Bright spark unites Croats, Serbs

Croatia and Serbia: Croatia and Serbia celebrated 150 years since the birth of Nikola Tesla yesterday, finally uniting around a scientific genius who has long divided the Balkan neighbours.

Born to a Serb family in central Croatia when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Tesla was a posthumous victim of the bitter conflict that engulfed Yugoslavia in 1991, when Zagreb declared its independence from the federation.

After featuring prominently for decades on the Yugoslav dinar currency, he was nowhere to be seen on the kuna notes of the free Croatia that emerged from war in 1995, while his family house was left to crumble and a monument to him was blown up.

It was a sorry fate for a man who was as proud of his mixed Serb and Croat heritage as he was of innovations that underpin the technology of radio, the electricity grid, neon lighting, X-rays and key areas of computer science and nuclear physics.

"He is our common heritage, a Serb born in Croatia who did not want ethnic conflicts," said Serb president Boris Tadic at an opening of a scientific museum housed in Tesla's old home in the Croatian village of Smiljan.

"But our past was not always glorious. Today we have a common responsibility to offer our citizens a new vision," added Mr Tadic.

Croatia's president Stipe Mesic said: "Today, we are celebrating Tesla the Serb, the son of Croatia and a citizen of the world."

Mr Mesic called for the scientist's own claim to be "equally proud of [ my] Serb origin and Croatian homeland" to serve as "our guidance for the future."

Tesla emigrated to the United States in 1884, reputedly with only four cents and the design for a flying machine in his pockets.

Across the Atlantic, his plans for an alternating-current system of electricity transmission (the AC system) eventually triumphed over Thomas Edison's aggressive promotion of a direct-current system.

Tesla was a poor businessman, however, and made little money from his pioneering work with electricity or research that allowed Wilhelm Röntgen to discover X-rays in 1895 or Guglielmo Marconi to claim the invention of the radio soon after.

Only in 1943 - the year Tesla died, penniless and alone - did the US Supreme Court rule that credit for the discovery of radio should actually go to the Balkan genius.

Many traditionally Serb villages in Tesla's native region are still without electricity, however, a fact that some locals blame on the lingering antipathy of the Croatian authorities.