Tesla’s only portrait, for which he posed in person, was never in Tesla’s inheritance.  That portrait is most likely in some private collection.  People are interested to come to the museum, to look at the exhibit or to ask for some information about Tesla, they have feelings for him, but they are less interested to do research.  That sort of concentration and perseverance is lacking in the great majority of visitors, although there are exceptions.

Zorica Civrić, custodian of the Museum of Nikola Tesla in Belgrade

Before founding the museum, Institute “Nikola Tesla” was founded.  Who were the initiators and how was the Association for building the Institute organized?

In January 1936 the Association for Building the Institute of Nikola Tesla was founded.  As opposed to today, when associations have different sort of aims, this association was comprised of the most distinguished professors of the College of Engineering in Belgrade, and the president of the association was the president of the Serbian Royal Academy. 

What gives this association a special significance is that Tesla himself knew about its activities.  Tesla was in contact with Slavko Boksan, who started publishing works about Tesla in the ‘20s.  He worked on gathering people who could help with the realization of the goal, and who had the knowledge and willingness to write about the great scientist. 

Slavko Boksan played a very significant role in this period because he wanted the people here to talk about Tesla’s merits as much as possible.  That same year, 1936, Tesla’s eightieth birthday party was held, and Boksan was again the initiator of the event.  A collection with the works of the participators in the celebration was published, and at the time those were important names in the world of science.

When was the Institute founded, and what were its goals?

The Institute was founded in 1939, but the Institute celebrates the year of founding the Association as its year of founding, so it is celebrating its seventieth birthday this year.  One of the goals of the Institute was to acquaint the scientists with Tesla’s work.  After the lecture Tesla delivered in London and Paris in 1892, where he was received as a world-famous scientist, not much was being written about Tesla in Europe. 

But during the time of preparation for the founding of the Institute, in the period between 1936 and 1939, he received much recognition from numerous European universities.  What Boksan did was particularly important, he reminded people about the significance of Tesla’s inventions in the area of poly-phase systems, but he also tried to illuminate Tesla’s contribution in the area of the radio. 

To this date, this theme is extremely interesting.  The most important role of the association lay in the fact that everything was thought out, and it had a goal that went ahead of what was being done.  The consequence of the existence of the association and the celebration of Tesla’s eightieth birthday in 1936 in Belgrade was precisely the founding of the Institute.

The founding of the Museum?

Everything that happened between the two World Wars made Belgrade into the place where it was natural for Tesla’s inheritance to arrive.  Sava Kosanović, after becoming the guardian over Tesla’s possessions, took over the duty of handling the financial and administrative problems of taking care of the inheritance.  In 1946 he became the first ambassador of the Federative People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in USA. 

He completed his diplomatic activity in 1950, and in 1951 the entire material was taken to Belgrade.  At first, the material was kept in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering in a few rooms, and from June 1952 it is placed in the Museum.  After the end of the war, there were indications that the inheritance would be given to the Institute, but after World War Two the Institute was connected to the industrialization of the country, so it was logical to found the Museum in 1952 as an institution that will keep the inheritance and Tesla’s memory.

There are two reasons why the moment when they examined Tesla’s inheritance was special to the people who did it.  Firstly, you are faced with the inheritance as a human being, the feeling you are in front of something that belonged to Nikola Tesla is great in itself.  Then you delve into all this material, into Tesla’s world, and you examine it. 

Even though there was a lot of material, the inheritance was quickly and carefully examined after hard work, and already in 1955 the permanent exhibit was opened.  All the models of Tesla’s apparatuses, exhibited in the museum, are done so well, that the visitors to the museum, if you don’t tell them they are replicas, think those are the devices Tesla made.  It is certain that there was a lot of love and dedication present with the engineers and the people who participated in the examination of the material during the preparation of the exhibit.

Adopting the unit T?

Even in 1956, when the hundredth anniversary of Tesla’s birth was celebrated, and when scientists from all over the world came to Belgrade, there was a far-reaching goal of the celebration, to contribute to the adoption of unit tesla.  That way of thinking was wise, the celebration did not have itself as purpose, it happens and everyone leaves, but there was an aspiration to continue with the work. 

The celebration in 1956 contributed to the final introduction of the unit.  At the hundredth anniversary in 1956, the president of the International Electrical Engineering Committee announced that the committee has adopted the proposal to name the unit of magnetic induction after Tesla, but that was not the end of the procedure.  At the 11th General Conference for Weights and Measures in 1960, the resolution to name the unit of magnetic induction in the International System of Units after the name of our great scientist was finally adopted. 

The initiative for naming the unit came from the professors of Technical Faculty, Aleksandar Damjanovic and Pavle Miljanic in the ‘30s.  The largest problem was the voting.  Many pro-Soviet oriented countries were against the adoption of the proposal, so during the breaks there was a lot of lobbying on the Serbian side.

Problems of the Museum today?

The conditions of keeping the material pose a big problem.  Different materials are kept under the same conditions in a physically narrow area.  Microclimatic conditions are not equally suitable for all the materials.  There is a particular problem with preserving papers and materials made out of silk.  The paper is sometimes more than a hundred years old, text is disappearing on certain documents that started fading away, although there are techniques which allows text to be read.  It is cheaper to invest into prevention than into conservation and restoration.

The Missing Material

Tesla’s only portrait, for which he posed in person, was never in Tesla’s inheritance.  That portrait is probably in some private collection.  It is a different story with Edison’s gold medal Tesla was awarded.  Charlotte Muzar, Sava Kosanović’s associate, testifies that after Tesla’s death, the medal was in the safe when it was closed in Tesla’s apartment, but the same object was missing when it was opened in Belgrade.

Interest

People are interested to come to the museum, to look at the exhibit or to ask for some information about Tesla, they have feelings for him, but they are less interested to do research.  That sort of concentration and perseverance is lacking in the great majority of visitors, although there are exceptions.  We are currently in the process of making microfilms and computerizing the archival material, so the reading and research of Tesla’s documents will be simplified once this process is finished. 

Our problem is that today history of science, a scientific discipline, is not developed.  American IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc) has a section dealing only with history of science, and it covers history of electronics and electrical engineering.

In the program of the state committee for celebrating 150th anniversary of Nikola Tesla’s birth, there is a point in which it says that the earthly remains of Nikola Tesla will be buried on the St. Sava Plateau?

I don’t believe something like that was forged, on the anniversary of his birth for Tesla to be buried again.  I don’t understand the choice of the place either.  I understand the opinion that Tesla has to rest at another place, and not in his Museum.  Good, but that should be discussed, and nothing should be done without the Museum.  Because if someone leaves out the Museum of Nikola Tesla, that person would leave out Tesla himself.  Tesla’s urn is kept here according to the wishes of his family, Sava Kosanović and Mića Trbojević.

They were the people who were closest to him, and Kosanovic’s only dilemma was whether to keep the urn in America, or to move it to the Museum.  Professor Veljko Korać, the first director of the Museum, was also consulted when it came to the decision, and it was decided to place the urn where it is now found.  It is placed in such a way that it does not disrupt the exhibit.  The fact that it is here enables a large number of people to pay their respects to Tesla in peace and quiet every time they come to the Museum.

About Tesla?

Tesla is a thinking man who cannot be placed in any frame, he crosses every limit you set for him, as if you wanted to put a giant in a bottle.  Familiarization with Tesla’s inheritance would be useful for creating one’s one picture about Tesla, instead of accepting interpretations.  It is barely known that in Tesla’s archive, there is a correspondence with 11,500 people and institutions. 

That completely destroys the image of him as a lonely man.  He was as much lonely as it was necessary for the huge work that was in front of him, and not because he wasn’t ready or capable of establishing contacts with people.  Tesla worked in companies he founded himself, he wasn’t a part of a system, and he was different from his colleagues even in that.  His way of life was his choice, to be as independent as possible.