Speech by Milutin Milanković on the occasion of Tesla’s 80th birthday

Speech by Milutin Milanković, a giant of our science, Vice President of the Royal Serbian Academy, at the celebration of Nikola Tesla’s 80th birthday at the Kolarac Foundation in 1936.

Milutin Milankovic (Paja Jovanovic, 1943)

It took man a full fifty centuries to master the laws of nature, with his present-day technology, over land, sea and air, and to expand his view into the depths of the universe. The history of natural sciences and technology, the bright side of the history of mankind, teaches us that this conquering work of man progressed slowly, step by step. It shows us that from 3500 BC to the present day, about 15,000 inventions have been made, which constitute the treasury of our knowledge of natural forces, and which have created our present-day technology. Each such invention has taken us one step forward.

Among this large number of inventions, there are about two hundred selected ones, which differ from all the others in their importance. Those inventions, which we call epochal, were lightning bolts of the spirit of ingenious men, which, flashing, illuminated the horizon of our knowledge and opened vistas to distant unknown lands. With such an invention, our knowledge and our dominion over nature were not expanded by just one step, but by an entire vast area.

Nikola Tesla with Ruđer Bošković’s book “Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis”, in front of a transformer, New York, May 20, 1896; photo: Wikipedia (colored)

In that imperial treasury of epoch-making inventions of human genius, two inventions of Nikola Tesla shine like alembic stones – the invention of energy transmission by polyphase current and the invention of high-voltage and high-frequency electric currents. The first invention doubled the range of energy transmission by electric current, the second invention increased the voltage and frequency of electric alternating current from hundreds of units to millions, the unexpected properties of such currents were discovered and used in wireless telegraphy, radio engineering and medicine. These two inventions of Nikola Tesla were not steps of progress, but winged flights of his. And they were, at the moment when they were announced to the professional world, evaluated and greeted as such.

With these inventions of his, an epoch in the development of technology, Tesla soared high above our environment. But when he reached the peak of his fame, when he gave his lecture in front of the Royal English Institution in London and then performed his sensational experiments on the same table on which Faraday once experimented, Nikola Tesla flew to his old falcon’s nest to kiss the grave of his father Milutin, an Orthodox priest and national fighter, to embrace his mother who had breastfed him with Serbian milk, to kiss the right hand of our great poet Zmaj, who had inspired him with his spirit, and here, in the capital of pre-war Serbia, to announce to the whole world his belonging to Serbism and his pride in having emerged from it. And all of Serbism, from Kršna Lika, Tesla’s cradle, to Timok, cheered enthusiastically for its great son.

That was in May 1892. Since that time, almost half a century has flown by, a glorious chapter in our history. With the blood of its best sons, our people united and built their great state. In that struggle for liberation and unification, faced with new tasks and worries, we began to forget our great son on the other side of the thick sea. In our newly created state, we have not yet reached the point where, using the tools that Tesla forged, we can become masters of the natural forces of our country. Our rivers and basins are still fruitlessly wasting their fabulous energy. Only on the periphery of our state, when we approach its border, can we notice a high-voltage electric power line here and there, and in its three wires will an expert eye recognize the realization of Tesla’s invention. Our material culture has not yet reached the level where we can feel the benefits of Tesla’s inventions, and the public has not yet understood their significance. Only recently, thanks to the work and pen of our electrical engineer Slavko Boškan, has our and foreign public become better informed about everything that Tesla’s genius created. And it is certain that the seeds that Tesla sowed will bear fruit for us as well. The time will come when we will enter into a spiritual connection with the whole wide world through electrical waves, when electrical power lines will crisscross our entire country, and the light that they will spread everywhere where our people live will speak eloquently to future generations about that titan, the son of our people, who, with the gigantic power of his spirit, overcame the natural elements.

Celebrating today the eightieth anniversary of Nikola Tesla’s birth, we do not intend or attempt to increase his unattainable fame, but we only wish to express our pride that a genius has emerged from our midst, whose name, even without our help, will forever be recorded in bright letters in the history of science and technology.

The Serbian Royal Academy, which I have the honor to represent here, placed Tesla’s name at the top of its list of correspondents forty years ago. It participates wholeheartedly in today’s celebration of Nikola Tesla and pays its respects to his genius and his immortal work.

Milutin Milanković

Milutin Milanković’s speech was prepared for pouke.org by Aleksandra Ninković Tašić, president of the Mihajlo Pupin Educational and Research Center and author of the exhibition about Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin at the Historical Museum of Serbia, which was seen by more than 200,000 people in 15 months.

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