IN DEFENSE OF THE PIGEON BRIDE OF NIKOLA TESLA: WHY THE INVENTOR NEVER MARRIED A HUMAN WIFE
4/20/2022
Nikola Tesla once made the claim that he does not think many great thinkers have been married men. A romantic relationship, he asserts, would be a huge barrier for his concentration towards scientific achievement.
A magazine of the time, American Electrician, published this response to Nikola Tesla’s claims:
American Electrician
July, 1896
What Made The Great Scientist Tick?
Tesla’s view of marriage and success may be easily disproven on the surface. Einstein married twice, and there is a long list of married scientists and engineers who lived a highly productive life whilst also being married.
Considering that Tesla is almost in a category of his own, perhaps he was correct in at least diagnosing his own personal needs. History is unsure if Archimedes was ever married, and he likely was not. Socrates and Aristotle were both married, but Plato, who was arguably the busiest of the three from managing his revolutionary new type of academy, never married.
Leonardo Da Vinci never married. Although historians now believe Da Vinci might have been a homosexual, this will never be proven in absolute. Regardless, there isn’t much evidence that Da Vinci spent his time in romantic pursuits, and his journals show that he spent his time aggressively learning and creating. He was so productive with his time to an extreme that it is easy to imagine an alternate universe where he fell in love, became distracted or even content, and never became the prolific renaissance man who advanced science and art.
Confucius married at 19 and Benjamin Franklin was 17 when he began dating the woman he would later marry. It was especially normal in olden times for people to marry at a young age, and it somewhat still is normal now. Although, a look at Tesla’s life during his youthful years show that he was moving from one country to another so often, he would never have the opportunity to settle down with a woman during the younger phases of his life.
If we fast forward to the mid-1890s, Tesla is a full grown man, he is wealthy, and has long established his residency in New York City. Although his fortunes would take a turn for the worse in future decades, he was friends with many people in high society, he owned his own thriving company, the first large-scale hydroelectric dam at Niagara Falls by his design was a huge success, and at this specific time he was doing very well. If he truly wanted a wife, there would be nothing standing in his way. Except for one thing—
Obsession. His personality was defined by it. In different interviews spanning decades apart, he portrays a man who is as obsessive as one can possibly be. In his first year at college, he describes studying without rest seven days a week from 3 am to 11 pm. In his second year of college, he tells us he relaxed his studies to read at leisure in the library, where he read the complete works of Voltaire which accounted for nearly 100 thick books with small print. In his elder years, he tells a magazine interviewer that he tosses and turns in bed at night, still totally focused on solving his mechanical problems. The inventor repeatedly outlines behaviors like these in his writings. When Nikola Tesla decides he wants to do something, he shuts out the entire outside world and focuses solely on accomplishing his goal.
By this time, Tesla had achieved greatness with the world’s adoption of his Alternating Current induction motor technology, which provided long distance electricity. His next great obsession came to him in the process of tweaking his motor for the Westinghouse Corporation, whereby he discovered wireless electricity by accident. From that point onward, his deepest and only desire was to build a wireless world.
Plenty of history’s most successful men have been married, and some of them have even had time for extra-marital affairs. Yet a few of the greatest in every field behave with a singular obsessive drive while in deep seclusion, so devoted to their art that dating doesn’t cross their mind. This is a personality trait shared by the greats such as Tesla and Da Vinci.
The Great Pigeon Bride
After the height of Tesla’s fame and success, a quarter-century passes. He finds himself with money problems, and he is completely unable to accomplish any of his goals. The masses forget why he is relevant. He downsizes to a cheaper hotel that he still cannot afford. Things are not going well for Tesla at this point.
He begins feeding the pigeons at Bryant Park and he visits the pigeon coop on the roof of his home at the Hotel New Yorker. At this point in his life, he is probably not getting enough healthy human interaction. The pigeons become his pets, his children, his friends, and maybe even his first wife.
Some people treat their pets as their own children. And today it’s common to hear someone joke of their dog: “This is the only man I need in my life!” Love for animals can manifest in unhealthy ways, such as a television show where people hoard dozens of cats in every room of their house, but Tesla doesn’t seem to have this type of problem. His relationship with his pigeons seems to be a healthy one.
Robo Bird
Tesla held the position that free will is outside of our grasp and that people are robotic in nature. We are a stimulus, evoked by a stimulant. Part of Tesla’s obsessive personality was that he loved to read everything he could find. It is likely that he read Origin of Species, and although he doesn’t directly use Darwin’s name, he alludes to this in some of his writings.
This gives us insight into how he probably viewed the pigeon as a beautiful robotic bird created by the mysterious and infinite forces of nature. A creature that evolved over billions of years of time to scan for food on the ground and bob its head while walking, but could also be trained to carry secret messages. A small and beautiful beast, and just the same, a piece of living machinery. A biological technology.
The dating pool is slim when you are a genius, broke, and nearly in your 70s. Give old Tesla a break. You might take a pigeon as a wife too if it was your only option.
The Word “Pigeon” Does Not Appear Within This Book
"A startling peek into the mind of a true genius."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Tesla’s Words is an eye-opening adapted work...”
—Foreward Clarion Reviews
5/5 stars
"Tesla’s Words is a short book… yet readers will learn as much about Tesla from this as they might from a scholarly 600-page biography."
—IndieReader
