It is little known to the Balkan public that Nikola Tesla was the first in the world to envision the Internet and presented it back in 1900, in his project for wireless transmission, the World System. This is exactly what the multimedia project “Tesla First Imagined the Internet” is about, whose website teslainternet.rs was launched these days, in honor of Tesla’s birthday.
At the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, Tesla’s idea was to integrate all forms of electronic communication into one — the World System — delivering them to users through wireless connections, regardless of content type or distance. Just as the internet does today — connecting all digital communications into a unified whole! This is exactly how our genius foresaw it from the beginning.
In addition to being a visionary, Tesla also had registered patents that are significant for the creation of the Internet, as well as the entire wireless network and multimedia digital world we know today. We know that Tesla is the father of wireless transmission (of both information and energy), but this is how he described his World System and its practical multimedia possibilities in 1900:
“It enables not only immediate and precise wireless transmission of any type of signal, message or sign, to all parts of the world, but also interconnection of existing telegraph, telephone and other signal stations…”
“A cheap receiver, no bigger than a pocket watch, will enable him to listen anywhere, on land or sea, to a speech delivered or music played elsewhere, no matter how distant.”
Using the technical language of that time, Tesla outlined in 12 points what we now know, use, and call wireless internet, mobile network, and GPS, all related to remote multimedia communication.
Tesla’s 12 ideas were related to wireless transmission of text, data, information, sound, photographs, drawings, and documents. The only thing missing was video (moving images had not yet fully become film at that time). In the project “Tesla First Envisioned the Internet”, Tesla’s ideas are presented alongside 12 modern digital concepts: Email, Digital certificate, VOIP, RSS, Instant Messaging app, VPN, Streaming media, NTP, EDI, GPS, Digital printing, and FTP.
The multimedia project “Tesla First Envisioned the Internet” emerged from the collaboration between Lazar Bošković, the creator of the concept, text, and design, and generative artificial intelligence responsible for crafting retro illustrations in the style of the 1900s. The production was done by the AgitPROP agency.
