Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Lazar Bošković, Creative Director, AgitPROP
Modern communication technologies are based on the application of the patents of Nikola Tesla, the world’s and Serbia’s greatest scientist, born on 10 July, 1856. His famous Wardenclyffe Tower and Laboratory in Long Island – built, but also destroyed, at the beginning of the 20th century – were supposed to be the beginning of something which could be called an “analogue Internet”.
Nikola Tesla first announced the essence of his wireless transfer vision in the 1900 “The World System” project. Speaking in the technical dictionary of the time, he described in 12 points what is now called wireless Internet, mobile telephony and GPS. In the autobiography My Inventions (1919) Tesla writes that he started to commercialize “The World System” in 1900, and explains:
“The ‘World-System’ has resulted from a combination of several original discoveries made by the inventor in the course of long continued research and experimentation. It makes possible not only the instantaneous and precise wireless transmission of any kind of signals, messages or characters, to all parts of the world, but also the inter-connection of the existing telegraph, telephone, and other signal stations without any change in their present equipment.”
Later, in 1908, he described it in more detail in the journal Wireless Telegraphy & Telephony, in the article “The Future of the Wireless Art,” and his prediction of the future was published in 1909 by the New York Times, and the journal Popular Mechanics, in the article “Wireless of the future”, in which Tesla says:
“It will soon be possible, for instance, for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them appear instantly in type in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber in the world. It will only be necessary to carry an inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, which will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, for distances of thousands of miles. One may listen or transmit speech or song to the uttermost parts of the world. In the same way any kind of picture, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another. It will be possible to operate millions of such instruments from a single station. Thus it will be a simple matter to keep the uttermost parts of the world in instant touch with each other. The song of a great singer, the speech of a political leader, the sermon of a great divine, the lecture of a man of science may thus be delivered to an audience scattered all over the world.”
Some mobile phone manufacturers suggest that Tesla’s vision back then was the announcement of smartphones. However, when you look at more comprehensively what Tesla wrote and spoke at the beginning of the 20th century, the conclusion is that his words speak more about the technology of today that unites all aspects of communication and information transfer, and that is the Internet, regardless of the particular device. This is also reflected in the multimedia project “Tesla’s Vision of the Internet”, available at teslinavizijainterneta.rs.
Infographic “Tesla’s Vision of the Internet” shows how everything that Tesla mentioned in 12 points of his “World System” is available to every Internet user today – either via a computer, or via a mobile phone. It shows in parallel Tesla’s visionary words and old photographs from Tesla’s time on the one hand, and on the other hand are descriptions of today’s information and communication technologies whose backbone is exactly the Internet.
Mobile exhibition “Tesla’s Vision of the Internet” has been exhibited seven times since 2012 in Belgrade and Novi Sad. It is available in the form of 15 panels and is freely provided for exhibition needs to interested institutions. The author is Lazar Bošković, it was made in the co-production of the Register of the National Internet Domain of Serbia, the Gallery “O3one” and the Museum of Nikola Tesla, and the designer was Dušan Vojnov (Orange studio).
The motives of the exhibition were the foundation for the monodrama “Tesla and wireless connecting of the world”, which speaks of the significance of his inventions in the contemporary digitized lifestyle. Namely, every digital device in the world (a computer, a smartphone …) has technologies based on Tesla’s patents, such as “and” logical circuit and wireless transmission. Both originate from a patent for a remote control boat, which Tesla showed on a pond in New York’s Madison Square Garden, in 1898.
