Had it not been for Nikola Tesla (1856 – 1943), I wouldn’t be sitting on a train. Nobody would – except, maybe one, pulled by a steam engine. Greta beware! Had Tesla not won the AC/DC war against Thomas Alpha Edison the world’s first AC hydro power station would not have been built at the Niagara Falls in 1895, and the second industrial revolution might have taken a bit longer to kick off.

Part of Tesla portrait in Museum

Some due is of course owed to Elon Musk who uses Tesla as a brand name for his vehicles, bringing back a term faintly familiar from physics at high school as a measure for magnetic flux or induction. Nobody teacher had bothered at the time to talk about the man Tesla.

He was a genius whose early insight into AC being much superior for electrical power transportation over long distances than DC opened electricity for wider use and larger benefit of society at large.

So any train enthusiast who doesn’t pay a visit to the Tesla Museum when passing through Belgrade clearly has to work on his or her credibility. The museum isn’t huge, it houses Tesla’s urn and the technical drawings and documents he left behind. There are models of his various inventions (and drawings of his visions for solving energy problems of humanity) and artefacts from the period when he was most active in the late 19th century.

Model of the power generation and distribution system principle as applied at Niagara.

The visit includes an interesting and a bit spectacular show of high voltage discharges, neon tube lamps mysteriously illuminating when electricity runs harmlessly through volunteering visitors.

Most impressive to me were two aspects of Tesla’s life. First, he emigrated to the USA, because he felt his innovations were not appreciated in Europe (a bell not unfamiliar is ringing in the back of my mind here). Secondly, and more impressively, he as an engineer won the systems “war” against Edison, who was on this matter more of a bullying businessman than an engineer. Also not too unfamiliar a story, albeit with the unexpected happy ending.

So I invite you to remember the genius Nikola Tesla and his contribution to modern life when the real Tesla with over 10000 HP pulls your high speed train, or when the coffee grinder with some 200 watts crushes coffee beans for your morning cappuccino.