On July 10th, Serbia marks the Science Day, a national event dedicated to the great Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla and to science in general. This year, the event has commenced the day before with the opening of the exhibition entitled "Tesla's Vision of the Internet" by Lazar Boskovic, organized by the Serbian National Internet Domain Registry and the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade, staged in Belgrade’s gallery "Ozone".
The exhibition presents Tesla’s work "World System" from the year 1900, when he presented a 12-point vision of what is today called the wireless internet, mobile telephony and GPS. In a 1909 statement for the New York Times, quoted by Popular Mechanics magazine in an article titled "Wireless of the future", Nikola Tesla said this, among other things:
"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 with 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 place 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."
All this is possible for Internet users today, using a computer or via a mobile phone.
MORE INFORMATION: теслинавизијаинтернета.срб/teslas-vision-of-the-internet
DOWNLOAD: Tesla's vision of the Internet (PDF, 3,7 MB)