Love Tales #3: Tesla and the Pigeon

We live in an age of technological advancements, electric cars being one of the most sought after amongst all the recent inventions. One word that comes to the mind of everyone looking to buy an electric car is “Tesla.” An American electric vehicle company headed by Elon Musk, Tesla is one of the most successful clean energy companies of current times.

However, very few people know where the word “Tesla” comes from. Or that Musk’s giant of a company takes its name from the American inventor, Nikola Tesla. Even more fascinatingly, a handful of people are aware of Tesla’s life, his times, and his fascinating love for a pigeon!

Pic credit: Wikimedia Commons

Nikola Tesla was a Serbian American engineer and physicist known for his groundbreaking work in electric power. He had over 300 patents worldwide, and his inventions helped pave the way for alternating current (AC), electric motors, radios, fluorescent lights, lasers, and remote control, among many other things.

He is considered a genius, with numerous patents to his name, but he had an eccentric side that many people found difficult.

Among Tesla’s many quirks was his fondness for pigeons. When living in New York, he spent several hours feeding pigeons in the park and even took them home if any were injured so he could tend to them. He often kept the windows open in the hotel room he lived in so that pigeons could visit when they wished, resulting in a horrible mess. He once even asked a hotel chef to prepare a special mix of seeds for the pigeons! In addition, Tesla’s acquaintances found his passion for pigeons weird because he was a well-known germaphobe.

Fascination with pigeons was one of Tesla's many idiosyncrasies. He was obsessed with the number 3 and engaged in a number of compulsive behaviors around it. For example, he commonly washed his hands three times in a row and would walk around a building three times before entering.

Married life was not for Tesla, who once said: “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.” He reportedly thought that sex would hinder his scientific work!

Though he never married, Tesla admitted to falling in love with a very special white pigeon that visited him regularly.

"I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon,” John Jacob O’Neill, Tesla's biographer wrote in his book 'Prodigal Genius.'

It was in 1922 that Tesla reported that the white pigeon had flown into his room to tell him that she was dying. Before the bird passed, he said, a white light shone from her eyes, brighter than anything he had ever generated with his electrical machinery. Tesla was heartbroken at her death and told friends that at that moment, he felt his life’s work was finished.

“When that pigeon died, something went out of my life. Up to that time I knew with a certainty that I would complete my work, no matter how ambitious my program, but when that something went out of my life I knew my life’s work was finished,” Tesla told O’Neill.

Love can mean different things to different people. For some, it is passionate and could exist between two humans only. While for others like Tesla, it is painful and could happen between a man and a pigeon as well. And with the same intensity and zeal as between two humans.

As Tesla well described his love for the pigeon:

“Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. When she was ill, I knew, and understood; she came to my room and I stayed beside her for days. I nursed her back to health. That pigeon was the joy of my life. If she needed me, nothing else mattered. As long as I had her, there was a purpose in my life.”