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