The famous scientist Nikola Tesla created his greatest works in the USA, where he patented thousands of his inventions, which continue to fascinate the world to this date.The inventor of the magnetic field, the induction motor, polyphase alternating current and many other inventions spent his one and only day in Serbia in 1892.The cultural route “In Tesla’s Footsteps” connects the institutes and museums visited by Nikola Tesla more than a century ago, the birthplaces of his friends and fellow scientists and the hydropower plants built according to his drawings.
Visitors to Belgrade have an opportunity to recreate a day in the life of the famous scientist and follow the path taken by him on his visit to Serbia. From the starting point at the Museum of Science and Technology, which displays important inventions of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and machine building, the route continues to the century-old cabinet of the University School of Electrical Engineering, with examples of power generators on display.
Finish retracing Tesla’s footsteps through Belgrade at the Nikola Tesla Museum, which houses the original mechanical devices built by Tesla, as well as his personal items and clothing and the urn with his earthly remains. The collection of the Nikola Tesla museum comprises more than 160,000 original documents, 2,000 books and manuscripts, photographs, instruments and devices, which reveal a lot about Tesla’s inventions, as well his private life. Due to its immense importance for humanity, Nikola Tesla’s Archive has been inscribed on UNESCO’s list of documentary heritage entitled Memory of the World.
From Belgrade, you can continue your journey further through Serbia. Thus, visitors can discover more about Tesla’s interests by visiting the birth house of his favourite poet, Jovan Jovanović Zmaj, in Sremska Kamenica. If you visit Idvor and the Museum Complex of Mihajlo Pupin, you will learn everything about Tesla’s friend and fellow scientist who, just like Tesla, spent most of his life in the US. To see where Tesla’s love of pigeons came from, visit Šišatovac Monastery on Fruška Gora mountain.
We suggest you also visit one of the first hydropower plants in the world, built by Đorđe Stanojević on the falls of the river Đetinja, modelled after Tesla’s hydropower plant on Niagara Falls. This hydropower plant, named “Pod gradom” (Under the Town), was built in Užice just four years after the first hydropower plant in Canada and has been standing above this river for more than 100 years.
Vučje Hydropower Plant near Leskovac was the second hydropower plant built in Serbia and was soon followed by Sveta Petka on the river Nišava, Gamzigrad near the town of Zaječar and Moravica in the town of Ivanjica. Although they are all more than a hundred years old, they are excellently preserved and form a surreal sight together with the surrounding rivers and vegetation. In addition to the hydropower plants built by professor Đorđe Stanojević, you can also visit Negotin, his home town.