Reprehensible by Mikey Robins

Reprehensible by Mikey Robins

Author:Mikey Robins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Australia
Published: 2020-08-04T16:00:00+00:00


Your Move, Elon

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943), among others of his era but greatly more so, helped create much of what we regard as the modern world. A polymath, we can see his theories and inventions at work every day in the areas of electricity, wireless communications, X-rays and radio – there is even a theory that he invented a ‘death ray’, a concept that would later be popularised by science fiction writers in the 20s and 30s. Although never fully proved, I add it for dramatic effect.

He did, however, create over three hundred patents, developed the first motor to run on AC power, along with pioneering radio control devices, the plasma lamp, and much of what we would consider to be the modern torpedo – and that’s just the tip of the invention iceberg. And just for fun he fluently spoke eight different languages.

What could possibly drive one single individual to have the intellect and purpose to create so many amazing inventions – inventions that seemed to come directly from his singularly fervent imagination?

In a word: celibacy.

This was driven by several factors. He was a life-long germophobe, was obsessed with personal hygiene, and had more than a few personal quirks, one of which was oystersaritisphobia, or an irrational fear of pearls. They disgusted him to the point where he once sent a secretary home from work because she had arrived with a string of the ‘offensive’, softly glowing orbs around her neck. It was well known that he could not even engage in a conversation with a woman who was wearing any sort of pearl adornment. And seeing as pearls were the height of nineteenth-century fashion among the ladies in whose circles he travelled, it must have made life interesting, to say the least.

But what probably kept him out of the sack more than anything was his long-held belief that, in his own words, ‘I do not think that you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.’ Apparently even a great mind can be selective when it comes to rearranging historical facts.

It would seem that he channelled all of his pent-up romantic and sexual energy into his work and speculations on future inventions. At the start of the twentieth century he wrote an essay predicting what we would now call a ‘smart phone’. Many of his inventions and theories are still classified to this day. (I did mention ‘death ray’.)

That is not to say he never found love or companionship; it just came rather late in his life and it was, well, more than just a bit odd. Rather than attempt to encapsulate this unique relationship myself, I think it only right that Nikola Tesla be allowed to speak for himself:

I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird 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.



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