“Is this a real submarine or a prototype?”
“Real. Malisan. It is an Italian make. CB-20 of late 1943 was part of World War II and came to this museum in 1959.”
“Looks well maintained!”
“Yes, Beginning in 2008, it underwent a restoration of its interior and exterior. It has regained its original paint colour.”
This was the conversation I had with our guide while visiting the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb, Croatia. One of the striking collections of this museum was this submarine, a CB class midget built by the Caproni, commissioned in 1943 for the Royal Italian Navy. Following the Italian Armistice in September 1943, it was captured by the Germans, who handed it to the Navy of the Italian Social Republic. In 1945, after the war, the Yugoslavs captured it and commissioned it into their Army. It was decommissioned in the 1950s, and in 1959, it was handed over to the Technical Museum in Zagreb, which was opened to the public on January 14, 1963.
The Nikola Tesla Technical Museum is fascinating. It’s not as big and interactive as the Michigan Science Centre or not as rich in the display as the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Detroit, which I visited a few years ago. Nevertheless, it has on display the power of the human mind in scientific innovation, especially in 19th and 20th century Europe.
The museum features exhibits such as steam engines, models of geology and mining, wartime communication systems such as the telephone, telegraph, a signal transferring machine, a locomotive, a tram car, military vehicles, and the earliest European version of geyser, freezer, sewing machine, ironing system, firefighting equipment, spacecraft, rocket carriers and orbit stations. It maintains the oldest steam engine in the region, dating from the mid-19th century, which is still operational. Above all, it proudly dedicates a complete section on the Nikola Tesla study with demonstration equipment.
The guide’s face lit up as we reached the Tesla demonstration corner. He was excited to explain Tesla’s inventions. As we settled down in anticipation, he introduced Tesla: “The great inventor Nikola Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and wireless electricity distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments and the possibility of wireless communication in the 19th and 20th centuries, which have now become part of our everyday lives. Born an ethnic Serb in Smiljan village during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in today’s Croatia, on July 10, 1856 to a family of priests of an Eastern Orthodox Church, he was expected to succeed his father, but destiny had some other design. Interested in the demonstrations of electricity by his physics teacher in school, he wanted to study physics and engineering instead of becoming a priest. Fortunately for science, he fell sick for nine months, and his father swore to free him from the future priesthood and allow him to study engineering in case he recovered from his illness. He recovered and evaded conscription into the Austro-Hungarian Army to join the Imperial-Royal Technical College in Graz in 1875 on a scholarship but did not complete his degree.”
The guide paused, smiled and resumed, “This does not mean that one has to drop out of formal education to be Tesla.”
International currents
Tesla worked in Hungary and Paris before moving to the U.S. Subsequently, the Tesla Electric Company was formed in 1887, where he worked on improving and developing new electric motors, generators and other electrical devices.
Before us, the Columbus Egg stood on one of its ends as the guide spun it using a two-phase coil found in an induction motor designed by Tesla. He continued to explain Tesla’s induction motor and the physics of a rotating magnetic field.
The guide explained that it was the time of “war of currents”, and Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla wanted to prove who had the superior technology for electrical transmission. Edison promoted direct current (DC), while Westinghouse promoted alternating current (AC). After Tesla demonstrated his AC motor in 1888, he was a clear winner, and Westinghouse bought Tesla’s AC patents and hired him to commercialise the motor. However, Westinghouse could not afford to develop Tesla’s motor and other polyphase systems immediately because of stiff competition between three big firms, the Westinghouse, Edison, and Thomson-Houston Electric Company, each financially undercutting the other.
“Volunteer to experience the alternating current?” The guide asked and we agreed. He asked the three of us to hold hands, and as electricity passed through us, I felt a slight vibration through my hands. It was milder than the accidental electric shock that one sometimes gets from household electrical appliances.
The guide now slid the cabinets for the final acts, lighting gas-discharge tube lamps and wireless transmission of high-voltage, high-frequency alternating current. As he continued, he emphasised Tesla’s moot physics point that intelligible signals can be transferred to any distance without wires by conducting it through the earth.
The demonstration of wireless transmission of high-voltage electricity was both scary and exciting. As the guide wound up, he touched upon a critical issue of nationalising global thinkers, innovators and scientists as a part of the politics of nationalism. He wanted to convey the message that nations have been eager to own Nikola Tesla, and it is a fact that he was born to a Serbian family in a village which then belonged to the Austrian Empire and now to modern-day Croatia. He was a naturalised U.S. citizen and worked there, and Westinghouse proudly owns patents for many of his inventions. Knowledge cannot be bound by geography, nationality and ethnicity. Tesla is of the world, and his creations are for the betterment of humanity. Croatians are proud of him as much as the world is. The guide reiterated what Tesla had once said, “I am equally proud of my Serb origin and my Croat homeland.” It was a profound concluding remark and perhaps a fitting tribute to Nikola Tesla’s genius.
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