The legendary electrical genius Nikola Tesla is in the news this week with this announcement on theoatmeal.com that Elon Musk, CEO of the Tesla electric vehicle company, has donated $1 million to the Tesla Museum, on the 158th anniversary of the great man's birth.
Tesla is one of the unsung heroes of the electrical industry. While Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse won widespread praise for the genius and inventions that help form the foundation of today's electrical grid, Tesla is a somewhat tragic figure who arguably contributed just as much to this business but spent his last years broke, and, apparently, with a strange love for pigeons.
According to this post on www.atlasobscura.com:
"Tesla allegedly loved an all-white pigeon romantically. As the story goes, the bird flew to tell him she was dying with a bright light in her eyes. After the bird died in 1922, Tesla knew that his life's work was finished. Regarding this beautiful bird, Tesla supposedly said, "I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.”
In an odd twist of fate, Tesla has a street corner named after himself in New York City at 40th and the Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) where he allegedly spent many hours feeding pigeons in Bryant Park. The street corner was named after Tesla in 1994.
To learn more about Tesla's life and his contributions to the electrical world, visit http://www.teslasociety.com/teslamuseum.htm