NIKOLA TESLA: ANECDOTES
   
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     A YOUNG INVENTOR
  
     ``The child began when only a few years of age to make original 
     inventions. When he was five, he built a small waterwheel quite unlike 
     those he had seen in the countryside. It was smooth, without paddles, 
     yet it spun evenly in the current. Years later he was to recall this 
     fact when designing his unique bladeless turbine.
   
     But some of his other experiments were less successful. Once he 
     perched on the roof of the barn, clutching the family umbrella and 
     hyperventilating on the fresh mountain breeze until his body felt 
     light and the dizziness in his head convinced him he could fly. 
     Plunging to earth, he lay unconcious and was carried off to bed by his 
     mother.
   
     His sixteen-bug-power motor was, likewise, not an unqualified success. 
     This was a light contrivance made of splinters forming a windmill, 
     with a spindle and pulley attached to live June bugs. When the glued 
     insects beat their wings, as they did desperately, the bug-power 
     engine prepared to take off. This line of research was forever 
     abandoned however when a young friend dropped by who fancied the taste 
     of June bugs. Noticing a jarful standing near, he began cramming them 
     into his mouth. The youthful inventor threw up.''
   
     Adopted from "Tesla: Man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981.
     
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     SERBIAN POETRY
  
     ``Another anecdote about the inventor is told by the Reverend 
     Stijacic. On his first trip to America as a young writer for the 
     Serbian Federation, Stijacic had been surprised to find in the Chicago 
     Public Library, a book of poems, the author of which was the popular 
     Serbian poet, Zmaj-Jovan. The translator was Nikola Tesla. Later, when 
     Stijacic was taken by Dr. Rado to meet the inventor in his offices on 
     the twentieth floor of the Metropolitan Tower, he said, "Mr. Tesla, I 
     did not know that you were interested in poetry."
   
     A look of wry amusement shone in the inventor's eyes. "There are many 
     of us Serbs who sing," he said, "but there is nobody to listen to 
     us."''
   
     Adopted from "Tesla: man out of time", by Margaret Cheney, 1981.
     
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     AUNTS
  
     ``I had two old aunts with wrinkled faces, one of them having two 
     teeth protruding like the tusks of an elephant which she buried in my 
     cheek every time she kissed me. Nothing would scare me more than the 
     prospect of being hugged by these as affectionate as unattractive 
     relatives. It happened that while being carried in my mother's arms 
     they asked me who was the prettier of the two. After examining their 
     faces intently, I answered thoughtfully, pointing to one of them, 
     "This here is not as ugly as the other."''
   
     Nikola Tesla, "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart 
     Bros., 1982. Originally appeared in the Electrical experimenter 
     magazine in 1919. 
     
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