What Nikola Tesla would have put on his wishlist
Nikola Tesla never cared much for money, comfort, or convention, which makes imagining his wishlist far more fun than shopping for anyone alive today. I tried to build the list the man himself might have written. I gave myself one rule: every item has to connect to something Tesla actually did, ate, obsessed over, or refused to live without.
Skip the neckties and the fine brandy, because none of it would have moved him. Here's the wishlist I think he'd have put together:
25 Pounds of Pigeon and Dove BirdseedI'll put some in my pockets before going to the park.$42
A nice trip of your choosing, but I'm picky about the room.Hotel room number must be divisible by 3.
The birdseed goes at the top because Tesla had a devotion to pigeons. He spent hours feeding them in the park, took injured birds back to his hotel room to nurse them, and even had a hotel chef mix up a special blend of seed for his flock, a fondness Britannica refers to as his weird obsession with pigeons. He got so attached that he later spoke of one white pigeon as the love of his life, so a bottomless bag of top-grade seed would make sense to be on the list.
The napkins sound strange until you learn Tesla was a serious germaphobe with pronounced obsessive-compulsive tendencies. He demanded exactly eighteen clean napkins at every meal so he could personally wipe down each piece of silverware and glassware before touching it. The specific number wasn't random either, since eighteen is divisible by three, his lucky figure, so the ritual quietly satisfied two compulsions at once.
Being divisible by three applied to other areas as well. Tesla spent his later decades in Manhattan hotels and refused to occupy any room that wasn't a multiple of three, right down to Room 3327 of the Hotel New Yorker, where he died in 1943. A long-term suite that already fit his rule of threes would have spared him a lot of awkward negotiation at the front desk.
In his later years Tesla kept to two simple meals a day and a largely vegetarian diet, living mostly on milk, honey, bread, and vegetable juices because he was convinced heavy food dulled the mind. A recurring pantry delivery of exactly those staples, no substitutions accepted, would suit his routine.
The do-not-disturb sign protects the hours that mattered most to him. Tesla was relentlessly nocturnal and barely slept, claiming he never rested more than two hours at a stretch and once worked eighty-four hours without a break. (I remember having projects that had me working odd hours, but never like that.) Those marathon overnight sessions in the lab were exactly when his best ideas tended to arrive, so a heavy-duty door hanger would have earned its keep.
Interesting tidbit
In resarching this post, I learned that Tesla designed his inventions entirely in his head, running and refining machines in his imagination before building a single physical part; he described how, the moment an idea struck, he would start building it up in his imagination. Forbes summed the method up as drafting a full blueprint mentally, down to the last detail, before he ever picked up a tool. Nothing to do with wishlists - just thought it was intersting.
In conclusion
I had to cut this off at six, but Tesla's quirks could fill a much longer list. He reportedly calculated the cubic volume of his food before eating it, couldn't stand the sight of pearls, and walked around the block three times before going inside. Every item here traces back to a documented habit, which is the whole fun of it.
Ready to make your own wishlist?