Complex Numbers

Current Events

Remember Rebecca Black's squirmy earworm song, "Friday?" No, I will not link it. Well, this morning, I was tempted to do a parody in honor of today called "Pi Day," but my cats talked me out of it, so we all get to keep our sanity.

Unlike this guy, apparently. From Big Think:

Tesla’s pigeon: How the great inventor fell for a bird  
"She understood me and I understood her. I loved that pigeon.”

The main trouble with Nikola Tesla's legacy is that his name was appropriated by a mediocre band, and then run into the ground by one of the most successful con artists in history. The only way to reclaim what shouldn't be a laughingstock, I think, is to remember the inventor's life, accomplishments, and, yes, even his apparent madness.

On a February morning in 1935, a disoriented homing pigeon flew into the open window of an unoccupied room at the Hotel New Yorker.

That hotel, though it's been through a few changes over the decades, still exists. I've stayed there. I don't think the windows open anymore; with air conditioning, it's not necessary, and maybe it prevents some jumpers.

While management debated what to do, a maid rushed to the 33rd floor and knocked at the door of the hotel’s most infamous denizen: Nikola Tesla.

When I was there, I even made a pilgrimage to the 33rd floor.

“Dr. Tesla … dropped work on a new electrical project, lest his charge require some little attention,” reported The New York Times.

"Charge?" They just couldn't resist, could they? Revolting how some people just plug in the most obvious puns.

Nikola Tesla—the Serbian-American scientist famous for designing the alternating current motor and the Tesla coil—had, for years, regularly been spotted skulking through the nighttime streets of midtown Manhattan, feeding the birds at all hours.

He invented way more than that. Some say, rather poetically, that he invented the 20th century. While a bit hyperbolic, it's not that far off the mark.

In the dark, he’d sound a low whistle, and from the gloom, hordes of pigeons would flock to the old man, perching on his outstretched arms.

Look, all I'm saying is, that's a remarkable image and if someone hasn't painted that, someone definitely should.

Tesla said that he and his bird could speak to one another mind to mind, and that sometimes, as they silently conversed, beams of light would shoot from her eyes.

This is the sort of thing I meant by "madness" above. But is it really? Or was he operating on a different level of reality? With genius like Tesla's, there's always that seed of doubt: maybe he was right, and it's the rest of us who are blind.

Tesla’s love of pigeons was an obsession with a capital O. Likely followed by a capital C and a capital D. He seems to have suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder, and his case was severe.

Anyone with only a passing knowledge of Tesla's life, and of pop psychology, would immediately jump to the same conclusion. While it can be dangerous and rude to diagnose someone from some distance in space and time, all the signs were absolutely there. I'd even throw in the possibility of autism.

I won't quote more from the article, which is fairly long, but, and I can't emphasize this enough, beautifully written. It weaves quite the tapestry of history and science, and, of course, there's a bit of Mark Twain in there.

This is where I'd usually relate the subject of the article to Pi Day, but all I could think of was the relationship between pi and the sine waves of electrical current, but maybe that's a bit too obvious while at the same time too esoteric. So I'll just leave it at that and go find me some pie.