CROATIA: MYTH AND REALITY
C. Michael McAdams

Nineteenth century Nazis

One journalist went so far as to disparage the very individuals depicted on the banknotes. Another noted the portrait of the great nineteenth century Croatian leader Ante Starsevic, considered to be the father of his country, and attempted to link him to the Nazis despite the fact that he lived and died in the wrong century.

Others pictured on Croatian banknotes included some of the most famous and revered names in Croatian history. All were dismissed as "rather obscure political figures or poets whose fame never extended beyond Croatia." The head of the Serbian Democratic Forum, a Croatian opposition party, suggested that the inventor Nikola Tesla was not considered because he was a Serb. Mother opined that the late dictator Josip Tito should have been considered but he was not an "ethnically pure Croat." To suggest that the Yugoslav communist dictator Tito be pictured on Croatian currency was absurd, but Nikola Tesla was a more interesting proposition.

Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Croatian-born American who left Croatia at age sixteen and spent fifty years of his life and most of his scientific career in the United States. Because of his Serbian Orthodox parentage, (his father was priest), Tesla was considered to be a Serb by Serbs and Croatians alike. The "prodigal genius" was responsible for thousands of inventions, including alternating current which powers the world. The invention of alternating current has been compared to the invention of the wheel for its impact on the world. Tesla was from Lika, Croatia, and left at age sixteen to study in Graz and Prague. He moved to the United States in 1884 to work with Bell, Edison, and Westinghouse. Tesla invented the radio in Europe in 1893 and a U.S. patent for radio transmission was filed on September 2, 1897. The patent was allowed on March 20, 1900, and became Tesla's second radio patent. The first was granted in 1898. Tesla's patent for radio was hotly disputed by the company formed by Guglielmo Marconi, who was the first to broadcast his voice in 1895. Marconi's patent was filed on November 10, 1900, and was rejected as a duplicate of Tesla's.

In later years the Marconi Company attempted to strip Tesla of his patent. After years of litigation and thousands of pages of testimony from the world's great scientists, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tesla's to be the sole valid patent in June 1943, only months after Tesla's death. The case was much more than academic. The Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company made millions and wanted sole ownership of radio. Like most of his inventions, Tesla was willing to give the technology to the world for free.

In 1904 Tesla envisioned, to the disbelief of most of the world, "A cheap and simple device, which might be carried in one's pocket [which) may then be set up anywhere on sea or land, and it will record the world's news or such special messages as may be intended for it."

In life, Tesla was an eccentric and brilliant man. In death his legacy lived on as his theories continued to be explored and confirmed. It is nearly impossible to enter a modern room or vehicle, whether an automobile or space shuttle, and not see some device, whether a computer screen or a telephone that can not be linked to his genius.

But his greatest legacy may be as on of the few shared heroes of Croatia and Serbia. Golda Meir was as revered by Americans as she was by Israelis. Yet her portrait does not appear on U.S. currency even though she lived in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, (1906-1921) about as long as Tesla lived in Lika. Despite that, there was one final reason that Croatia did not picture Tesla on a banknote. Nikola Tesla and the Tesla museum in Belgrade, were pictured on the 1994 five dinar note of Serbia, a country where he never lived.

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Edición electrónica de Studia Croatica, 1998

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