Nikola Tesla and the Institute

Nikola Tesla is one of the most productive engineers and inventors who worked and created in the technical and technological fields of science. Concepts of production, transmission, and application of alternating current, as known in contemporary civilization, are based mainly on Nikola Tesla’s works and patents.

The Nikola Tesla Institute of Electrical Engineering is the only institution in the World that has Nikola Tesla's written consent to bear his name.

The first alternating current hydroelectric plant was built in the United States of America, on Niagara Falls, and initiated in 1897, with 9 out of 13 applied patents belonging to Nikola Tesla.“Nikola Tesla died… He died in poverty but was among the most useful and successful men ever. His achievements were great and are becoming greater as time goes on,” the Mayor of New York, LaGuardia, said on January 7, 1943, on the day of Tesla’s passing. Later that year, a decision of an authorized American court revoked the copyright of radio transmission from Marconi and returned it to the true spiritual father of telecommunications –Nikola Tesla.

„Nikola Tesla died… He died in poverty but was among the most useful and successful men ever. His achievements were great and are becoming greater as time goes on.”

In Belgrade, however, in the mid-1930s, an idea materialized within the academic and scientific community to establish “an institute after the name of Nikola Tesla, which would show that our nation appreciates Tesla’s achievements and that it can provide possibilities to new generations to cooperate, in an institute of an international standing, in the fields of science and technology as set by Tesla.” A jubilee ceremony, held on May 28, 1936, in Belgrade, at the National University of Kolarac, celebrating the 80th birthday of Nikola Tesla was an occasion for Prof. Bogdan Gavrilovic to declare the Nikola Tesla Institute (NTI) founded: “It is my great honor, in this extraordinary jubilee gathering on the occasion of 80th anniversary of Tesla’s life, to be able to declare, on behalf of the Nikola Tesla Association, that the Institute Nikola Tesla is being established today”.

Tesla agreed with the idea of establishing the Institute in a few written messages, in which he prophesied the effectiveness and fruitfulness of such an institution. After three years of striving through the labyrinths of the then-state bureaucracy, the idea to establish NTI was endorsed by a lawful Provision authorised by the President of the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in May 1939.

,,Tesla agreed with the idea of establishing the Institute in a few written messages, in which he prophesied the effectiveness and fruitfulness of such an institution’’

The NTI associates continued their pioneering work with great hope and zeal, illustrated for the first time in this Monograph by presenting the original archived document with Minutes of the first Assembly Meeting of NTI, held on June 15, 1939, in Belgrade. The work of NTI in those first years, when financial and other resources had been secured to construct a building and a laboratory, was dramatically interrupted and disabled when World War Two started. Proportions of the destruction and the condition of a liberated but economically and spiritually devastated country were documented in the Minutes of the Celebratory Meeting of the NTI Assembly, held on March 31, 1946, on the 10th anniversary of the NTI establishment. The decisions at this meeting illustrate our predecessors’ moral and intellectual strength: “For the great name of Nikola Tesla, we could not and did not dare from ethical reasons to decide to close the Institute. The Administration has not made such a shameful decision today either. Still, even if such a decision had been made, our Society and our State would not have acknowledged it in a justified revolt and defense of the national prestige. Thus, we have decided that the Institute continues working, with an expectation of better days”.

„For the great name of Nikola Tesla, we could not and did not dare from ethical reasons to decide to close the Institute…’’

The second half of the 20th century was characterized by fast and mass electrification in capitalist and communist countries. The bases of this process were the alternating currents generated in hydro, thermal, and nuclear plants, and the basic principles of the development were patents of Nikola Tesla. The NTI represented a significant integrating subject in our country’s electrification process. Not only a large number of substantial projects which directly influenced the development and modernization of the country were finalized, but also NTI represented a fertile seed that generated the blooming of institutions that exist and successfully work even today – Institute “Mihajilo Pupin,” Institute “Jaroslav Cerni,” Institute “Milan Vidmar” (Slovenia), Institute of Electric power industry (Croatia) and, Museum of Nikola Tesla.

,,but also NTI represented a fertile seed that generated the blooming of institutions that exist and successfully work even today’’

In 1960, the Government of the People’s Republic of Serbia granted a new function to NTI. It renamed it to Electrical Engineering Institute “Nikola Tesla,” the name that has remained until today. Having passed through periods of altering legal regulations and internal organizational changes, NTI has always adjusted its scope of work to the demands of the actual market and has survived times of recession, sanctions, and wars (1990 – 2001), furthermore has entered the period of accelerated activities and the period of accreditation, certification and most recently the process of transformation of scientific and research organizations in Serbia.