Tesla’s Pigeon

March 10, 2025May 16, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

“I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.” –Nikola Tesla.

I’ll go ahead and leave the discussion of whether Nikola Tesla is the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) or a GOAT to those with far more knowledge on the subject, but if any individual embodied the spirit of a domesticated bezoar ibex, descending from the Zagros and Taurus mountains to join humanity’s ranks, it would be Nikola Tesla.

Some skeptics dismiss the reverence for Tesla, saying, “I wouldn’t call him the GOAT.” Their argument? “He was first, I’ll give you that. He discovered how to harness alternating current, enabled wireless communication, pioneered remote control, and achieved countless other feats that revolutionized humanity, but,” and here’s where they make their c’mon! faces, “don’t you think someone else would have come up with all of that eventually?”

This is where we’re at, apparently. We’ve grown so accustomed to enjoying the fruits of genius that we downplay the achievements themselves. In today’s world, the process of celebrating greatness often involves systematically dismantling it. We begin by humanizing our icons—making their lives relatable and their quirks amusing—to draw in readers. We peel back the layers of their accomplishments, not to marvel at them but to suggest that anyone else, given the chance, might have done the same. We present witty but reductive “but-did-you-knows” about their flaws, as though to bridge the gap between their brilliance and our everyday mediocrity.

We build them up just to tear them down, all to feel better about ourselves.

“See, Henrietta Bormine, my wife? That Tesla guy wasn’t so great. He had outdated ideas about [insert pet issue here]. I could have achieved what he did—anyone could’ve, really, if they put in the effort.”

This is what we do now.

The thing about these “Anyone could’ve done it” arguments is that they’re almost impossible to defeat. Perhaps, with the same dedication—those mythical 10,000 hours—someone could have achieved what Tesla, Einstein, or da Vinci did. Most discoveries, inventions, and breakthroughs lose their superhuman qualities over time. Who invented the television set? “Someone would have eventually.” Who invented the microwave? “Was there an inventor?” Who invented the toaster. “Boring.” The next question is if anyone could’ve invented these things why didn’t they? Another factor that makes these arguments almost impossible to defeat is the idea that we cannot remove the geniuses from the timeline to test their theory.

This debate also leads me to the question I have when anyone drops a GOAT on someone spectacular, what separated the genius from their competition? Was a man like Nikola Tesla simply a right time, right place type of guy? How many people, in his era, were racing to explore the lengths of man’s ability to harness and manipulate electricity for human needs and eventual usage?

When we were kids, we thought Benjamin Franklin invented electricity. I don’t know how we twisted that story in such a manner, but it wasn’t long before a representative from the nerdy brainiacs set up straight. “Think about how foolish that sounds … How does a person invent electricity? He just advanced the idea that it could be harnessed, and some even debate that notion. They suggest that numerous others were conducting similar experiments. think there were a number of people messing around with experiments and displays of harnessing electricity, but Franklin was just the most famous person to put his name to such theories, and his fame and notoriety put all of those long-standing theories on the map.”

Tesla’s name belongs on the timeline of scientific advancements in electricity, but his achievements don’t stand in isolation. His legacy is interwoven with the work of predecessors, peers, and successors whose names are far less known. And here’s the ultimate question: How many “relatively anonymous figures” from history accomplished even a fraction of what Tesla did? For the sake of argument, let’s call this unsung hero “Todd Callahan,” because it feels like the quintessential everyman name for such musings.

This fictional Todd Callahan grew up much like Nikola Tesla—a curious science enthusiast who stood out as the smartest person anyone in his area had ever known. They dubbed Todd an “uncommon genius.” While other kids spent their afternoons throwing balls in open fields, Todd was tinkering with stuff. When other boys his age played with the toys, Tesla and Todd tore theirs apart. They enjoyed destroying stuff as much as every other young boy, but this wasn’t destruction for distruction’s sake. They did it to rebuild the toys, and they destroyed these toys and rebuilt them so often that they developed an understanding for mechanics in a way that set them on the path to innovate and manipulate the natural world.

Todd’s brilliance was evident early, earning him both admiration and envy from those around him. His neighbors marveled at his genius, and perhaps some resented it. Even the tenured professor, who encountered hundreds of bright students every year and would’ve scoffed at GOAT-like superlatives, privately admitted to his colleagues that Todd Callahan was special.

How many Todd Callahans existed during Tesla’s time, and what distinguished them from each other? Was Tesla, as an adult, more daring, more imaginative, or simply more willing to embrace failure and learn from it? We could say D) all of the above, but the most vital factors in Tesla’s journey to success might have been the simplest of all: hard work, patience, and time.

Time, above all, may have been the decisive factor separating Nikola Tesla from the Todd Callahans of history. Tesla devoted his life—every ounce of energy, thought, and purpose—to science. While this now feels like a cliché description we could apply to many “almost Teslas” of history, it’s worth considering its weight. Imagine mentioning at a party, “Nikola Tesla devoted all of his energy, his time, and his thoughts to science.” The likely response? A collective yawn or polite indifference. It’s not the kind of revelation that stuns a crowd—it’s too broad, too general to feel significant.

But for Tesla, it wasn’t just a statement; it was a truth that defined his life. As Petar Ivic wrote, “Tesla’s only love, inseparable and sincere, was science.”

We probably have to add terms like ‘inseparable’ and ‘sincere’ to capture attention, because every major figure in history devoted themselves to something. The modern adjective we drop on someone so devoted to the particulars of their craft is gym rat. Judging by descriptions of Nikola Tesla’s physique, he never spent time in a gym, but the analogy holds true when we learn that he spent so much of his free time in life in labs and various other enclosed rooms that skin cancer was probably never one of Tesla’s concerns.

Even suggesting that Tesla probably spent a majority of his life in small rooms, testing various ideas and experiments probably doesn’t move the needle much, but the difference between Nikola Tesla and the various Todd Callahans of human history is that Todd Callahan was a normal man driven by normal needs, and normal wants and desires. Todd wanted to achieve as much as Tesla did in the fields of science, but as some point, the man wanted to go home. He sacrificed a lot in the name of science, but he loved to fish and hunt on weekends, and he loved playing card games with the fellas. Todd was a normal man who loved science, but he also loved women. He dated a variety of women, until he found his true love, and they settled down to have a family, a dog named Scruffy, and a white picket fence to keep Scruffy and the kids from harm.

Tesla refrained from these normal pursuits in life, fearing that they would take away, or diminish, his pursuit of steadily advancing the science of electricity. We could say that Nikola Tesla refrained from pursuing a sense of human wholeness, or a sense of completion, but we could also say that was his edge.

“I do not believe an inventor should marry,” Tesla said. “A married man is precluded from devoting himself to his work. Therefore, I have chosen to remain unmarried and to pursue my work.” Tesla believed celibacy allowed him to maintain acute focus and channel his energy entirely on his inventions, and as opposed to most science nerds, Nikola Tesla did, in fact, have list of women who were all but beating down his door.

Nikola and His Pigeons

Nikola Tesla took the “hard work, patience and time” devotion to his craft so seriously that he tried as hard as he could to void his life of distractions, physical and otherwise. The only vice, it appears he had, was an utter devotion to pigeons. He could spend hours at a time feeding them at the park. In his pursuit of fowl friendship, he occasionally encountered an injured one. When that happened, he brought them back to his hotel room to nurse them back to health. He was known to leave his hotel room window open to allow pigeons full access to his room whenever they needed. He also had a habit of asking the chef of the hotel to prepare a special mix of seeds for his pigeons to, we can only guess, gain him an unfair advantage among those seeking friendship and more from the pigeon population.

The one thing that those of us who know little about birds, and nothing of pigeons, know is that birds are not what we’d call discriminating when it comes to where they decide to relieve themselves. Bird enthusiasts suggest it is “difficult but possible to potty train a bird,” but there are no indications that Nikola Tesla, a germaphobe before being a germaphobe was cool, spent any of his precious time on Earth devoted to that cause. Thus, we can only guess that Tesla’s hotel room wouldn’t make it in a Better Homes and Garden feature article, and we have to imagine that if that list of potential suitors, mentioned above, got one look, or whiff, of his hotel room it might diminish his demand. The historical record suggests that this was also one of the reasons why some of the hotels he lived in gave him the boot.

Nikola Tesla was willing to sacrifice all of that for an afternoon spent in the company of his favorite beings on the planet, and in the midst of all that, Nikola Tesla found true love for the first time in his life. As with any person who surrounds themselves with people, places and things, we eventually whittle them down to a focus of our attention and love. Tesla found that in one of the pigeons who regularly kept company with him, a white pigeon with some grey highlights. He declared that this pigeon would find him, no matter where he was, and spend time around him. Eventually, as with all pigeons, this one fell to an illness. Tesla took her back to his room and tried to cure her illness, but this man of miracles, could not save his one true love in life. It broke his heart, as it breaks all of our hearts when a beloved pet dies, but Tesla was so broken hearted that some suggest he experienced such a feeling of hopelessness, and such a general sense of purposeless, that he died days later of a broken heart. We’ve all heard tales of an individual who dies shortly after their spouse, and that appears to be what happened here, with Tesla and his beloved pigeon.

Before he died, Tesla informed others that his beloved pigeon visited him on the day of her demise, and “a white light shone from her eyes, brighter that anything I’ve generated with electrical machinery.” Shortly after her death, Tesla told friends that his life’s work was finished.

This story is used by some outlets to diminish Nikola Tesla, and the Tesla quote they use is that he loved a “pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me.” The intent is to suggest he was such a wacky scientist that couldn’t properly manage human relations, so he devoted his passion to this rat with wings. It’s funny on the face of it, but how many of us “love” a dog so completely that when the little fella gets run over by a car, we’re broken hearted? As Jules, from Pulp Fiction would argue, “But, dog’s got personality, [and] personality goes a long way.” It’s true, but when they die, we cry and make damn fools out of ourselves in a way that those who witness it will never forget or forgive. “I’m sorry, but it’s a dumb dog,” they say with derision. How many have the same passionate love for a cat, who in many ways fails to return love in the demonstrable ways a dog can. Some love a pig, a rat, and a snake in much the same way, even though we can’t understand how anyone could develop a quid pro quo relationship with such animals.

Is it a little quirky any time a grown man develops such passionate feelings for a bird, but this happened late in Tesla’s life when we can only imagine he lost much of his drive, passion, and that almost unquenchable thirst for accomplishment was probably quenched, and that probably created a void in which he began to focus on how lonely he was in life. Some part of him may have also regretted not seeking human companionship more in life, but he may have felt that he waited too long, and that the time for all that had long-since past. As such, he may have sought an unconditional friendship that allowed these pigeons to become repositories for his love. Anyone who has read about Nikola Tesla knows he was a passionate man, and when he reached a point where he felt he accomplished everything he wanted to in life, he looked for more tangible ways to express his sense of love. I doubt Nikola Tesla went to the park bench, looking for the type of love only a pigeon can provide. I’m sure it just happened, and we can’t control who we fall in love with.

19th Century Medicine: Be Grateful

May 10, 2024August 7, 2024 Rilaly1 Comment

“When it comes to modern medicine, do you ever feel grateful?”

“I mean, yeah, but that’s like being grateful that Jupiter doesn’t fall off its axis. We know the catastrophe that would happen if it wasn’t there, but it’s always been there, so it’s tough to remain grateful for it.”

“Are you grateful for your good health?”

“Yeah, of course, but again, that’s like being grateful for good weather. We don’t notice it until the bad weather hits. We have to constantly have our perspective adjusted to appreciate health, wealth, and weather.”

“Because after reading Thomas Morris’ The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth, I went real grateful that I didn’t end up in a different time. I know what you’re saying about it’s always been there, but damn, you read what those 19^th Century doctors were doing to their patients back then, and it seems like they were just guessing most of the time.”

“Look, our moms took us to the doctor, and he fixed it. It’s what they do. I never considered myself ungrateful, or taking it for granted, but it’s their jobs.”

“Fair enough, but did you ever have something your doctor couldn’t fix? That’s some scary stuff, let me tell you. They put us through an array of tests, they prescribe stuff, just to see what works, “Take two of these and call me in the morning.” What if nothing your doctor tries, works? Who do you blame? We don’t blame the researchers for failing to develop that perfect pharmaceutical to cure what ails us, we don’t blame innovators for failing to develop technological advancements necessary to find out what’s wrong with us, and we don’t blame modern medicine for being as yet ill-equipped or ill-informed to deal with our mysterious ailment. We blame our doctor. Our doctor is the hero or the zero, because they are our face of modern medicine. They’re who we see when we think of medicine. If you’re the one they can’t cure, it would be difficult for you to be grateful for the advancements of modern medicine, but the rest of should remember that for everything we can’t cure yet, the list of what we now can cure should earn a whole lot of gratitude. You’re right, it’s difficult to be grateful for good health, or life in general, but reading through a brief history of 19^th Century medicine should remind us all to be grateful that we are not living in constant pain, and that our species managed to survive at all.”

Previous generations reminded us to remain grateful, “Always be grateful for the times you live in, because I’ve seen worse, and my parents saw far worse.” They don’t understand our technology, and the machines their doctors put them through overwhelm them. “Don’t take it for granted,” they say. The lead by example in this dictum, because they can’t believe they’re still alive, relatively healthy, and pain-free. No matter what they say or do, however, we were born with this technology, and we can’t help but take for granted what has always been there for us.

Author Thomas Morris might provide a better perspective for why we should be grateful, by “gently mocking” the medical practitioners of the 19^th Century for their practices and procedures. Before gently mocking them, however, Morris adds two qualifiers every writer who compiles such material for a book should add before gently mocking prior eras for their lack of scientific knowledge:

“The methods they used were consistent with their understanding of how the body worked, and it is not their fault that medical knowledge has advanced considerably since then.”

It’s not their fault, I would add, and it’s wasn’t their doing. The doctors, family practitioners, or ear, nose, and throat specialists of the era were handcuffed by the constraints of knowledge at the time, and as Morris adds they performed admirably under such constraints.

“One thing that these case histories demonstrate is the admirably tenacious, even bloody-minded, determination of doctors to help their patients, in an age when their art left much to be desired.”

We could use the hindsight of modern medicine to call early 19^th century medicine something of a guessing game, but will 23^rd Century medical professionals think the same thing of 21^st Century medicine? Western medicine has come a long way in 200 years, and Morris’ book emphasizes that, but professionals in various medical fields will admit Thomas Morris could write a second book called The 21^st Century: What We Still Don’t Know. Modern authors probably won’t be able to write such a book, because they don’t know what they don’t know, but a Mental Floss article details some of basic, fundamentals we still don’t understand yet, including: why we cry, why we laugh, why we sleep, why we dream, why we itch, and how we age. These matters might seem insignificant in terms of greater physical health, but if we can unlock those mysteries, what answers might follow? As with modern medicine, The 19^th Century medical professionals had precedent, studies, and literature to study and guide their decisions, but the precedents they followed, like ours, were as flawed as they were.

Thomas Morris, prefaces a quote from an article James Young Simpson, the pioneer of chloroform anesthesia, writing, “[Simpson] cautioned that it was unwise to be too hard on the “extravagance and oddity” of their methods, adding presciently:

“Perhaps, some century or two hence, our successors … will look back upon our present massive and clumsy doses of vegetable powders, bulky salts, nauseous decoctions, etc., with as much wonderment and surprise as we now look back upon the therapeutic means of our ancestors.”

Morris’ qualifiers illustrate how annoying it is to read modern authors assume a level of authority, even intellectual superiority, over the most brilliant minds of another era without qualifiers. These modern authors critique past knowledge and technology from the pedestal of modern research, acquired knowledge, and technology as if they had anything to do with it. Few of these authors acknowledge that they, like the rest of us, are the beneficiaries of modern advancements, even though they have not personally contributed anything to the difference between the eras.

That being said, we all know the line: “those who don’t learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.” There’s nothing wrong with mocking and ridiculing the past, because it makes the art of teaching history more entertaining, and we find mockery entertaining, but the author of it should provide some sort of context.

Thomas Morris pursuit of this is also admirable in another way, as it displays a takeaway, we can’t help but reach by the time we finish his book, gratitude. How many minor ailments (and there’s no such thing as minor when we’re suffering from them) can we magically resolve with two aspirin, ibuprofen, or a series of prescribed doses of antibiotics? How many procedures (currently considered routine) cure what harms us? How grateful are we to the technological innovators, doctors, and all of those who played roles (be they unwitting or otherwise) in the trial-and-error processes involved in research that have contributed to the progress medicine has made in such a relatively short time. It’s relatively difficult to be grateful for life, but as Morris’ book alludes, we should be grateful that our ancestors survived at all. We wouldn’t have the luxury of regarding our modern medicine as commonplace if they hadn’t, because as incredible as the human body is, it’s possible, and even probable, that we shouldn’t be here.

How did our ancestors survive the plague? World History Encyclopedia lists cures such as rubbing bare chicken butts on lesions, chopped up snakes, and drinking crushed unicorn horns as some of the more popular remedies at the time. They also list drinking crushed emeralds, arsenic, and mercury straight, with no chasers. How did they/we survive?

We currently believe in using cardiopulmonary resuscitation when a person stops breathing, but 19^thcentury man believed, as Morris writes, that blowing tobacco smoke in someone’s rectum might revive them after, for example, a drowning. Other periodicals note that physicians played around with blowing smoke into the mouth and nose, but they found the rectal method more effective. “The nicotine in the tobacco was thought to stimulate the heart to beat stronger and faster, thus encouraging respiration. The smoke was also thought to warm the victim and dry out the person’s insides, removing excessive moisture.”

The “How did we survive?” head-shaking laughter the follows hearing such measures might cement the fact that no one ever tries to pass such foolish nonsense along again. While we’re laughing, however, let’s keep in mind how much information, innovation and technology benefits our definition of modern know-how. We could go through that list, but even if we bullet-pointed it, it would be so lengthy that our eyes might glaze over, and we might accidentally dismiss a most vital discovery, such as the germ theory.

How did we survive the years preceding someone’s idea that they might be able to scientifically confirm the idea that the onset and spread of disease might have something to do with microorganisms, pathogens, and germs. They suggested that eating spoiled food, drinking stagnant water and poorly preserved alcohol, among other things could cause disease and the spread thereof. Modern readers might “Of course!” such findings now, but it rocked the scientific community at the time. Although the records show that the idea that microorganisms might be the cause for the spread of disease dates back to ancient civilizations, the scientifically-backed idea was credited to Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch between 1860 to 1880, and that was probably made so late in the 19^th century that we can guess that it wasn’t fully implemented by family doctors (AKA Ear, Nose, and Throat doctors, or ENT) until the early 20^th century. Think about how many lives have been saved by the idea that stagnant water, spoiled food, and fermentation of wine could cause diseases. This first officially documented scientific discovery also paved the way for the first official, scientific discovery of the first, widely used antibiotic penicillin by an Alexander Fleming.

The ENT doctor is our face of modern medicine, much like the police are the face of law in our experience. They are the people we know, but if we think about it, the ENT doctor sits at the bottom of the medical community’s pyramid. They have nothing to do with the research that helps them make determinations on what courses to follow or prescriptions to write. They also use the technological innovations created by others to pinpoint our ailment, so while we could say they are beneficiaries of modern medicine, future experts might say our modern physicians were captive to the limits of 21^st century medical knowledge at the time.

Do we expect our ENT doctor to perform research in a lab before they diagnose us? Do we expect them to trial and error the medicine they prescribe? No, they have to act on the knowledge of those who specialize in those areas, and the 19^th century ENT doctors and surgeons were no different.

How many modern patients enter a general practitioners’ office, see a specialist, and undergo the array of tests we currently have at our disposal, and we still don’t know what’s wrong with them? We hear it all the time, patient A entered the office with a condition that mystified the most brilliant minds of medicine who examined her, and she died before anyone could properly source her ailment. I’ve known such a situation personally, and I’ve witnessed it intimately. I only write that to suggest that my empathy goes out to victims, family members of victims, and anyone who knows someone who has experienced such a matter, but there are times when no one is to blame. When we’re in such a desperate state, or grieving the loss of a loved one, our first inclination is to blame someone for not recognizing her ailment sooner. We blame her doctors, her doctors blamed the specialists, and they all quietly threw their hands up in the air in frustration. Who was at fault, or is anyone? Our advances in modern medicine, since the 19^th Century have been so remarkable that they lead us to believe that we’re at the final frontier. We think if her parents could’ve only found the most brilliant mind of medicine, with all of latest technology available to them, and all of the information research has provided, we think she could’ve been cured. This isn’t to say there hasn’t been instances of malfeasance and misfeasance in the medical community, but as opposed to the TV shows we watch, some of the times even the most brilliant encyclopedic minds of medicine won’t know, because we don’t know yet. That’s the harrowing, humbling truth that no self-respecting doctor, or anyone else in the medical field, will admit is that in some cases the science isn’t there yet.

If we were able to interrogate a family doctor, a surgeon, or someone else in the medical profession of 19^th Century, I imagine a confident professional of that era might say, “Mock away, we deserve it on some level for our lack of knowledge, but you cannot say it was for a lack of trying. We cared deeply what happened to our patients, from the little, old ladies who complained about chronic ailments to devastated small boys, and everyone in between. These were not only our patients, they were our neighbors, and members of our community seeking our knowledge, guidance, and medical assistance to relieve them of horrific illnesses and injuries, and we did our best, with our era’s best knowledge, technological advancements and research, to help them in every single way we could. It’s not what you have today, so mock us all you want, but you cannot say we weren’t trying.”

Anytime I read such a compendium, one of the first things I think about is time machines. We all love the speculative concept of going back in time to talk to long-dead relatives, historical figures, and to experience our romanticized notion of living, if only for a moment, in a different time. The implicit warning books like The Mystery of The Exploding Teeth leave is, if some brilliant mind ever develops the technology to travel back in time, that pioneer taking one giant leap for mankind should check, recheck, and triple check to make sure they get one key component of their technology right before they leave: make sure you can get back. The authors of speculative fiction devote very little space to this need to get back to the present. It’s not very sexy, and no matter how much an author of fiction loves their character, they’re not concerned with the ramifications of their character getting stuck in another time period. They can play this short-term game with their characters, because their characters aren’t real. A real character who knows anything about the research, technology and science that influenced the decisions made by the medical community of the 19^th Century should make getting back their primary concern, because while they will experience worldwide, historic fame for the technology of their contraption, if they’re not able to get back, they might not get to enjoy that fame.

Mathematics and Telescopes: The Triumph of Neptune’s Discoverers

March 16, 2024November 22, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

“Neptune was the first planet to be discovered through mathematical equations, as opposed to astronomical observations.”

Wait, before we continue, think about that for a second. A man, or two men, or three, used the data of the day, a pencil, paper and nothing more than their brains to declare that a planet should be … right there! Let that sink for a moment.

Five of the planets were discovered by humans looking up, and we’ve been doing that for so long, thousands of years that someone would’ve eventually gone on the historical record to say, “I have just discovered a planet.” Was that impressive, well there is documented evidence that early civilizations in Babylonia looked up and said, “That right there, ain’t no star. That’s a damn planet” as far back as 1,000 BC. Actually, Teddy, we always knew that was there, you just beat us all to the historically documented record.

When Sir William Herschel discovered a planet we now call Uranus on March 13, 1781 with his trusty telescope, and his further observations found that it wasn’t a comet, but a planet, they all thought he made one whale of a discovery, but if everyone had telescopes at that point, we could say Sir Herschel just beat everyone else to the historical record. Whatever the case, Sir Herschel was given credit for discovering the end of the universe. There was one problem, the astronomical community could not plot point Uranus’ positions based on mathematical projections. Every other planet had very specific orbital points that they would hit, based on the gravitational laws of the universe, otherwise known as Newton’s laws. Those planets pushed and pulled on each other to keep themselves in line. This new planet, that we now call Uranus, was all over the place, and its orbital pattern, or its projected plot points, made no sense.

Using all of the pre-discovery data, Astronomer Alexis Bouvard made seventy-seven projections on where Uranus should be, but his fellow astronomers called him out. Based on their observations, they found that all of his projections were wrong. Recognizing his errors, after the tables of his projections were published worldwide, the confused Bouvard initially blamed the pre-discovery data, but when that didn’t satisfy him or the astronomical community, Bouvard came up with a theory called “A Perturbing Force.”

My guess is that the astronomical community initially greeted the perturbing force theory as an excuse Alexis Bouvard made for his inaccuracies. “Alex, my guy, just admit it, you were wrong. We all know you’re a genius, but we’re dealing with the unknown here. Maybe you should just admit that you were wrong and move on.”

Here, we have to have some sympathy for Bouvard, as we can only guess that he pined for months and years to come up with these tables. We can guess that he said something along the lines of, “Hey, I didn’t just throw this stuff out there. These were precise projections based on all the data I had at my disposal, coupled with the laws Sir Isaac Newton. I wouldn’t just guess and then publish those guesses to subject myself to this level of humiliation. There’s something more here, something we need to study.” Bouvard further suggested something that probably furthered his abuse among his peers in the astronomical community. He suggested that this perturbing force could quite possibly be another planet. Then, he submitted that proposal that Uranus might not be the end of the universe to the Paris Observatory, but unfortunate for the legacy of Alexis Bouvard, the astronomer who received that request for a follow up left soon after Bouvard submitted that request for further findings.

Furthering the unfortunate nature of Bouvard’s legacy, Alexis died before anyone would substantiate his projections and the idea that it had to be a perturbing force gravitationally pulling and pushing Uranus off what should have been precise data points dictating its orbit. Thus, we can only guess that Alexis Bouvard probably died believing himself a failure, or at the very least that everything he accomplished in life ended with a huge stain, in the form of an exclamation point, on his legacy.

Even though Alexis Bouvard never found a workaround to nature taking his life, his idea of a perturbing force remained. Skeptics of the day argued that because Bouvard’s projections relied on Isaac Newton’s theories, Bouvard’s inaccurate projections exposed the flaws in Newton’s theories.

Mathematicians, like John Couch Adams, insisted that Newton’s theories were sound and after studying Bouvard’s projections, they believed they should’ve been true. Adams was young, twenty-four-years-old, old enough to know the laws of nature, and all the laws and bylaws his peers developed to explain the universe, but he was still young enough to think they were all wrong. He thought he could use Bouvard’s projections, and all of the data Bouvard compiled, coupled with Newton’s laws to deduce the mass, position, and orbit of this perturber Bouvard theorized. Couch Adams then devoted four years of his life to study, calculate, and project where a possible perturber could be, and he submitted those four years of work to the esteemed British Astronomer Royal George Biddell Airy.

Biddell Airy was understandably skeptical of Adams’ findings, as the mathematician submitting them was such a young pup. We can also guess that Airy was wary of placing his esteemed stamp of approval on Adams’ findings without further evidence. He decided to press Adams for more detailed computations. Unfortunate to the legacy of John Couch Adams he did not respond, some suggest that this failure to respond was due to Adams’s unprofessional demeanor, his nerves, procrastination, or the idea that Adams may not have had those detailed computations. Whatever the case was, Couch Adams’s failure to respond in a timely manner cost him sole credit for the discovery of the planet Neptune.

Some suggest that Frenchman, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier, was unaware of John Couch Adams work, his subsequent submission, and his failure to complete the work, but Le Verrier was very aware of Alexis Bouvard’s life’s work. He paid particular attention to Bouvard’s “perturbing force”, and it fascinated him. He thought he could find the missing link, and he thought he did. He first sent his findings to the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, but due to bureaucratic inertia and a lack of proactive observation, the Academy did not follow up. They did not reject Le Verrier’s math, however, as they found it rigorous, but his findings did not translate into instant acceptance as a confirmed discovery because to them it remained theoretical until it could be observed. The Academy later stated that they had “other concerns” that precluded them from making such observations, and they claimed that they lacked the capacity to follow up with the level of immediacy Le Verrier demanded. Whatever the case, Le Verrier basically said if you’re not going to do it, I’ll find someone who will, and he submitted his edited findings to Johann Gottfried Galle at the Berlin Observatory on September 18, 1846. Berlin had a powerful new refractor telescope and a more agile response, partly because Galle and his assistant Heinrich d’Arrest were eager to test the hypothesis.

Galle confirmed Le Verrier’s detailed calculations, and they confirmed the existence of the planet we now know as Neptune on September 23, 1846, but they added that Le Verrier was one degree off. Here we reach another “think about it, before we move on” moment. Le Verrier took Alexis Bouvard’s precise projections, based on pre-discovery data, and he joined Bouvard’s mathematical calculations on his errors, coupled with some theoretical notion of a perturbing force, pushing and pulling Uranus off what should have been its normal orbit, and declared that Neptune should be right there! And those calculating his math, nothing more than math(!), found that he was one degree off! [Note: The international astronomy community eventually decided to settle the international dispute by giving credit to both the British Adams and the French Urbain for Neptune’s discovery, even though Adams unofficially discovered it first.] Astronomy.com also states that “Adams [eventually] completed his calculations first, but Le Verrier published first. Le Verrier’s calculations were also more accurate.” The lesson here for you kids looking to submit astronomical findings to a governing body, when they approach you for detailed calculations to support your astronomical findings make sure you either respond immediately, or maybe you should have your detailed calculations ready before declaring your findings.

Neptune is not visible by the naked eye, and this, coupled with the technological limitations of the time, forced the brightest minds in astronomy, physics, and mathematics to base their theoretical predictions and findings on the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton theories, and this idea that the entire universe existed on universally accepted mathematical principles.

Anytime we discuss a first, we encounter the eventuality of someone discovering something eventually. In doing so, we undermine the definition of smart, creative, and ingenious. Some of us might be too easily impressed by knowledge in an arena for which we are basically neanderthals. Yet, how can anyone not be impressed that a man, or two men, or three men in total, used relatively basic theory, combined with data points, and a vague supposition to mathematically project that due to the irregular movements of one body in the universe is acting so unusual that it must be acting or reacting to another body in such a way that it has to be … right there, only to find out that they are one degree off. We can only guess that in the intervening twenty-four to twenty-five years, between Bouvard’s guess and Adams and Le Verrier’s confirmation, there were hundreds of guesses submitted to observatories, and they were all wrong.

Were all of those theoretical guesses wrong, or were they, as P Andrew Karam, at Encyclopedia.com states, simply the result of bad timing? “The discovery of Neptune proved more a remarkable coincidence than a testimony to mathematical prowess.

“Leverrier’s and Adams’s solutions for Neptune’s orbit were incorrect. They both assumed Neptune to lie further from the sun than it actually does, leading, in turn, to erroneous calculations of Neptune’s actual orbit. In fact, while the calculated position was correct, had the search taken place even a year earlier or later, Neptune would not have been discovered so readily and both Leverrier and Adams might well be unknown today except as historical footnotes. These inaccuracies are best summarized by a comment made by a Scientific American editor:”

“Leverrier’s planet in the end matched neither the orbit, size, location or any other significant characteristic of the planet Neptune, but he still garners most of the credit for discovering it.”

“It is also worth noting that, after Neptune’s mass and orbit were calculated, they turned out to be insufficient to account for all of the discrepancies in Uranus’s motion and, in turn, Neptune appeared to have discrepancies in its orbit. This spurred the searches culminating in Pluto’s discovery in 1930. However, since Pluto is not large enough to cause Neptune and Uranus to diverge from their orbits, some astronomers speculated the existence of still more planets beyond Pluto. Hence, Pluto’s discovery, too, seems to be more remarkable coincidence than testimony to mathematical prowess. More recent work suggests that these orbital discrepancies do not actually exist and are due instead to plotting the planets’ positions on the inexact star charts that existed until recently.”

The two of them got lucky in Karam’s words. They made 19^thCentury errors that we can now fact-check with our modern technology, and we can now say that they timed their findings at a most opportune time in Neptune’s orbit. Yet, whatever “remarkable coincidences” occurred, it turns out Adams’ and Leverrier’s “calculated position [proved] correct”.

“The remarkable coincidences” answers the question why so many previous theoretical submissions were incorrect, rejected, or couldn’t be observed by observatories and thus verified between Bouvard’s initial theory in 1821 and Leverrier’s detailed calculations of the positioning of the planet later named Neptune.

As with any story of this type, some of us wonder what happened between the lines? Have you ever been so obsessed with something that you couldn’t function on a normal human level? Have you ever been so obsessed with something that you didn’t enjoy food, drink, or any of the other fundamental joys of life the way you did before? Have you ever been so obsessed that you couldn’t sleep at night, and routine, mundane conversations with your friends seemed so routine and mundane that you can’t bear them, until you resolve the one problem that haunts you. How many accomplished individuals in their respective fields sacrificed dating, marrying, and having a family to their focus their existence on being the one to find the answer to the perturbing body theory? We can talk about fame, and fortune, and all that, but if you’re genuinely obsessed, you reach a tipping point where those things become nothing more than a byproduct to working through the question to find the answer on your own. In instances such as these, even a level of historical fame pales in comparison to the personal satisfaction we feel by finding the answer.

Whatever the case was, we can comfortably guess that Adams and Le Verrier didn’t submit the first predictions. We can find fault in Le Verrier’s projections, but we should remember that he was providing an educated guess that a planet one billion miles away from Uranus, and 2.7 billion miles away from him on Earth existed. The observatory asked him for detailed calculations, he provided them, and the observatory used those calculations to spot Neptune. I consider that a point blank exclamation mark at the end of this discussion.

Yet, whenever we discuss the idea that .25% of the population, or one in 400, are geniuses, and we publicly marvel at their accomplishments, some ninny comes along and drops the ever-annoying, “It would’ve eventually been discovered by someone, somewhere.” When we express exhaustion, they add, “What? It’s a planet, a planet that is roughly four times larger than Earth. Someone would’ve eventually spotted it.”

As much as we loathe such dismissals, it appears to be true in this case. If P Andrew Karam is correct, and we have no reason to doubt him, Adams and Leverrier were the first to submit right place, right time predictions that due to “a remarkable coincidence” could be verified due to the timing of their submissions.

It also bothers those of us who enjoy marveling at genius to hear things like, “Some guys are just smarter than others. I know some smart guys who say some smart things.” That’s true too, of course, but some are geniuses, and some of us love nothing more than dissecting, refuting, and demystifying the notions of their genius. Were John Couch Adams and Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier geniuses who figured something out that no one else could, or were they right-time, right place opportunists? No matter what Karam writes about their errors, he admits the “calculated position was correct”.

Le Verrier’s calculated position was also derived without the benefit of James Webb or Hubble telescopes, and he and Adams did not know the nuclear-powered space probes that could confirm theoretical guesses on the molecular composition of the lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan. They also did not have the advantage provided by Voyager Spacecraft visits, of course. They had Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, the idea of celestial mechanics from Johannes Kepler, some comparatively archaic technology, and a pencil and paper.

With our modern technology, we can now correct the mistakes of the past. This is the way it should be, of course, but we should refrain from diminishing past accomplishments or inherently claiming superior intelligence now. We might know more now thanks to the brilliance of our greatest technological toys, but most of us had nothing to do with building that technology. We’re just the beneficiaries of it. We now have the advantage of all of these marvelous gadgets and tools at our disposal to fact-check prior “geniuses”, but does that mean that the brilliant minds of the past weren’t geniuses? We can talk about how some of the theories don’t stand up, but think about how many physicists, astronomers, mathematicians, and general theorists of yesteryear developed theories, without the advantage of the accumulated knowledge we’ve gathered since, that do?

Some of the geniuses of yesteryear turned out to be wrong, of course, and some of them were right-place, right-time opportunists who discovered things first, but before you say “Someone, somewhere would’ve discovered it” remember the guys who mathematically predicted the existence of Neptune, probably road a horse to work on a dirt road, if they were lucky enough and rich enough to own a horse, and their definition of the heart of the city was often just a bunch of wooden store fronts, like the recreations we see on the old HBO show Deadwood. Most of what these 19^th century astronomers and mathematicians saw in the nighttime sky is what we can see by stepping outside and looking up into the sky. They had some technological assistance back then, in the form of relatively weak telescopes, and some theorize that astronomers, like Galileo Galilei in 1613, Jerome Lalande in 1795, and John Herschel in 1830 may have used it to spot Neptune first, but they didn’t know they were seeing a planet, because their telescopes were not powerful enough for them to know that. Those of us who write articles about such topics and the geniuses who made ingenious discoveries or theories that proved slightly incorrect or somewhat flawed should asterisk our critiques by saying, “I am smart. No, really I am, really, really smart, but as ingenious as I am, I don’t know if I could’ve done what they did with the primitive technology they had, primitive when compared to ours. So, before I go about correcting and critiquing their findings with the technology I have at my disposal, thanks to those who developed it for me, I’d like to say how impressive it is that they came so close that it’s impressive that they did what they did with what they had.”