world with your knowledge and work,” Tesla told the students.
Belgrade – The Center of Tesla’s Legacy
After Tesla’s death, his legacy arrived in Belgrade based on the decision of American judicial authorities, as his nephew Sava Kosanović was declared Tesla’s sole heir.
According to Tesla’s wish, Kosanović transferred the documentation and Tesla’s personal items to Belgrade in 1951.
The Tesla Museum possesses over 160,000 original documents, more than 2,000 books and magazines, and over 1,200 historical and technical exhibits. Archival materials from Tesla’s legacy were inscribed in the UNESCO “Memory of the World” register in 2003.
Belgrade’s international airport is named “Nikola Tesla.” His name is also carried by the Electrotechnical Institute in Belgrade, founded in 1936, an Electrotechnical School, the Niš University Library, two thermal power plants in Serbia…
Monuments to Tesla are placed in front of the technical faculties building and at the airport in Belgrade.
Tesla’s birth date, July 10, is celebrated in Serbia as Science Day.
That July 10, or Tesla’s birthday, become Science Day in Serbia was championed by the Tesla Memorial Society of New York in 2010.
“When we submitted the proposal to Mr. Božidar Đelić, then Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Serbia and Minister for Science and Technology, and in January of the same year, we launched a major media campaign for the Republic of Serbia to declare Tesla’s birthday as the national Science Day in Serbia, which, to our great joy, was done,” Marina Bulatović, journalist and publicist, and initiator of the declaration of ‘Nikola Tesla Science Day,’ told Serbian Times.
World Science Day was first celebrated in Serbia in 2011, and since the same year, in addition to this date, which the Republic of Serbia observes as a UNESCO member, by government decision, the national Science Day, July 10, Nikola Tesla’s birthday, was also established.
The city of Philadelphia in the American state of Pennsylvania also declared his birthday an official holiday.
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