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Nikola Tesla’s Childhood
Nikola Tesla was born on July 9th and July 10th, but his birthday is celebrated on July 10th. He was born near the western edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it’s known as Lika, and then Lika became part of Yugoslavia, and today is located in Croatia near the border of Bosnia. The house he was born in was a little house that stood near the Serbian Orthodox church, where his father was an ill-paid priest, between the Adriatic Sea and a range of mountains called the Velebit.
Statue of Nikola Tesla in Nikola Tesla memorial center in Smiljan, Croatia
His early childhood was devastating, his brother, Dane, was killed in a horse riding accident. Later on after the poignant death of Dane poor Nikola was stricken with a lifelong sense of obligation to his parents to compensate for their sadness. Scientists today may say that Tesla had suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Young Tesla in his first few years of a boy wasn’t showing any warnings of being an amazing genius. In these years Nikola was exceedingly adventurous; since he lived on a farm he roamed the hills and went miles away from home. He mostly roamed around the hills with the domestic animals, such as geese, and pigeons of their farm. And of course from all of that play and adventure he’s bound to get a few boyish scabs usually on his legs.
At around five years old Nikola was dreaming about becoming an engineer, but his father disapproved of this nonsense. He wanted Nikola to be in the army like wealthy Uncle Pajo. Nikola ignored his father and to proved to him that he was born to be an engineer by, at the age of six, at a demonstration of the town’s fire truck engine he managed to fix the engine with the help of the captain and crew of the fire station.
Nikola’s first job was ringing the church bell on Sundays, and he got this job because his father entrusted him into it. On his first Sabbath he waited and rang the bell perfectly on time. Then after he rang the bell he would race down the stairs of the belfry, but this time he accidentally stepped on the mayor’s wife’s skirt and ripped it off her body, later on he quoted, “That sounded like a salvo of musketry by raw recruits”.
Young Nikola had an abnormal ability; out of nowhere he could visualize scenes, and even people. Sometimes he wouldn’t have any idea if objects were real or imaginary, so tormented he had to cover his eyes to know. Later on in his life he would see that this really is helpful to inventors such as himself.
At the age of six He moved to a nearby city called Gospic. By age ten he was obsessed with vacuums; by loving this he started mathematics. In school he could do calculations in his head faster than the teacher could write on the board, because of this he was first suspected of cheating.
During this period he saw a drawing of Niagara Falls and immediately pictured a large wheel pushing the water through it and making it go faster. He told this idea to his Uncle Josif and said that he would go to America and capture energy and thirty years later he did.
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