Nikola Tesla: the most important inventor that you have never heard of.

Do you know who Nikola Tesla was? Mmm... Probably not... unless you are either Serbian, a history savant, a Grade 9 physics pupil or a magnetism and electrics buff.

Well, put simply, this guy was a GENIUS. And probably about 100 years ahead of his time. Without his influence, no-one could be cross at Eskom, because there would be no Eskom. Look around you. Tesla's ideas and inventions are all around you.

Nikola Tesla (Serbian Cyrillic: Никола Тесла) was born in 1856 in Smiljan, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (now part of modern day Croatia). His folks were both Serbian by origin. Tesla's father was an Orthodox priest, whilst his mother was a smart woman who created many appliances to make their lives easier - for example, a mechanical egg beater. Tesla later attributed all of his inventive instincts to his mother. Tesla first studied at home and later went to Carlstadt, where he blew his teachers' minds by doing integral calculus in his head.

His inventions
He stayed in Europe until he was 28 and then moved to America. From here on, he really came into his own. With his genius and American money to fund him, he invented so many things
that we use today.














Consider the following:
- The generation and distribution of Alternating Current electricity.
- Radio and Radio Control (He built the first remote control boat in 1899).

There are much more. See the long list at Wikipedia. But I would also like to mention one of my favorites: the high-frequency transformer (Tesla Coil) that paved the way for his research in transmitting electricity through the air and earth.

Our visit to his museum

After hearing and reading about Tesla, Hermie and I tramped off to the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, in the Tesla House in Krunska street 51, one Saturday Morning. It was very quiet, and we had the run of the place. The ladies were very friendly and started with a nice english video, that outlined Tesla's life and work.

After the movie, we had some cool toys demonstrated to us, including the egg-shaped rotor which Tesla built as a technology demonstrator. The demonstrator flipped a switch and a bronze egg, started to slowly turn on the flat dish. It picked up speed, and then "stood up", spinning on its vertical axis...faster and faster. Amazing!





But the highlight was most definitely when we were handed fluorescent tube lights and the high-frequency Tesla Oscillator was started. The 200 000 V electrical arcs started to fly, and the noise was deafening. Then, suddenly, the tubes started to glow...eerie... Tesla was right. You can transmit high frequency electricity without wires. I wonder if his dream will come true: the wireless transmission of electrical energy over the whole earth. Take a look at this video to see what I mean... Notice that as the Tesla Coil fires up, the tubes start to glow as energy is transmitted to them through the air.





Impressions
This man was simply a genius. The fact that three nations want to claim him as their own, attest to his greatness. I have only briefly heard of Tesla during a University physics lecture before, when the Tesla Unit for magnetic flux density was discussed. (I had to look that up.) It was only here in Serbia, that I realised that Tesla is probably the most important inventor that we have never heard of.

Both Hermie and I walked away from the museum deeply impressed by the man's genius and character. We spoke about him and his inventions for days after the visit. If you are ever in Belgrade, visit the museum. But, if you cannot, then take a quick peek at the links below.

Favorite Tesla Quotes

Otis Pond: "Looks as if Marconi got the jump on you."
Nikola Tesla: "Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents."

"...The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will readily be taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."
Nikola Tesla"

Nature and nature's laws lay hid by night. God said "Let Tesla be and all was light."
B A Behrend, Vice President IEEE

Cool Links:
There are MANY more. But these are the ones I liked best.

1. Very cool PBS Site: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/
2. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
3. The Official Tesla Museum: http://www.tesla-museum.org
4.Tesla Patents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tesla_patents
5. Tesla Autobiography http://www.teslaplay.com/autobody.htm

Videos
1. PBS Video: PBS Tesla Master of Lightning video.
2. Recent Movie: The Prestige.

Tesla Coil - 12 Million Volts

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13 - Novi Sad here we come!

So we've been here 2 months. The only thing of Serbia we have seen so far is Belgrade. About time we go and see if there is a rest of Serbia. So we decided on a trip to a neighboring city close to Belgrade but in a different province, Novi Sad.

Novi Sad is the capital of the autonomous province of Vojvodina. It lies about 80 km Nort-West of Belgrade but also on the banks of the Danube and the geography of the area is a very flat plain with few if any mountains. The Austrian influence on the building styles are much more pronounced and it has a very different feel to it than Belgrade. I actually felt like I was in Europe!

We decided to take the train to Novi Sad as it is not something we do often and it was not expensive at all. The tickets were 840 din there and back which works out at about R80 (that is for two tickets). The train ride took about an hour and a half and was actually quite pleasant. It was wonderful to see the countryside and as we both were still rather sleepy (train left at 8:20 so we got up at around 6) the rocking of the train was rather soothingzzzzzzz...

When we arrived at Novi Sad we found out that even fewer people spoke English here than in Belgrade but by now we have picked up on a few words and could sort of figure out what people were trying to say. Strange how one communicates even when you can't understand each other's words. We took the bus into Novi Sad Centar. Climbing off the bus we saw this wonderful red sign with the golden "M" on it and as we were both rather hungry decided to go and visit a friendly clown called Ronald. We also bought a Novi Sad map at the news stand next to the bus stop and over a lovely meal we decided where we want to go and what rout we would take.

Trg Slobode, the Pertovaradin Fortress and the Newlywed arch were on our itinerary and after we had good sustenance we walked over to Trg Slobode which was very close by.

On the square (Trg Slobode) one can see a huge statue of some important person looking very serious (Svetozar Miletića one of the mayor of Novi Sad a long time ago) and right behind it the beautiful City Hall. It was when I saw the buildings around the square that I finaly felt that I was truly in a foreign Europein country. There is no mistaking the Austrian influence here. Another interesting building on the square is called the iron man building as it has a suit of armor bluilt into the facade.
And of course a town square is not a town square without a church. Opposite the town hall is the Catholic parish church with the Name of Mary which is often referred to as the "Cathedral". But as the bishop's cathedra (chair) is actually in Subotica (another city in Vojvodina) it is not a cathedral. It has however, the most interesting roof tiling and looks a lot like a cathedral.

The Petrovaradin Fortress lies on the opposite side of the Danube river and is connected to Novi Sad with a Bridge. The Fortress, although now only a district of Novi Sad, was built before the town developed and it has quite an interesting history. The key to it's existence is a high rock above the Danube form which you can easily control the river traffic. It was therefore inhabited form ancient times. During Roman rule a settlement and fort named Cusum stood here safeguarding the frontier of the Roman empire (which was the Danube). In the 11th and 12th centuries a castle with the name of Petrikon stood on the high rock above the Danube while the Turks and the Hungarians fought over this area. The Hungarians won and the castle and monestry beneath it was donated to the Cistercian monastic order. The Hungarians called the castle Petervarad (Peter's castle) which is also the source of the Serbian name. In 1526 the castle did fall into Turkish hands but was to far from their borders for it to be more than a port on the Danube. That changed when the Austrians defeated the Turks in 1688 and soon realized it potential. They developed it to be the strongest defense against the Turks with its pinnacle in the time of Maria Theresa.

The town of Novi Sad developed on the other side of the Danube because non-catholics were not tolerated inside the fortress. Most merchants were jewish, serbian or greek and therefore the town developed quite a bit especially when Belgrade fell into Turkish hands.

The Fortress is well preserved except for graffiti on some of the historical buildings and is being renovated at present. There is a lot of potential for tourism but it seems as in Belgrade that Serbia is slowly recovering form decades of war and tourism is still developing slowly.

Our last stop before we returned to the station was the newlywed arch. Seeing that we are practically still newlyweds we decided that it has to be a place visited.

By this time we were both quite tired so we decided to try and catch the 15:47 train back to Belgrade. Seeing that it was already 15:10 this casued a litlle bit of a dash to the station. But in the end we had a very lovely day and enjoyed it tremendously.


Click here for more photos of Novi Sad

14 - Tour through the streets of Belgrade

Today we decided to go and explore the streets of Belgrade as it was a beautiful day and spring was in the air. We planned our tour with the help of our Serbian tour guide book and it would entail walking to Trg Republike (the main square of Belgrade) and then down the pedestrian street Knez Mihailova. We then would walk along the streets that once ran next to the city wall and are some of the oldest streets in Belgrade.

This lovely fountain is situated a block from our apartment on Trg Nikole Pašića. It is also where the cinemas are. We passed this fountain and crossed the street to pass the City Hall of Belgrade which had the most beautiful flowers in the garden in front of it as you can see below.

Right next to the City Hall (which used to be an old palace of the king of Yugoslavia when it was a kingdom) is a beautiful park with the name Pionirski Park. I walk through this park on my way to the grocery store. The photograph below is of Pionirski Park.

When you walk through Pionirski park you get to the Parliament of Serbia. This also used to be a palace of the King of Yugoslavia and is situated almost next to the City Hall with a lovely garden between the two buildings as you can see in the photo below. The building seen in the photo is again the City Hall but from the side.

From the City Hall we than walked to Trg Republike. This square is quite significant because it symbolizes a few things to the Serbian people. Firstly it has the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović which is the man that finally freed the Serbian people from Turkish rule. Trg Republike is situated where the main gate to the walled city of Belgrade used to be. This gate was called Istanbul gate and symbolized the Turkish rule over the Serbian People. It was broken down on the departure of the Turks from Belgrade and the stone form the gate was used to build the foundations of the National Theater. The photograph below shows the statue of Prince Mihailo Obrenović and the National theatre in the background.

Trg Republike ironically, got its name to commemorate the fall of the monarchy and the beginning of the communistic Republik of Yugoslavia

From Trg Republike we then walked along the pedestrain street Knez Mihailova which is also named after Prince Mihaila Obrenović. The buildings in this street are quite beautiful and we actually felt like we were in Europe for the first time and it has this lovely drinking fountain.



Near the end of Knez Mihailova is the City library which is special in that it has some roman ruins in its basement. When we went down to the basement we came across a very "interesting" librarian who showed us the ruins but also insisted on showing us his books and taking a lot of photos of us. ;-D Below is a photo of a pipe dating from Roman times wow!



Before we got to Kalemegdan which is at the end of Knez Mihailova we turned into Kralja Petra Street which leads to the Orthodox Cathedral and the cafe opposite it with the name "? Cafe" and then into the street that followed the city wall Kosančićev Venac.

The old cafe dating form 1823 has the following story. It changed owners a few times and at a certain point was called "At the Cathedral" (as it opposite the orthodox cathedral) but the church authorities had a problem with that so for the time being the owner had a "?" outside the cafe as he was thinking of a new name. The people thought it was the new name and the "?" stuck. We decided to try out this "? cafe" and had our lunch here. Below is a photograph of the cafe and the menu. Which was questionable...?









After we had our lunch of veal and mutton with potatoes we then continued on to Kosančićev Venac with its cobblestones. Walking along Kosančićev Venac (seen below left) we came across the site that used to be the National Library of Serbia. This building was bombed during world war II and a lot of written Serbain history was lost. The photo on the right below is what is left of this building.









Following the old streets we worked our way back to Knez Mihailova and then home. We had a lovely time. At firsts glance Belgrade does not have much to offer esoterically but when you look closely there are indeed some interesting and beautiful things to see.

Click here for more photos of Belgrade

18 - Daytrip to Kalemegdan

Today we faced the unknown and ventured out to see what all this fuss about Kalemegdan is all about. To fill you in on a bit of history here is an extract from the Serbian Tourism website.

"Although Belgrade, is a very old city, known as Singidunum in the Roman times, it hasn't got many monuments from the past. It has been the target of many invaders throughout its history, so that was destroyed and rebuilt many times. There are almost no structures dating back to the old Roman times or medieval monuments. There are some monuments dating back to the times under Turkish rule. The best preserved of the latter is Kalemegdan, the old core of the Belgrade fortress. Apart from some Roman foundations and walls dating back to Despot Stefan's period (early 15th century), almost all its other fortifications were built in the 18th century by the Austrians. The complex system of extensive heavy ramparts, towers, bridges, turrets, moats and passages encompasses a number of fine fortress gateways, a clock tower, an old Roman well, and the Ruzica Church in the upper part; and a baroque gateway and the medieval Nebojsa Tower in the lower part. The fortress has been turned into a city park offering a wide variety of monuments from more recent times. Particularly attractive is a sculpture by Ivan Mestrovic - Pobednik (The Victor). The Military Museum in Kalemegdan, has a large collection of weapons and documents illustrating the history of Belgrade and Yugoslavia from the earliest times to date."

We found Kalemegdan to be a wonderful peaceful place. It was quite something to see the Danube, which is such a famous river (though more because of Strauss and Vienna than because of Belgrade). The Danube seems to have played an important part in a lot of the history around Belgrade. It was the border of the Roman empire with the Barbarians. It was also a good defense against invasion.

Walking about we did however, miss knowing the history that happened around this place and one would have loved a guided tour or audio guide. Something that seems to be lacking in Belgrade. They are not very focused on tourism. This is understandable though, looking at their turbulent history and recent wars. They are currently renovating a lot of the fortress structures and I would love to come back in 10 years and see how Kalemegdan has developed in this area.

The absence of English descriptions of what you are looking at is also a bit frustrating. Although we have stared to figure out the Cyrillic alphabet, we still don't know the language that well and understood very little. Even in the military museum which had such awesome exhibitions, a lot of it was lost on us because we could not understand the information given.

At the end of the day we had a lovely experience and our interest into the history of Kalemegdan and Belgrade was higtened.

11 - First Sunday in Belgrade

Our first Sunday in a brand new city. Everything is foreign and they don't even use the same alphabet! It made me feel very homesick and unsure of myself.

The day was spent taking a walk down the street our hotel was located in, Bulevar Oslobođenja, and seeing where it goes. We acquired a tourist map of Belgrade from the hotel and then we where off like Christopher Columbus looking for India.

Our first discovery was the church on the photograph above. This is St Sava's Cathedral and is quite impressive with it's white tall walls and green roof. We were fortunate to be next to the cathedral at noon and were blessed with the thundering sounds of three immense bells ringing out.

Why do churches have bells?



Unfortunately they are restoring this spectacular building and the inside of it has been stripped to the concrete. But what and experience....

We then left St Sava and headed further along Bulevar Oslobođenja. On our little map we were aiming for the tourist information centre. On the way there we were lured away by the big golden "M". Ordering Macdonalds in a foreign language was in interesting and liberating experience. It seems that there is a language like Macdonaldese.

At the tourist information center we were given valuable insight into the inner workings of the bus system. So we decided to climb mount Kilimanjaro and take the bus home. By now our lower backs and feet were telling us that we have walked much further than we realized. So we bought our two bus tickets home - and actually made it there.

10 - Arrived Alive!

The rest of our journey went much better. We had a nine hour flight to Zurich with a stop over of 6 hours and then we flew to Belgrade. We both slept well on the plane but were still very tired by the time we were flying to Belgrade.


Our impressions of Switzerland and Belgrade were as follows:


Hermie:
Switzerland is very beautiful (the little part a saw of it - the airport and its surroundings). But my main impression is that everything is extremely expensive! The Swiss-German language is actually very similar in a lot of its words to Afrikaans and with my little bit of German I actually found it quite easy to understand a lot of it. For Belgrade I didn't really know what to expect. In places it looked a lot like the Townships back home (except for the shacks). It is a odd mixture of buildings and areas that are extremely run down and brand new very modern buildings and then, of course the very old beautiful historic buildings. Very interesting. ;->

Adan:
Man! 10 hours in cattle class ain't nice - no matter how you slice it. ;-) The food on Swiss is also a bit ho-hum. Except the choccies!! They rock! We pulled into Zurich at 06:05 local time and it was dark, cold and wet. It brightened up quite a bit - surrounding hills a nice green. (When we left for Belgrade - I had a window seat - I was impressed with the town layout. Very nicely integrated with the greenery/nature. Everything seemed crisp and in its place.) For future reference, the best value meal at Zurich Airport is the Long Cheese Burger Meal at Burger King - CHF 12.00 for a 8" stretched burger, mayo, fries and a coke. Thats about R 140 for 2 burgers. Man, we even licked the paper towels to "optimize our investment"! ;-))

As for Belgrade... we saw blurry impressions of interesting bits, thanks to our Taxi driver, Bogie (Serbian for Bogart). The trip from the Nikola Tesla (famous physicist and magnet fundi) Airport to the Best Western "M" Hotel (18 Km) cost us 2000 Dinars per couple. Thats about R 230.00. But it was worth it. In the 10 minutes it took to cover the distance, we learned about the new Belgradska stadion, the bridge over the river Sava, the war and the bombs the americans dropped. We even know there are 2 million Belgrads. Or Belgradians. We are not sure what to call them yet. We do know, however to say Dobre Dan, when you see one. That means "Good Morning". Hlava means Thank you. As you can probably gather, we have thanked a couple of Belgradians for the Good Morning. ;-) The best for last: We have established, beyond any doubt, that passing in the emergency lane is not restricted to South Africa. Yes, good 'ol Bogie, spent many minutes there, pulling many really cool passing manouveres in his Champagne coloured 1990 Mercedes 2.3i (W124 series).

09 - Our very fast departure to Belgrade

We knew it was going to happen soon, we have been on standby for weeks. But then, this morning while I was still watching my CSI for the day the sms from Adan came. “Start packing my dear I’m sitting in the Embassy and they have approved our visa”. We were booked to fly out this evening.

But how did we get to this point?

It all started one Tuesday in January. Adan was approached by his boss to go to Croatia on a project. That evening we discussed it and decided it will be a spectacular opportunity for us! The next Morning, while I was having lunch with my mother in law, Adan sms-ed me that we were due to leave for Croatia in Febraury! I was stunned at how quickly this was happening as it was only two weeks to February. There was so much to organise before we left. But, as these things go, our departure was postponed to the beginning of March. That at least gave us a little more time to sort everything out before we left. We could also attend Corné (Adan’s sister) and Michael’s wedding.

In applying for the Croatian visa, we encountered a few hiccups to the extend that we had to go to Serbia till the Croatian visa could be sorted out. Now we had to get the Serbian visa which was also a bit of a challenge as Serbia and Monte Negro just departed ways and therefore it was a “new” embassy. So there we were scheduled to fly to Serbia this evening but still not sure whether we will be able to as we were still waiting for visa.

That brings us back to Adan’s sms of this morning.

With a few seconds of intense panic, I started to get everything ready to pack. By twelve o’clock I was packed and was sorting out the perishables in the fridge and getting the house ready to be left for 7 months. Now I was just waiting for Adan to come home and fill me inn. By 14:15 Adan was still not home. Our flight was 20:25 in the evening, but with the very bad traffic to the airport at five in the afternoon we wanted to leave at 16:15. Adan then phoned me and we arranged that I pick him up at work a 15:00. By 16:00 we were still waiting for the for-ex driver to arrive with the all important travel money. My poor husband still has not packed and we wanted to leave for the airport in 15 minutes. Needless no say we didn’t! We arrived home at 16:15 and left for the airport 16:45. Adan managed to pack in 30 minutes! Quite impressive I should say!

So there we were all packed and on our way to the airport at 20km/h! Peak hour traffic has struck again! What could we do but just breath!

By 6 o’clock were booked in on our flight to Zürich and then on to Belgrade the next day. What a day! I think that was the first time we breathed all day...