Nikola Tesla

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Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, spring 1894

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Death

Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, some time between the evening of 5 January and the morning of 8 January 1943, at the age of 86.[100] Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number,[101] in effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.

Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the government's Alien Property Custodian office took possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened. At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing his work on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma, and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers; J. Edgar Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents.[102] One document stated that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments [...]".

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Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American authorities to gain these items after his death due to the potential significance of some of his research. Eventually, his nephew, Sava Kosanoviċ, won possession of some of his personal effects, which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum.[103] Tesla's funeral took place on 12 January 1943, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City. His body was cremated and his ashes taken to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1957. The urn was placed in the Nikola Tesla Museum, where it resides to this day.

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Bust of Tesla by Ivan Meštrović, 1952, in Zagreb, Croatia

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Tesla's pigeon

According to John J. O'Neill, author of Prodigal Genius, the Life of Nikola Tesla, Tesla told him this story in the presence of William L. Laurence, the New York Times science writer.

Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me." If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.

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One night as he was lying in bed, she flew in through the window and he knew right away that she had something important to tell him: she was dying. "And then, as I got her message, there came a light from her eyes - powerful beams of light". "...Yes," "...it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory."

Tesla admitted to O'Neill that when that particular pigeon died, something went out of his life. Before that time, he could complete the most ambitious programs he could ever dream of but after the pigeon flew into the beyond, he knew his life's work was done for good.[104]

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Legacy and honors

He did not like posing for portraits, doing so only once for princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy.[105] His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who was at that time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see it. Meštrović made a bronze bust (1952) that is held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56) placed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the Ruđer Bošković Institute to receive a duplicate. In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his hometown of Gospić in 1986.

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The SI unit tesla (T) for measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B) was named in Tesla’s honor at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris in 1960. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla. Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power, and is considered the most prestigious award in the area of electric power.[106] The crater Tesla on the far side of the Moon and the minor planet 2244 Tesla are also named after him.

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Tesla was featured on several Yugoslav- and Serbian dinar notes and coinage. The largest power plant complex in Serbia, the TPP Nikola Tesla is named in his honor. On 10 July 2006 the biggest airport in Serbia was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in honor of Tesla’s 150th birthday.

The company, Tesla was a large, state-owned electrotechnical conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia. It was renamed in Tesla's honor from the previous Electra on 7 March 1946. Some of its subsidiaries still trade in the Czech Republic.

An electric car company, Tesla Motors, named their company in tribute to Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola Tesla [...] We‘re confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both understanding and approval.[107]

The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a phone hardware company in Zagreb before Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honor of Tesla's pioneering work in wireless communication.

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The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist , as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this anniversary, 10 July 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Tesla. The parochial church of St. Peter and Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers ever published by, and about, Tesla; most of these provided by Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society. in New York. Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blazevic has been erected. In the nearby city of Gospić, on the same date as the reopening of the renovated village and museums, a higher education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Krsinic (the original is in Belgrade) was presented.

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The song "Tesla's Hotel Room" by the Handsome Family, on their 2006 album Last Days of Wonder, is a fictionalized account of Tesla's later years at the New Yorker hotel.

The heavy metal group Tesla, which made famous the rock-ballad "Love Song", was named after Nikola Tesla, and their website provides a link to Nikola Tesla's webpage.

The famous Serbian composer-singer Zeljko Joksimovic composed in 2006 the instrumental song "Nikola Tesla", vocals by Jelena Tomasevic for a documentary film on Radio Television of Serbia. This song was released in 2008 at the Balkan ethnic collection “Balkan Routes Vol. 01: Nikola Tesla” which is dedicated to Tesla.

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In the years since his death, many of his innovations, theories and claims have been used, at times unsuitably and controversially, to support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific. Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in conspiracies about "hidden knowledge". Even in Tesla's time, some believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.[22] This belief is maintained in present times by followers of Nuwaubianism.

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Statue of Nikola Tesla in Niagara Falls State Park on Goat Island, New York.

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20 Serbian dinar coin minted in 2006

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Monuments

A monument to Tesla was established at Niagara Falls, New York, USA. This monument is a copy of a monument standing in front of the Belgrade University Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Another monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an alternator, was established at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.[108] The monument was officially unveiled on Sunday, 9 July 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth. The monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton, Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning design from an international competition. Tesla's most famous statue is the one erected on 23 May 1879 at Sycamore Peak showing him and Dr. Brian S. Whitecross. Belgrade International Airport is called "Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport".[109]