The World Must See the Light--TESLA

BALKANS: The World Must See the Light

The World Must See the Light
Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Feb 13 (IPS) - Nikola Tesla did much to show the world the light, and Croatia and Serbia both want that recognised this year.

This year marks the 150th birth anniversary of Tesla, the shy, lonely, and eccentric man behind alternative current generators, turbines that provide electricity, transformers that store it, and many other things electrical that are now taken for granted.

This has been proclaimed the year of Nikola Tesla by governments of both Croatia and Serbia. He was born in 1856 in what is now Croatia, to the family of a Serb Orthodox priest.

He spent most of his life in the United States. But on a rare public appearance, Tesla said he was "proud of his Croatian homeland and Serb origin."

In commemoration moves, Belgrade airport will be renamed Nikola Tesla Airport later in the year. The Croatian branch of Ericsson has been re-named Ericsson Nikola Tesla.

"This (the two governments' action) will be a powerful message to the world," Croatian Education Minister Dragan Primorac told local media. "Tesla unselfishly gave his inventions to all people."

Besides, he said, "this can help improve relations between Croatia and Serbia." The two nations fought a bitter war in the early 1990s.

Lectures and academic seminars will be held in both countries. The Belgrade Museum of Nikola Tesla, that contains most of his work, private correspondence and replicas of his major inventions, will be open for longer hours.

"The main gathering in Serbia will be held on July 10, the day of Tesla's birth," Serbian Energy Minister Radomir Naumov told IPS. Thousands are expected at the congressional centre Sava in Belgrade that day.

The National Library of Serbia is preparing an exhibition of items from the recently obtained Tesla Collection, a gift from the Tesla Society in New York.

It contains 200 articles written by Tesla and 1,800 items published on his work in the United States a century ago. Among them is the single book he wrote in 1919, 'My Inventions'. The book reveals that Tesla visualised most of his inventions first and later took to experiments and construction.

Tesla left for the United States in 1884 at the age of 28. He died in New York in 1943 at age 87. He had more than 700 inventions and 100 patents.

He never married and was often described as an ascetic man, afraid of germs and handshakes. Tesla was a strict vegetarian as well. He spent most of his time in his own workshops, experimenting for days and nights on end. He did not need more than four hours of sleep a day.

He worked with Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and other pioneers of electricity at the turn of the 20th century.

Together with Westinghouse, Tesla tamed the Niagara Falls on the border of Canada and the United States, providing neighbouring towns and villages with electricity back in 1896. The power station at the falls bears his name.

"Tesla was a dreamer with a poetic touch," Veljko Abramovic, a researcher on Tesla's life told IPS. "He left much business unfinished, like his dream of wireless transmission of electric energy. He was a visionary, yet an unselfish man who believed in the noble idea of providing mankind with necessities."

Tesla's research enabled Wilhelm Roentgen to discover X-rays in 1895, and later also helped in the invention of the radio and of neon lights.

The radio was officially invented by Guglielmo Marconi at the turn of the 20th century, but in the year of Tesla's death in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Tesla's patent for the radio superseded that of Marconi.

"Although little is known about Tesla in the broader public abroad, scientists and researchers did recognise this strange man," Abramovic said. A crater on the Moon was named after Tesla, the measure for a magnetic field in physics carries his name, as well as a small planet, which previously had only a number, 2244. (END/2006)