Tesla and the Pigeons

At the end of his life, Nikola Tesla develops an obsessional relationship with New York's pigeons. He daily feeds certain birds, rents hotel rooms where they can enter freely, and spends an important part of his income to care for them. This fascination contrasts strongly with the classic image of the inventor turned exclusively toward machines and electricity.

Nikola Tesla spends the last decades of his life in several New York hotels after having progressively lost financial control of numerous industrial projects. Although he remains famous for his work on alternating current, electric motors, and high-frequency transmissions, his behavior becomes increasingly eccentric in the eyes of his entourage.

Among his best-known habits figures his relationship with pigeons living around Bryant Park and the New York Public Library. Tesla daily feeds the birds and affirms recognizing individually some of them.

He develops a particular attachment for a white female he describes in several testimonies as exceptionally important to him. Tesla explains having spent important sums to have injured pigeons treated and sometimes installs specific devices in his hotel rooms to welcome them.

This obsession accompanies other documented compulsive behaviors: fear of microbes, fixation on certain numbers, and extremely rigid routines in daily life. Historians still debate the psychological interpretation of these elements. The image of the solitary genius surrounded by pigeons today strongly participates in Tesla's cultural myth, a figure at once associated with radical technological innovation and the progressive isolation of great modern inventors.