Tesla: The Life and Times of an Electric Messiah Read Free Page B

exam certificates his father was furious. ‘That almost killed my ambition,’ he wrote.
    It was only later, after his father had died, that he discovered letters from his professors telling him to take his son away from the polytechnic, otherwise he would kill himself with overwork.
    Â 
    Carousing and Gambling
    In his second year at college Tesla gave himself over to carousing and, in his third year, he gave up going to lectures altogether. This led to his scholarship being cancelled. He tried to get another scholarship from the publishers of the pro-Serbian newspaper, Queen Bee , calling himself a ‘technician’ and saying he could speak Italian, French and English, as well as Serbian, Croatian and German. It was refused and he was thrown out of school for gambling and, it was said, ‘womanizing’. He disappeared from Graz without a word and friends feared that he had drowned in the river.
    In 1878, he re-appeared in Maribor, which was then in the Austrian province of Styria, now in Slovenia. He found work there as a draftsman in a tool and die shop, though he seems to have spent much of his time playing cards for money. His father, who did not approve of gambling, found out where he was and came to beg him to return to school, this time in Prague.
    A few weeks after his father’s visit, Tesla was arrested as a vagrant and deported back to Gospic. At his father’s church, he met and fell in love with a girl called Anna. Strolling by the river or on long walks back to his hometown of Smiljan, they discussed the future. She wanted a family; he wanted to be an electrical engineer. Then his father fell seriously ill. He died soon after, aged 60, and was given a funeral fitting for a saint.
    Tesla continued gambling. One day his mother came to him and gave him a roll of notes, saying: ‘The sooner you lose all we possess the better it will be. I know that you will get over it.’
    He said: ‘I conquered my passion then and there and only regretted that it had not been a hundred times as strong. I not only vanquished but tore it from my heart so as not to leave even a trace of desire. Ever since that time I have been as indifferent to any form of gambling as to picking teeth.’ He reported giving up excessive smoking and coffee drinking with similar ease. And he seems to have given up his passion for Anna too.
    Â 
    The Coming of the Telephone
    Tesla then honoured his dead father’s wishes. Supported by two maternal uncles, he went to Prague University and signed up for courses in mathematics, experimental physics and philosophy. This introduced him to the Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711 – 76) and the idea that human beings were born a blank slate that was shaped through life by sensory perceptions – ideas that would come into play when he later worked on robotics.
    The intellectual ferment of Prague stimulated Tesla and, again, he put his mind to building a new type of electric motor, removing the commutator to eliminate the sparking. Eventually, the money from his uncles dried up. Tesla needed a job and he saw in the newspapers that one of Thomas Edison ’s agents, Tivadar Puskás, was setting up a telephone exchange in Budapest, having already built one in Paris. Puskás’ idea was to build telephone exchanges in major European cities. Until then Alexander Graham Bell had only thought of installing his invention on private lines linking two locations.
    However, in Budapest, no work was forthcoming, so Tesla took a government job as a draftsman in the Central Telegraph Office. This bored him and he quit to devote himself full time to inventing. Coming up with no practical idea, he had a nervous breakdown.
    Â 
    A Flash of Inspiration
    Tesla was only rescued from a deep depression by his new friend Anthony Szigeti. One afternoon they were walking in the City Park reciting poetry. ‘At that age,’ he said, ‘I knew books by heart, word