FROM IMMIGRANT TO INVENTOR
[Illustration: _From a photograph, copyright by Underwood & Underwood_
MICHAEL PUPIN]
FROM
IMMIGRANT TO INVENTOR
BY
MICHAEL PUPIN
PROFESSOR OF ELECTRO-MECHANICS, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK
[Illustration]
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK · LONDON
1949
COPYRIGHT, 1922, 1923, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
Published September, 1923
Reprinted November, 1928; January, March, 1924
July, 1924
TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER
PREFACE
Looking back over the development of this volume throughout the year or
more during which I have been writing it, it seems to me that I cannot
better express the end I have had in view than to repeat here what I
wrote at the beginning of Chapter XI:
“The main object of my narrative was, and still is, to describe the
rise of idealism in American science, and particularly in physical
sciences and the related industries. I was a witness to this gradual
development; everything that I have described so far was an attempt to
qualify as a witness whose testimony has competence and weight. But
there are many other American scientists whose opinions in this matter
have more competence and weight than my opinion has. Why, then, should
a scientist who started his career as a Serbian immigrant speak of
the idealism in American science when there are so many native-born
American scientists who know more about this subject than I do? Those
who have read my narrative so far can answer this question. I shall
only point out now that there are certain psychological elements in the
question which justify me in the belief that occasionally an immigrant
can see things which escape the attention of the native. Seeing is
believing; let him speak who has the faith, provided that he has a
message to deliver.”
MICHAEL PUPIN.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHAT I BROUGHT TO AMERICA 1
II. THE HARDSHIPS OF A GREENHORN 43
III. THE END OF THE APPRENTICESHIP AS GREENHORN 72
IV. FROM GREENHORN TO CITIZENSHIP AND COLLEGE
DEGREE 100
V. FIRST JOURNEY TO IDVOR IN ELEVEN YEARS 138
VI. STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 167
VII. END OF STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE 192
VIII. STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 218
IX. END OF STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN 247
X. THE FIRST PERIOD OF MY ACADEMIC CAREER AT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 279
XI. THE RISE OF IDEALISM IN AMERICAN SCIENCE 311
XII. THE NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL 349
INDEX 389
ILLUSTRATIONS
Michael Pupin Frontispiece
Pupin’s Birthplace FACING PAGE 4
The Old Monument on Staro Selo 4
Olympiada Pupin, Mother of Michael Pupin 10
The Village Church in Idvor 36
Nassau Hall, Princeton University 68
An Early View of Cooper Union 74
Men of Progress--American Inventors 78
Photograph of Pupin Taken in 1883 136
Joseph Henry 204
John Tyndall 204
Michael Faraday 220
Herman von Helmholtz 232
The Hertzian Oscillator page 265
Henry Augustus Rowland 290
James Clerk Maxwell 290
Electrical Discharges Representing Two Types
of Solar Coronæ 294
Solar Corona of 1922 294
Sir J. J. Thomson 306
Wilhelm Konrad Rœntgen 306
Pupin’s Residence at Norfolk, Conn. 328
Dr. George Ellery Hale, Honorary Chairman of
the National Research Council 372
The National Research Council Building,
Washington, D. C. 372
Facsimile of Letter from President Harding page 386
FROM IMMIGRANT TO INVENTOR
I
WHAT I BROUGHT TO AMERICA
When I landed at Castle Garden, forty-eight years ago, I had only five
cents in my pocket. Had I brought five hundred dollars, instead of five
cents, my immediate career in the new, and to me a perfectly strange,
land would have been the same. A young immigrant such as I was then
does not begin his career until he has spent all the money which he
has brought with him. I brought five cents, and immediately spent it
upon a piece of prune pie, which turned out to be a bogus prune pie.
It contained nothing but pits of prunes. If I had brought five hundred
dollars, it would have taken me a little longer to spend it, mostly
upon bogus things, but the struggle which awaited me would have been
the same in each case. It is no handicap to a boy immigrant to land
here penniless; it is not a handicap to any boy to be penniless when he
strikes out for an independent career, provided that he has the stamina
to stand the hardships that may be in store for him.
* * * * *
A thorough training in the arts and crafts and a sturdy physique
capable of standing the hardships of strenuous labor do entitle the
immigrant to special considerations. But what has a young and penniless
immigrant to offer who has had no training in any of the arts or crafts
and does not know the language of the land? Apparently nothing, and
if the present standards had prevailed forty-eight years ago I should
have been deported. There are, however, certain things which a young
immigrant may bring to this country that are far more precious than any
of the things which the present immigration laws prescribe. Did I bring
any of these things with me when I landed at Castle Garden in 1874? I
shall try to answer this question in the following brief story of my
life prior to my landing in this country.
Idvor is my native town; but the disclosure of this fact discloses
very little, because Idvor cannot be found on any map. It is a little
village off the highway in the province of Banat, formerly belonging
to Austria-Hungary, but now an important part of the kingdom of the
Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. At the Paris peace conference, in 1919,
the Rumanians claimed this province; they claimed it in vain. They
could not overcome the fact that the population of Banat is Serb, and
particularly of that part of Banat where Idvor is located. President
Wilson and Mr. Lansing knew me personally, and when they were informed
by the Yugoslav delegates in Paris that I was a native of Banat,
the Rumanian arguments lost much of their plausibility. No other
nationality except the Serb has ever lived in Idvor. The inhabitants of
Idvor were always peasants; most of them were illiterate in my boyhood
days. My father and mother could neither read nor write. The question
arises now: What could a penniless boy of fifteen, born and bred
under such conditions, bring to America, which under any conceivable
immigration laws would entitle him to land? But I was confident that
I was so desirable an acquisition to America that I should be allowed
to land, and I was somewhat surprised that people made no fuss over me
when I landed.
* * * * *
The Serbs of Idvor from time immemorial always considered themselves
the brothers of the Serbs of Serbia, who are only a few gunshots away
from Idvor on the south side of the Danube. The Avala Mountain, near
Belgrade in Serbia, can easily be seen from Idvor on every clear day.
This blue and, to me at that time, mysterious-looking peak seemed
always like a reminder to the Serbs of Banat that the Serbs of Serbia
were keeping an eye of affectionate watchfulness upon them.
When I was a boy Idvor belonged to the so-called military frontier of
Austria. A bit of interesting history is attached to this name. Up
to the beginning of the eighteenth century the Austrian Empire was
harassed by Turkish invasions. At periodically recurring intervals
Turkish armies would cross her southern frontier, formed by the Rivers
Danube and Sava, and penetrate into the interior provinces. Toward the
end of the seventeenth century they advanced as far as Vienna, and
would have become a serious menace to the whole of Europe if the Polish
king Sobiesky had not come to the rescue of Vienna. It was at that time
that Emperor Leopold I, of Austria, invited Charnoyevich, the Serb
Patriarch of Pech, in old Serbia, to move with thirty-five thousand
picked families of old Serbia into the Austrian territory north of the
Danube and the Sava Rivers, to become its guardians. For three hundred
years these Serbs had been fighting the Turks and had acquired great
skill in this kind of warfare. In 1690 the Patriarch with these picked
families moved into Austria and settled in a narrow strip of territory
on the northern banks of these two rivers. They organized what was
known later as the military frontier of Austria. 1690 is, according to
tradition, the date when my native village Idvor was founded, but not
quite on its present site. The original site is a very small plateau a
little to the north of the present site.
[Illustration: IN THE HOUSE ON THE LEFT WITH THREE WINDOWS, A TYPICAL
PEASANT HOUSE OF IDVOR, PUPIN WAS BORN
On the right is the spire of the church on the
village green]
Banat is a perfectly level plain, but near the village of Idvor the
River Tamish has dug out a miniature canyon, and on the plateau of
one of the promontories of this canyon was the old site of Idvor.
It is connected to the new site by a narrow neck. The old site was
selected because it offered many strategical advantages of defense
against the invading Turk. The first settlers of the old village lived
in subterranean houses which could not be seen at a distance by the
approaching enemy. Remnants of these subterranean houses were still in
existence when I was a schoolboy in the village of Idvor, over fifty
years ago. The location of the original church was marked by a little
column built of bricks and bearing a cross. In a recess on the side of
the column was the image of St. Mary with the Christ Child, illuminated
by a burning wick immersed in oil. The legend was that this flame was
never allowed to go out, and that a religious procession by the good
people of Idvor to the old monument was sure to avert any calamity,
like pestilence or drought, that might be threatening the village. I
took part in many of these processions to the old deserted village,
and felt every time that I was standing upon sacred ground; sacred
because of the Christian blood shed there during the struggles of the
Christian Serbs of Idvor against the Turkish invaders. Every visit to
the old village site refreshed the memories of the heroic traditions
of which the village people were extremely proud. They were poor in
worldly goods, those simple peasant folk of Idvor, but they were rich
in memories of their ancient traditions.
[Illustration: THE OLD MONUMENT ON STARO SELO, THE OLD VILLAGE, WHERE
THE ORIGINAL SETTLERS OF IDVOR LIVED IN SUBTERRANEAN DWELLINGS]
As I look back upon my childhood days in the village of Idvor, I feel
that the cultivation of old traditions was the principal element in
the spiritual life of the village people. The knowledge of these
traditions was necessary and sufficient to them, in order to understand
their position in the world and in the Austrian Empire. When my people
moved into Austria under Patriarch Charnoyevich and settled in the
military frontier, they had a definite agreement with Emperor Leopold
I. It was recorded in an Austrian state document called Privilegia.
According to this ancient document the Serbs of the military frontier
were to enjoy a spiritual, economic, and political autonomy. Lands
granted to them were their own property. In our village we maintained
our own schools and our own churches, and each village elected its
own local administration. Its head was the Knez, or chief, usually a
sturdy peasant. My father was a Knez several times. The bishops and
the people elected their own spiritual and political heads, that is,
the Patriarch and the Voyvoda (governor). We were free and independent
peasant landlords. In return for these privileges, the people obligated
themselves to render military service for the defense of the southern
frontiers of the empire against the invading Turks. They had helped
to drive the Turks across the Danube, under the supreme command of
Prince Eugene of Savoy, in the beginning of the eighteenth century.
After the emperor had discovered the splendid fighting qualities of
the Serbs of the military frontier, he managed to extend the original
terms of the Privilegia so as to make it obligatory upon the military
frontiersmen to defend the empire against any and every enemy.
Subsequently the Serbs of the military frontier of Austria defended
Empress Maria Theresa against Frederick the Great; they defended
Emperor Francis against Napoleon; they defended Emperor Ferdinand
against the rebellious Hungarians in 1848 and 1849; and in 1859 and
1866 they defended Austria against Italy. The military exploits of the
men of Idvor during these wars supplied material for the traditions of
Idvor, which were recorded in many tales and stirring songs. Reading
and writing did not flourish in Idvor in those days, but poetry did.
Faithful to the old customs of the Serb race, the people of Idvor held
during the long winter evenings their neighborhood gatherings, and
as a boy I attended many of them at my father’s house. The older men
would sit around the warm stove on a bench which was a part of the
stove and made of the same material, usually soft brick plastered over
and whitewashed. They smoked and talked and looked like old senators,
self-appointed guardians of all the wisdom of Idvor. At the feet of
the old men were middle-aged men, seated upon low stools, each with a
basket in front of him, into which he peeled the yellow kernels from
the seasoned ears of corn, and this kept him busy during the evening.
The older women were seated on little stools along the wall; they
would be spinning wool, flax, or hemp. The young women would be sewing
or knitting. I, a favorite child of my mother, was allowed to sit
alongside of her and listen to the words of wisdom and words of fiction
dropping from the mouths of the old men and sometimes also from the
mouths of the middle-aged and younger men, when the old men gave them
permission to speak. At intervals the young women would sing a song
having some relation to the last tale. For instance, when one of the
old men had finished a tale about Karageorge and his historic struggles
against the Turks, the women would follow with a song describing a
brave Voyvoda of Karageorge, named Hayduk Velyko, who with a small band
of Serbians defended Negotin against a great Turkish army under Moula
Pasha. This gallant band, as the song describes them, reminds one of
the little band of Greeks at Thermopylæ.
Some of the old men present at these gatherings had taken part in the
Napoleonic wars, and they remembered well also the stories which they
had heard from their fathers relating to the wars of Austria against
Frederick the Great during the eighteenth century. The middle-aged men
had participated in the fighting during the Hungarian revolution, and
the younger men had just gone through the campaigns in Italy in 1859
and 1866. One of the old men had taken part in the battle of Aspern,
when Austria defeated Napoleon. He had received a high imperial
decoration for bravery, and was very proud of it. He also had gone to
Russia with an Austrian division during Napoleon’s campaign of 1812.
His name was Baba Batikin, and in the estimation of the village people
he was a seer and a prophet, because of his wonderful memory and his
extraordinary power of description. His diction was that of a guslar
(Serbian minstrel). He not only described vividly what went on in
Austria and in Russia during the Napoleonic wars in which he himself
participated, but he would also thrill his hearers by tales relating to
the Austrian campaigns against Frederick the Great, which his father
upon his return from the battle-fields of Silesia had related to him.
I remember quite well his stories relating to Karageorge of Serbia,
whom he had known personally. He called him the great Vozhd, or leader
of the Serbian peasants, and never grew weary of describing his heroic
struggles against the Turks in the beginning of the nineteenth century.
These tales about Karageorge were always received at the neighborhood
gatherings with more enthusiasm than any other of his stirring
narratives. Toward the end of the evening Baba Batikin would recite
some of the old Serbian ballads, many of which he knew by heart. During
these recitations his thin and wrinkled face would light up; it was the
face of a seer, as I remember it, and I can see now his bald head with
a wonderful brow, towering over bushy eyebrows through which the light
of his deep-set eyes would shine like the light of the moon through
the needles of an aged pine. It was from him that the good people of
Idvor learned the history of the Serb race from the battle of the field
of Kossovo in 1389 down to Karageorge. He kept alive the old Serb
traditions in the village of Idvor. He was my first and my best teacher
in history.
The younger men told tales relating to Austrian campaigns in Italy,
glorifying the deeds of valor of the men of Idvor in these campaigns.
The battle of Custozza in 1866, in which the military frontiersmen
nearly annihilated the Italian armies, received a great deal of
attention, because the men who described it had participated in it,
and had just returned from Italy. But I remember that every one of
those men was full of praise of Garibaldi, the leader of the Italian
people in their struggles for freedom. They called him the Karageorge
of Italy. I remember also that in my father’s house, in which these
winter-evening gatherings took place, there was a colored picture of
Garibaldi with his red shirt and a plumed hat. The picture was hung up
alongside of the Ikona, the picture of our patron saint; on the other
side of the Ikona was the picture of the Czar of Russia, who only a
few years before had emancipated the Russian serfs. In the same room
and hanging in a very conspicuous place all by itself was a picture of
Karageorge, the leader of the Serbian revolution. The picture of the
Austrian emperor was not there after 1869!
The Serb ballads recited by Baba Batikin glorified the great national
hero, Prince Marko, whose combats were the combats of a strong man in
defense of the weak and of the oppressed. Marko, although a prince
of royal blood, never fought for conquest of territory. According to
the guslar, Prince Marko was a true champion of right and justice.
At that time the Civil War in America had just come to a close, and
the name of Lincoln, whenever mentioned by Baba Batikin, suggested
an American Prince Marko. The impressions which I carried away from
these neighborhood gatherings were a spiritual food which nourished
in my young mind the sentiment that the noblest thing in this world
is the struggle for right, justice, and freedom. It was the love of
freedom and of right and justice which made the Serbs of the military
frontier desert their ancestral homes in old Serbia and move into
Austria, where they gladly consented to live in subterranean houses and
crawl like woodchucks under the ground as long as they could enjoy the
blessings of political freedom.
* * * * *
The military frontiersmen had their freedom guaranteed to them by
the Privilegia, and, in exchange for their freedom, they were always
ready to fight for the Emperor of Austria on any battle-field. Loyalty
to the emperor was the cardinal virtue of the military frontiersmen.
It was that loyalty which overcame their admiration for Garibaldi in
1866; hence the Austrian victory at Custozza. The Emperor of Austria
as a guardian of their freedom received a place of honor in the
selected class of men like Prince Marko, Karageorge, Czar Alexander the
Liberator, Lincoln, and Garibaldi. These were the names recorded in the
Hall of Fame of Idvor. When, however, the emperor, in 1869, dissolved
the military frontier and delivered its people to the Hungarians, the
military frontiersmen felt that they were betrayed by the emperor, who
had broken his faith to them recorded in the Privilegia. I remember
my father saying to me one day: “Thou shalt never be a soldier in the
emperor’s army. The emperor has broken his word; the emperor is a
traitor in the eyes of the military frontiersmen. We despise the man
who is not true to his word.” This is the reason why the picture of the
Emperor of Austria was not allowed a place in my father’s house after
1869.
As I look back upon those days I feel, as I always felt, that this
treacherous act of the Austrian emperor in 1869 was the beginning of
the end of the Austrian Empire. It was the beginning of nationalism in
the realm of Emperor Francis Joseph of Hapsburg. The love of the people
for the country in which they lived began to languish and finally died.
When that love dies, the country also must die. This was the lesson
which I learned from the illiterate peasants of Idvor.
[Illustration: OLYMPIADA PUPIN, MOTHER OF MICHAEL PUPIN
From a photograph taken in 1880]
* * * * *
My teacher in the village school never succeeded in making upon my
mind that profound impression which was made upon it by the men at
the neighborhood gatherings. They were men who had gone out into the
world and taken an active part in the struggles of the world. Reading,
writing, and arithmetic appeared to me like instruments of torture
which the teacher, who, in my opinion at that time, knew nothing of
the world, had invented in order to interfere as much as possible
with my freedom, particularly when I had an important engagement with
my chums and playmates. But my mother soon convinced me that I was
wrong. She could neither read nor write, and she told me that she
always felt that she was blind, in spite of the clear vision of her
eyes. So blind, indeed, that, as she expressed it, she did not dare
venture into the world much beyond the confines of my native village.
This was as far as I remember now the mode of reasoning which she
would address to me: “My boy, if you wish to go out into the world
about which you hear so much at the neighborhood gatherings, you must
provide yourself with another pair of eyes; the eyes of reading and
writing. There is so much wonderful knowledge and learning in the
world which you cannot get unless you can read and write. Knowledge
is the golden ladder over which we climb to heaven; knowledge is the
light which illuminates our path through this life and leads to a
future life of everlasting glory.” She was a very pious woman, and had
a rare knowledge of both the Old and the New Testaments. The Psalms
were her favorite recitations. She knew also the lives of saints. St.
Sava was her favorite saint. She was the first to make me understand
the story of the life of this wonderful Serb. This, briefly stated,
was the story which she told me: Sava was the youngest son of the Serb
Zhupan Nemanya. At an early age he renounced his royal titles and
retired to a monastery on Mount Athos and devoted many years to study
and meditation. He then returned to his native land, in the beginning
of the thirteenth century, and became the first Serbian archbishop and
founded an autonomous Serbian church. He also organized public schools
in his father’s realm, where Serbian boys and girls had an opportunity
to learn how to read and write. Thus he opened the eyes of the Serbian
people, and the people in grateful recognition of these great services
called him St. Sava the Educator, and praised forever his saintly name
and memory. Seven hundred years had passed since St. Sava’s time, but
not one of them had passed without a memorial celebration dedicated to
him in every town and in every home where a Serb lived.
This was a revelation to me. Like every schoolboy, I attended, of
course, every year in January, the celebrations of St. Sava’s day.
On these occasions we unruly boys made fun of the big boy who in a
trembling and awkward voice was reciting something about St. Sava,
which the teacher had written out for him. After this recitation, the
teacher, with a funny nasal twang, would do his best to supplement in
a badly articulated speech what he had written out for the big boy,
and finally the drowsy-looking priest would wind up with a sermon
bristling with archaic Slavonic church expressions, which to us unruly
boys sounded like awkward attempts of a Slovak mouse-trap dealer to
speak Serbian. Our giggling merriment then reached a climax, and so
my mischievous chums never gave me a chance to catch the real meaning
of the ceremonies on St. Sava’s day. My mother’s story of St. Sava
and the way in which she told it made the image of St. Sava appear
before me for the first time in the light of a saint who glorified the
value of books and of the art of writing. I understood then why mother
placed such value upon reading and writing. I vowed to devote myself to
both, even if that should make it necessary to neglect my chums and
playmates, and soon I convinced my mother that in reading and writing I
could do at least as well as any boy. The teacher observed the change;
he was astonished, and actually believed that a miracle had occurred.
My mother believed in miracles, and told the teacher that the spirit of
St. Sava was guiding me. One day she told him in my presence that in a
dream she saw St. Sava lay his hands upon my head, and then turning to
her say: “Daughter Piada, your boy will soon outgrow the village school
of Idvor. Let him then go out into the world, where he can find more
brain food for his hungry head.” Next year the teacher selected me to
make the recitation on St. Sava’s day, and he wrote out the speech for
me. My mother amended and amplified it and made me rehearse it for her
over and over again. On St. Sava’s day the first public speech of my
life was delivered by me. The success was overwhelming. My chums, the
unruly boys, did not giggle; on the contrary, they looked interested,
and that encouraged me much. The people said to each other that even
old Baba Batikin could not have done much better. My mother cried for
joy; my teacher shook his head, and the priest looked puzzled, and they
both admitted that I had outgrown the village school of Idvor.
* * * * *
At the end of that year my mother prevailed upon my father to send
me to a higher school in the town of Panchevo, on the Tamish River,
about fifteen miles south of Idvor, quite near the point where the
Tamish flows into the Danube. There I found teachers whose learning
made a deep impression upon me, particularly their learning in natural
science, a subject entirely unknown in Idvor. There I heard for the
first time that an American named Franklin, operating with a kite and
a key, had discovered that lightning was a passage of an electrical
spark between clouds, and that thunder was due to the sudden expansion
of the atmosphere heated by the passage of the electrical spark. The
story was illustrated by an actual frictional electrical machine. This
information thrilled me; it was so novel and so simple, I thought, and
so contrary to all my previous notions. During my visit home I eagerly
took the first opportunity to describe this new knowledge to my father
and his peasant friends, who were seated in front of our house and were
enjoying their Sunday-afternoon talks. I suddenly observed that my
father and his friends looked at each other in utter astonishment. They
seemed to ask each other the question: “What heresy may this be which
this impudent brat is disclosing to us?” And then my father, glaring
at me, asked whether I had forgotten that he had told me on so many
occasions that thunder was due to the rumbling of St. Elijah’s car as
he drove across the heavens, and whether I thought that this American
Franklin, who played with kites like an idle boy, knew more than the
wisest men of Idvor. I always had a great respect for my father’s
opinions, but on that occasion I could not help smiling with a smile of
ill-concealed irony which angered him. When I saw the flame of anger
in his big black eyes I jumped and ran for safety. During supper my
father, whose anger had cooled considerably, described to my mother the
heresy which I was preaching on that afternoon. My mother observed that
nowhere in the Holy Scriptures could he find support of the St. Elijah
legend, and that it was quite possible that the American Franklin was
right and that the St. Elijah legend was wrong. In matters of correct
interpretation of ancient authorities my father was always ready
to abide by the decisions of my mother, and so father and I became
reconciled again. My mother’s admission of the possibility that the
American Franklin might, after all, be wiser than all the wise men of
Idvor, and my father’s silent consent, aroused in me a keen interest in
America. Lincoln and Franklin were two names with which my early ideas
of America were associated.
During those school-days in Panchevo I passed my summer vacation in my
native village. Idvor, just like the rest of Banat, lives principally
from agriculture, and during harvest-time it is as busy as a beehive.
Old and young, man and beast, concentrate all their efforts upon the
harvest operations. But nobody is busier than the Serbian ox. He is
the most loyal and effective servant of the Serb peasant everywhere,
and particularly in Banat. He does all the ploughing in the spring,
and he hauls the seasoned grain from the distant fertile fields to
the threshing-grounds in the village when the harvesting season is
on. The commencement of the threshing operations marks the end of the
strenuous efforts of the good old ox; his summer vacation begins, and
he is sent to pasture-lands to feed and to rest and to prepare himself
for autumn hauling of the yellow corn and for the autumn ploughing of
the fields. The village boys who are not big enough to render much help
on the threshing-grounds are assigned to the task of watching over
the grazing oxen during their summer vacation. The school vacation
of the boys coincided with the vacation of the good old ox. Several
summers I passed in that interesting occupation. These were my only
summer schools, and they were the most interesting schools that I ever
attended.
The oxen of the village were divided into herds of about fifty head,
and each herd was guarded by a squad of some twelve boys from families
owning the oxen in the herd. Each squad was under the command of a
young man who was an experienced herdsman. To watch a herd of fifty
oxen was not an easy task. In daytime the job was easy, because the
heat of the summer sun and the torments of the ever-busy fly made the
oxen hug the shade of the trees, where they rested awaiting the cooler
hours of the day. At night, however, the task was much more difficult.
Being forced to hug the shade of the trees during daytime, the oxen
would get but little enjoyment of the pasture, and so when the night
arrived they were quite hungry and eagerly searched for the best of
feed.
* * * * *
I must mention now that the pasture-lands of my native village lay
alongside of territory of a score of square miles which in some years
were all planted in corn. During the months of August and September
these vast corn-fields were like deep forests. Not far from Idvor
and to the east of the corn-fields was a Rumanian settlement which
was notorious for its cattle-thieves. The trick of these thieves was
to hide in the corn-fields at night and to wait until some cattle
strayed into these fields, when they would drive them away and hide
them somewhere in their own corn-fields on the other side of their
own village. To prevent the herd from straying into the corn-fields
at night was a great task, for the performance of which the boys had
to be trained in daytime by their experienced leader. It goes without
saying that each day we boys first worked off our superfluous energy
in wrestling, swimming, hockey, and other strenuous games, and then
settled down to the training in the arts of a herdsman which we had
to practise at night. One of these arts was signalling through the
ground. Each boy had a knife with a long wooden handle. This knife
was stuck deep into the ground. A sound was made by striking against
the wooden handle, and the boys, lying down and pressing their ears
close to the ground, had to estimate the direction and the distance
of the origin of sound. Practice made us quite expert in this form
of signalling. We knew at that time that the sound travelled through
the ground far better than through the air, and that a hard and solid
ground transmitted sound much better than the ploughed-up ground. We
knew, therefore, that the sound produced this way near the edge of the
pasture-land could not be heard in the soft ground of the corn-fields
stretching along the edge. A Rumanian cattle-thief, hidden at night
in the corn-fields, could not hear our ground signals and could not
locate us. Kos, the Slovenian, my teacher and interpreter of physical
phenomena, could not explain this, and I doubt very much whether the
average physicist of Europe at that time could have explained it. It is
the basis of a discovery which I made about twenty-five years after my
novel experiences in that herdsmen’s summer school in Idvor.
* * * * *
On perfectly clear and quiescent summer nights on the plains of my
native Banat, the stars are intensely bright and the sky looks black
by contrast. “Thy hair is as black as the sky of a summer midnight”
is a favorite saying of a Serbian lover to his lady-love. On such
nights we could not see our grazing oxen when they were more than a
few score of feet from us, but we could hear them if we pressed our
ears close to the ground and listened. On such nights we boys had
our work cut out for us. We were placed along a definite line at
distances of some twenty yards apart. This was the dead-line, which
separated the pasture-lands from the corn-field territory. The motto
of the French at Verdun was: “They shall not pass!” This was our
motto, too, and it referred equally to our friends, the oxen, and to
our enemies, the Rumanian cattle-thieves. Our knife-blades were deep
in the ground and our ears were pressed against the handles. We could
hear every step of the roaming oxen and even their grazing operations
when they were sufficiently near to the dead-line. We knew that these
grazing operations were regulated by the time of the night, and this
we estimated by the position of certain constellations like Orion and
the Pleiades. The positions of the evening star and of the morning
star also were closely observed. Venus was our white star and Mars was
called the red star. The Dipper, the north star, and the milky way were
our compass. We knew also that when in the dead of the night we could
hear the faint sound of the church-bell of the Rumanian settlement
about four miles to the east of us, then there was a breeze from
the corn-fields to the pasture-lands, and that it carried the sweet
perfume of the young corn to the hungry oxen, inviting them to the
rich banquet-table of the corn-fields. On such nights our vigilance
was redoubled. We were then all eyes and ears. Our ears were closely
pressed to the ground and our eyes were riveted upon the stars above.
* * * * *
The light of the stars, the sound of the grazing oxen, and the faint
strokes of the distant church-bell were messages of caution which on
those dark summer nights guided our vigilance over the precious herd.
These messages appealed to us like the loving words of a friendly
power, without whose aid we were helpless. They were the only signs of
the world’s existence which dominated our consciousness as, enveloped
in the darkness of night and surrounded by countless burning stars,
we guarded the safety of our oxen. The rest of the world had gone
out of existence; it began to reappear in our consciousness when the
early dawn announced what we boys felt to be the divine command, “Let
there be light,” and the sun heralded by long white streamers began
to approach the eastern sky, and the earth gradually appeared as if
by an act of creation. Every one of those mornings of fifty years ago
appeared to us herdsmen to be witnessing the creation of the world--a
world at first of friendly sound and light messages which made us boys
feel that a divine power was protecting us and our herd, and then a
real terrestrial world, when the rising sun had separated the hostile
mysteries of night from the friendly realities of the day.
Sound and light became thus associated in my early modes of thought
with the divine method of speech and communication, and this belief
was strengthened by my mother, who quoted the words of St. John: “In
the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was
God.”
I believed also that David, some of whose Psalms, under the instruction
of my mother, I knew by heart, and who in his youth was a shepherd,
expressed my thoughts in his nineteenth Psalm:
“The heavens declare the glory of God....”
* * * * *
“There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard.”
Then, there is no Serb boy who has not heard that beautiful Russian
song by Lyermontoff, the great Russian poet, which says:
“Lonely I wander over the country road,
And in the darkness the stony path is glimmering;
Night is silent and the plains are whispering
To God, and star speaketh to star.”
Lyermontoff was a son of the Russian plains. He saw the same burning
stars in the blackness of a summer midnight sky which I saw. He felt
the same thrill which David felt and through his Psalms transmitted
to me during those watchful nights of fifty years ago. I pity the
city-bred boy who has never felt the mysterious force of that heavenly
thrill.
Sound and light being associated in my young mind of fifty years ago
with divine operations by means of which man communicates with man,
beast with beast, stars with stars, and man with his Creator, it is
obvious that I meditated much about the nature of sound and of light.
I still believe that these modes of communication are the fundamental
operations in the physical universe and I am still meditating about
their nature. My teachers in Panchevo rendered some assistance in
solving many of the puzzles which I met in the course of these
meditations. Kos, my Slovenian teacher, who was the first to tell me
the story of Franklin and his kite, was a great help. He soon convinced
me that sound was a vibration of bodies. This explanation agreed with
the Serbian figure of speech which says:
“My heart quivers like the melodious string under the guslar’s bow.”
I also felt the quivering air whenever during my term of service as
guardian of the oxen I tried my skill at the Serbian flute. Few things
excited my interest more than the operations of the Serbian bagpiper
as he forced the air from his sheepskin bellows and made it sing by
regulating its passage through the pipes. The operations which the
bagpiper called adjustment and tuning of the bagpipes commanded my
closest attention. I never dreamed then that a score of years later
I should do a similar operation with an electrical circuit. I called
it “electrical tuning,” a term which has been generally adopted in
wireless telegraphy. But nobody knows that the operation as well as the
name were first suggested to me by the Serbian bagpiper, some twenty
years before I made the invention in 1892.
Skipping over several sections of my story, I will say now that twenty
years after my invention of electrical tuning a pupil of mine, Major
Armstrong, discovered the electrical vacuum-tube oscillator, which
promises to revolutionize wireless telegraphy and telephony. A similar
invention, but a little earlier, was made by another pupil of mine,
Mr. Vreeland. Both these inventions in their mode of operation remind
me much of the operation of Serbian bagpipes. Perhaps some of those
thrills which the Serbian bagpiper stirred up in me in my early youth
were transferred to my pupils, Armstrong and Vreeland.
* * * * *
I was less successful in solving my puzzles concerning the nature of
light. Kos, the Slovenian, my first guide and teacher in the study of
physical phenomena, told me the story that a wise man of Greece with
the name of Aristotle believed that light originates in the eye, which
throws out feelers to the surrounding objects, and that through these
feelers we see the objects, just as we feel them by our sense of touch.
This view did not agree with the popular saying often heard in Idvor:
“Pick your grapes before sunrise, before the thirsty sunbeams have
drunk up their cooling dew.” Nor did it agree with Bishop Nyegosh, the
greatest of Serbian poets, who says:
“The bright-eyed dewdrops glide along the sunbeams to the heavens
above.”
The verse from Nyegosh I obtained from a Serbian poet, who was an
arch-priest, a protoyeray, and who was my religious teacher in
Panchevo. His name, Vasa Zhivkovich, I shall never forget, because it
is sweet music to my ears on account of the memories of affectionate
friendship he cherished for me.
According to this popular belief a beam of light has an individual
existence just like that of the melodious string under the guslar’s
bow. But neither the poet, nor the wise men of Idvor, nor Kos the
Slovenian, ever mentioned that a beam of light ever quivered, and if it
does not quiver like a vibrating body how can the sun, the moon, and
the stars proclaim the glory of God, and how can, according to David,
their voice be heard wherever there are speech and language? These
questions Kos would not answer. No wonder! Nobody to-day can give a
completely satisfactory answer to questions relating to radiation of
light. Kos was non-committal and did not seem to attach much importance
to the authorities which I quoted; namely, the Serbian poet Nyegosh,
the wise sayings of Idvor, and the Psalms of David. Nevertheless, he
was greatly interested in my childlike inquiries and always encouraged
me to go on with my puzzling questions. Once he invited me to his
house, and there I found that several of his colleagues were present.
One of them was my friend the poet-priest, and another was a Hungarian
Lutheran preacher who spoke Serbian well and was famous in Panchevo
because of his great eloquence. They both engaged me in conversation
and showed a lively interest in my summer vacation experiences as
herdsman’s assistant. The puzzling questions about light which I
addressed to Kos, and the fact that Kos would not answer, amused them.
My knowledge of the Bible and of the Psalms impressed them much, and
they asked me quite a number of questions concerning my mother. Then
they suggested that I might be transferred from the school in Panchevo
to the famous schools of Prague in Bohemia, if my father and mother did
not object to my going so far away from home. When I suggested that my
parents could not afford to support me in a great place like Prague,
they assured me that this difficulty might be fixed up. I promised to
consult my parents during the approaching Christmas vacation. I did,
but found my father irresistibly opposed to it. Fate, however, decreed
otherwise.
The history of Banat records a great event for the early spring of
1872, the spring succeeding the Christmas when my father and mother
agreed to disagree upon the proposition that I go to Prague. Svetozar
Miletich, the great nationalist leader of the Serbs in Austria-Hungary,
visited Panchevo, and the people prepared a torchlight procession
for him. This procession was to be a protest of Panchevo and of the
whole of Banat against the emperor’s treachery of 1869. My father had
protested long before by excluding the emperor’s picture from our
house. That visit of Miletich marks the beginning of a new political
era in Banat, the era of nationalism. The schoolboys of Panchevo turned
out in great numbers, and I was one of them, proud to become one of the
torch-bearers. We shouted ourselves hoarse whenever Miletich in his
fiery speech denounced the emperor for his ingratitude to the military
frontiersmen as well as to all the Serbs of Voyvodina. Remembering my
father’s words on the occasion mentioned above, I did not hesitate to
shout in the name of the schoolboys present in the procession: “We’ll
never serve in Francis Joseph’s army!” My chums responded with: “Long
five the Prince of Serbia!” The Hungarian officials took careful notes
of the whole proceeding, and a few days later I was informed that
Panchevo was not a proper place for an ill-mannered peasant boy like
me, and that I should pack up and return to Idvor. Kos, the Slovenian,
and protoyeray Zhivkovich interfered, and I was permitted to stay.
* * * * *
On the first of May, following, our school celebrated the May-day
festival. The Serb youngsters in the school, who worshipped Miletich
and his nationalism, prepared a Serbian flag for the festival march.
The other boys, mostly Germans, Rumanians, and Hungarians, carried
the Austrian yellow-black standard. The nationalist group among the
youngsters stormed the bearer of the yellow-black standard, and I was
caught in the scrimmage with the Austrian flag under my feet. Expulsion
from school stared me in the face. Again protoyeray Zhivkovich came to
my defense and, thanks to his high official position and to my high
standing in school, I was allowed to continue with my class until the
end of the school year, after promising that I would not associate with
revolutionary boys who showed an inclination to storm the Austrian
flag. The matter did not end there, however. In response to an
invitation from the protoyeray, father and mother came to Panchevo to a
conference, which resulted in a triumph for my mother. It was decided
that I bid good-by to Panchevo, a hotbed of nationalism, and go to
Prague. The protoyeray and his congregation promised assistance if the
financial burden attached to my schooling in Prague should prove too
heavy for my parents.
When the day for the departure for Prague arrived, my mother had
everything ready for my long journey, a journey of nearly two days on
a Danube steamboat to Budapest, and one day by rail from Budapest to
Prague. Two multicolored bags made of a beautifully colored web of
wool contained my belongings: one my linen, the other my provisions,
consisting of a whole roast goose and a big loaf of white bread. The
only suit of clothes which I had I wore on my back, and my sisters
told me that it was very stylish and made me look like a city-bred
boy. To tone down somewhat this misleading appearance and to provide
a warm covering during my journey for the cold autumn evenings and
nights, I wore a long yellow overcoat of sheepskin trimmed with black
wool and embroidered along the border with black and red arabesque
figures. A black sheepskin cap gave the finishing touch and marked
me as a real son of Idvor. When I said good-by to father and mother
on the steamboat landing I expected, of course, that my mother would
cry, and she did; but to my great surprise I noticed two big tears
roll down my father’s cheeks. He was a stern and unemotional person,
a splendid type of the heroic age, and when for the first time in my
life I saw a tear in his luminous eyes I broke down and sobbed, and
felt embarrassed when I saw that the steamboat passengers were taking a
sympathetic interest in my parting from father and mother. A group of
big boys on the boat took me up and offered to help me to orient myself
on the boat; they were theological students returning to the famous
seminary at Karlovci, the seat of the Serb Patriarch. I confided to
them that I was going to the schools of Prague, that I never had gone
from home farther than Panchevo, that I had never seen a big steamboat
or a railroad-train, and that my journey gave me some anxiety because
I could not speak Hungarian and had some difficulty in handling the
limited German vocabulary which I learned in Panchevo. Presently we saw
a great church-tower in the distance, and they told me that it was the
cathedral of Karlovci, and that near the cathedral was the palace of
his holiness, the Patriarch. It was at this place that the Turks begged
for peace in 1699, having been defeated with the aid of the military
frontiersmen. Beyond Karlovci, they pointed out, was the mountain of
Frushka Gora, famous in Serbian poetry. This was the first time I saw
a mountain at close range. One historical scene crowded upon another,
and I had some difficulty to take them all in even with the friendly
assistance of my theological acquaintances. When Karlovci was reached
and my theological friends left the boat, I felt quite lonesome.
I returned to my multicolored bags, and as I looked upon them and
remembered that mother had made them I felt that a part, at least, of
my honey-hearted home was so near me, and that consoled me.
* * * * *