Passport issued to Nikola Tesla in Croatia's capital Zagreb in 1883

In 1883, the presidency of the royal Croatian-Slavonian-Dalmatian land government in Zagreb, issued Tesla's passport to the regional office in Gospić "for abroad - France, Russia and Germany, for three years"; see [Petešić, p. 47].

The library of the Gymnasium in the city of Karlovac possesses documents on issuing Tesla's documents in the time when he was already in the USA. More precisely, Tesla's uncle, the Gospić archpriest Petar Mandić, submitted a request to the Royal Land Governement (of the Three-Une Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia), to the Department of Religios matters and Education, in order to "issue a matriculation form for Nikola Tesla to me". The uncle wrote that Tesla "has left for New York in America, in order to be trained in telephone profession, and for this he needs his matriculation form for studies completed here." The request was resolved in the positive on July 1st, 1885 (no. 4576). See [Petešić, p. 54].

Ćiril Petešić considers it to be unclear how was it possible that Tesla could travel without any passport from Budapest to France and Germany in 1882. Also, it is not known how Tesla obtained permission to travel to the USA in 1884, since this destination was not predicted in his passport issued in Zagreb in 1883. See [Petešić, p. 47].

Humanism in the time of Tesla's schooling in Rakovac

At the Higher Real School attended by Nikola Tesla, there was the Socity for Supporting Poor Students (Družtvo za podporu siromašnih učenika), founded already in 1860.

His ideal and all of his efforts were directed towards the advancement of Mankind. After that, he turned to mysticism and recounted to me, that he was since his youth praying to God before going to sleep, kneeling on bare knees. When I asked him, which prayers does he pray, he answered to me:

- Those, that I prayed since my childhood. But, yes, I prayed so until my fifties. Since then, I pray differently, but the essence is the same, and I pray to God every day.

Ivan Meštrović: Uspomene na političke ljude i dogadjaje (Reminiscences of Political People and Events), Buenos Aires, 1961., Knjižnica Hrvatske revije. (pp. 191-193)

Lecture of Nikola Tesla in the City Hall in Zagreb in 1892

How does the interior of the City Hall on the Upper Town in Zagreb look like, where Nikola Tesla delivered his invited lecture? Croatian Coats of Arms can be seen on the walls and on the ceiling:

An article describing Tesla's lecture in the City Hall in Zagreb, in the time of mayor Milan Amruš, published in "Narodne novine" (Peoples News) on May 25th, 1892. It is not excluded that Tesla's teacher Martin Sekulić was also among the listeners.

Nikola Tesla electric lighting in Zagreb

A famous electrical engineering expert, our compatriot Nikola Tesla, who at the invitation of the mayor dr. Amruš arrived to the city of Zagreb, in order to support the city officials in matters dealing with introducing electrical lighting, expounded his views in presence of the city mayor and vicemayor, city councellers Mallin and Hudowski, and the city surveyor Lenuci, dealing with essential questions of the enterprise. Mr. Tesla, a man at the age of about 35, tall, slim as a fir of his homeland, of black hair and eyes, who on his broad forhead bears a mark of a genius, had a longer exposĂŠ, from which we draw the following more important information.

...

He will, on the other hand, examine the offers which will arrive to the city authorities, and will provide his opinion about them, so that any possible misuse could be prevented. And in general, he considers his duty to help the administration of the city in any respect with his advice and action, as a native son of this land, and asks the city to contact him in any occasion in which technical difficulties might arrive, and he will provide his advice without any recompensation, the best he could. -

With this, he ended his interesting analysis. The city mayor, Dr. Amruš, expressed the hartiest gratitude for his efforts and for his promise, wishing him the best success in his future work, which was flattering in front of the world not only for him, but also for his homeland. In the discussion that followed, Mr. Tesla mentioned that now he works on the realization of the hypothesis, which he thinks is realisable and of profound importance, namely the wireless transfer of electic current by means of the natural electricity of the Earth. We wish success to our compatriot from the bottom of our heart in his endevours. ...

Electric plant (Munjara) of the city of Karlovac in 1908 in Ozalj

munjara = electric plant (derived from munja - lightning)

In 1908, a hydroplant, i.e., munjara, was built on the basis of the alternating current technology of Nikola Tesla. The building was designed by Hermann Bolle (1845-1925), better known as the designer of the Zagreb Cathedral, the Mirogoj Cemetery, etc. The first hydroplant in Croatia was built in the city of Šibenik already in 1895, as one of the oldest such electric plants in the world.

The city of Gospić had its first electric plant in 1925 (see HEP). Tesla's birthplace, the village of Smiljan, obtained AC current as late as 1956, i.e., 100 years after his birth.

The city of Zagreb built its first Munjara (electric plant) in 1907, in the region Trešnjevka, very near Panorama Hotel (on the south of it). The street where Munjara was built is even today called Munjarski put (Electric plant lane).

On August 26th, 1895, the first hydroelectric plant was launched on the Niagara Falls. Only two days later, the first Croatian hydroelectric AC plant plant was launched on the Krka Falls (Krka National Park in Croatia), which on August 28th, 1895 lighted the city of Šibenik. After that, the AC current was introduced in the cities of Rijeka (1890), Čakovec (1893), Zadar (1894), Varaždin (1895), Dubrovnik (1901), Pula (1904), Pakrac and Sisak (1905), and Zagreb (1907). The source of these data is the monograph Stoljeće svjetla u Zagrebu, 1907 - 2007 (Century of Light in Zagreb, 1907 - 2007), published by Hrvatska elektroprivreda (Croatian Electric Power Industry; Đurđa Sušec, ed.).

Personal acquaintances of Nikola Tesla

Some of the personal friends of Nikola Tesla (there are no known joint photos with Tesla, except for Fritzie Zivic, Croatian-American boxer):

• Milka Trnina (or Ternina, 1863-1941), soprano singer, the greatest Croatian opera singer in history, born in the region of Moslavina near Croatia's capital Zagreb; because of her, Tesla booked a loggia in Metropolitan Opera in New York, where Ternina had as many as 79 appearances; she sang at one of his birthday parties;
• Ivan Meštrović (1883-1962), distinguished Croatian sculptor;
• Zlatko Baloković (1895-1965), distinguished Croatian violinist, played at Tesla's funeral in 1943;
• Marijan Matijević (1878-1951, financially supported Tesla in the 1920s), in his time the strongest man in the world. His help to Tesla is mentioned by George Juraj Prpić in his monograph Croatians in America (there is a Croatian translation - Hrvati u Americi), of the Lika descent, born in Banat, university professor in the USA (John Carrol University, Department of History, Cleveland);
• Ivan (John) Benković (1886-1918), was born in the village of Rečica near the city of Karlovac, and studied painting at the Academy of Arts in Zagreb. He arrived to the USA in 1912, working as commercial artist in New York, under the pseudnim Bankow. He made a live portrait of Nikola Tesla in 1913 (one of only two Tesla's live portraits). With his recommendation letter, Tesla helped him to get employment in respectable Catholic journal entitled Extension Magazine, as well as in Hrvatski Svijet (Croatian World). He died prematurely out of the Spanish flew. See [Vladimir Novak, Croatians in America, p. 73]. The mentioned Tesla's portrait, drawn by Ivan Benković, is kept in the Museum of N. Tesla in Belgrade, while Tesla's recommendation letter is in the City Museum in Samobor near Zagreb.
• Fritzie Zivic (1913.-1984.), American boxer of Croatian roots, welterweight world champion in 1940 and 1941. His father Živčić was born in the Croatian town of Bosiljevo.

TESLA LABORATORY
LONG ISLAND, N. Y. 202 Metropolitan Tower
January 16, 1913

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

This will introduce Mr. John Benkovich,
a painter of excellent academic training who has already achieved
distinction in his profession. I take pleasure in recommending
him to any employer who is desirous of securing the services of
a skillful designer or draftsman, feeling certain that he will
acquit himself of the most difficult duties in his entire satis-
faction.

Nikola Tesla

This is the only known photo where Tesla smiles! This has been noticed by Mr. Mario Filipi, many thanks to him.
This very nice and amusing photo has been shot in 1941, just two years before Tesla's death.

Pior to 1880, Tesla got acquainted with great Czech comsposers Smetana and Dvoržak, that he was later meeting in Metropolitan Opera in New York; see [Petešić, p. 40].

Bust of Nikola Tesla within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (of the University of Zagreb) and in the Technical Museum in Zagreb was carved in 1930s by Emil Bohutinsky, Croatian sculptor born in Križevci near Zagreb.

Ferdinand Kovačević (Smiljan 1838-Zagreb 1913), patented duplex connection for telephone transmission. Kovačević was born in the village of Smiljan, as well as Tesla.

According to Josip Moser (president of the Electrotechnical Society Zagreb), a prestigios Austrian society called Elektrotechnischer Verein, among its 181 founding members in 1886 in Vienna, as amny as 40 of them were from Croatia. We mention for example

• Ferdianand Kovačević (inventor of the duplex connection; born in the village Smiljan, as Tesla)
• Martin Sekulić (Tesla's professor of Physics)
• Nikola Tesla
• Vinko Dvoržak (bron in Bohemia, earned his PhD under the guidance of Ernst Mach at the Charles University in Prague; founder of the study of Physics at the University of Zagreb, Croatia)
• Oton Kučera (popularizer of science as well as of Tesla's AC technology; born in Petrinja near Zagreb).

Fiorello LaGuardia, Nikola Tesla and Croatian language

Fiorello H. LaGuardia, who would later become one of America's foremost public servants, was an interpreter on Ellis Island from 1907 to 1910. Certified to speak three languages - Italian, German, and Croatian, LaGuardia received an annual salary of $1,200.

La Guardia utilized his knowledge of several languages, reportedly including Hebrew: Croatian, German, Italian, and Yiddish.

Mr. Chester did me a good turn by sending me to Croatia one summer for four months for the express purpose of studying Croatian.
Croatian was tough, with its seven cases, all of them used, and its many conjugations of verbs.
While I never pretended to be expert in this language, I did learn enough of it to pass a Civil Service examination later, which enabled me to get the job as interpreter at Ellis Island that helped me work my way through law school.

Tesla's predictions of Internet and mobile phone

Nikola Tesla in his autobiography My Inventions, published by Electrica Experimenter in 1919, in the fifth part of his series (entitled The Magnifying Transmitter), for the first time announces to the broad public his prediction of the advent of mobile phones, and even of the Internet:

This invention was one of a number comprised in my "World-System" of wireless transmission which I undertook to commercialize on my return to New York in 1900. As to the immediate purposes of my enterprise, they were clearly outlined in a technical statement of that period from which I quote:

"The 'World-System' has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment. By its means, for instance, a telephone subscriber here may call up and talk to any other subscriber on the Globe. An inexpensive receiver, not bigger than a watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played in some other place, however distant. These examples are cited merely to give an idea of the possibilities of this great scientific advance, which annihilates distance and makes that perfect natural conductor, the Earth, available for all the innumerable purposes which human ingenuity has found for a line-wire. One far-reaching result of this is that any device capable of being operated thru one or more wires (at a distance obviously restricted) can likewise be actuated, without artificial conductors and with the same facility and accuracy, at distances to which there are no limits other than those imposed by the physical dimensions of the Globe. Thus, not only will entirely new fields for commercial exploitation be opened up by this ideal method of transmission but the old ones vastly extended. ...

Colliers journal of January 30th, 1926, published an interview of John B. Kennedy with Nikola Tesla, under the title When woman is a boss, in which Tesla predicts very explicitly the advent of what we call today Internet and mobile phones.

When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.

We shall be able to witness and hear events - the inauguration of a President, the playing of a world series game, the havoc of an earthquake or the terror of a battle - just as though we were present.

Acknowledgements: Gymnasium in Karlovac (in particular to Sanda Furjanić and Antun Milinković), Croatian School Museum in Zagreb, Vladimir Muljević, Vatroslav Lopašić, Nikola Piasevoli, Zvonko Benčić, Željko Hanjš, Marijan Ožanić, Željko Krnjak, Dina Šimunić, Milica Kesler, Jasenka Ferber Bogdan.

Literature

• Nikola Tesla: My Inventions (on the left page, on the left of the photo of induction motor, there is a description of his ingenious profesor of Physics from Karlovac (Martin Sekulić)
• Vladimir Muljević: Martin Sekulić (1833-1905), Elektrotehnika br. 5, 1973, pp. 331-338.
• Ćiril Petešić: Genij s našeg kamenjara / Život i djelo Nikole Tesle (2. izdanje), Školske novine, Zagreb, 1977. (the booklet had 7 editions, and the first one was printed in 10.000 copies; information by the courtesy of professor Ante Bežen)
• Leo Randić (ed.): Pola stoljeća od boravka nobelovca Maxa Plancka u Zagrebu (Half a century since a stay of Max Planck in Zagreb), Priroda 3-4-5 (1992.), pp. 8-9 (the article contains a contribution by Dušan Pejnović from 1942: Predavanje Maxa Plancka u Zagrebu 15. rujna 1942. (A lecture by Max Planck in Zagreb, delivered in 1942), from the daily press of NDH preserved by Tihomir Šurina)
• Rudolf Strohal: Grad Karlovac opisan i orisan (The city of Karlovac described and Painted), Karlovac 1906. (Strohal was a director of Gymnasium in Karlovac, in the same building where there used to be situated the Higher Real School attended by Nikola Tesla during his secondary schooling from 1870-1873.)
• Antun Cuvaj: Građa za povijest školstva kraljevina Hrvatske i Slavonije od najstarijih vremena do danas VI., Zagreb, 1911., rakovačka Velika realka je opisana na str. 212-218.
• Natalija Jadrić i Tanja Mihaljević: Nikola Tesla - školovanje u Karlovcu [PPT]
• Darko Žubrinić:
  • Školovanje Nikole Tesle u Hrvatskoj i njegov profesor Martin Sekulić [PDF] (sažetak), u Povijest i filozofija tehnike / radovi EDZ sekcije 2017. godine / Benčić, Zvonko ; Moser, Josip (ur.). Zagreb : Kiklos, 2017. Str. 81-117.
  • Nastava hrvatskog jezika, matematike i fizike tijekom školovanja Nikole Tesle u Hrvatskoj [PDF], u Povijest i filozofija tehnike / radovi EDZ sekcije 2018 godine / Benčić, Zvonko (ur.). Zagreb : Kiklos, 2018. Str. 293-317
  • Nikola Tesla 1856.-1943., istaknuti hrvatsko-američki znanstvenik
• Ivica Vuković i Anđa Valent: Autori matematičkih rasprava u izvješćima rakovačke realke [PDF], PRIRODOSLOVLJE 16(1-2) III (2016), str. 89-110 (osobito str. 104-110)
• Kraljevska viša realna škola u Rakovcu; vidi također FOND
• Vladimir Paar: Fizičar Nikola Tesla, 1. dio, 2. dio, 3. dio
• Vladimir Novak: Croatians in America, Zagreb - Croatia, 2018, ISBN 978-953-7616-06-09
• Dušan Pejnović: O školovanju Nikole Tesle u Rakovcu (izvornik [JPG]), Matematičko-fizički list, Zagreb, br. 3, 1956-57, str. 112
  Dušan Pejnović (1883-1958) was Croatian physicist, author of about 160 papers (information by Dr. Branko Hanžek) and a collaborator of Croatian Encyclopedia.