Nikola Tesla: Programme of Celebrations (1976) Page 20

International Celebrations of the 120th Anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla

1. The main celebration outside Yugoslavia will take place in the United States, where Nikola Tesla lived, worked and died, and will form part of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of American independence.

A special American-Yugoslav committee set up in New York has worked out the following special 1976 programme which has the fullest support of representatives of American political, scientific and cultural life:

• erection of a monument to Tesla, the work of the Croatian sculptor Fran Krsinic and a present from the peoples of Yugoslavia, on 8 July, 1976 at the Niagara Falls (Goat Island) where the first hydro-electric power-station based on Tesla’s invention went into operation 80 years ago (15 November, 1896):
• scientific symposium “Nikola Tesla on Energy” in New York on 30 January, 1976. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in New York to award the first “Nikola Tesla” (annual) Prize at the winter meeting of the Power Engineering Society and the “Nikola Tesla” Yugoslav Society for the Spread of Scientific Knowledge;
• commemoration at Brookhaven near New York to mark the 120th anniversary of Tesla’s birth; unveiling of a plaque on the building in Long Island (Shoreham) which housed the Tesla laboratory and the Wardencliff tele-communication tower;
• scientific symposium “Nikola Tesla on Tele-communications” in co-operation with the I.E.E.E. Communication Society;

Actions proposed on the basis of a petition signed by hundreds of American engineers:

• a street or square in New York city to be named after Nikola Tesla;
• the President of the United States to proclaim 10 July, 1976 as Nikola Tesla Day;
• Nikola Tesla to be elected to the Hall of Fame for Great Americans;
• UNESCO to provide the initiative for international celebrations of the memory of this great world citizen;
• to consider the possibility of marking the places of Tesla’s two laboratories in New York city (1887 and 1895) and Colorado Springs (1899).

2. The anniversary of Tesla’s birth is to be marked in other countries of the world as well, especially in those with which Tesla was connected in the course of his creative life, - in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Soviet Union, France, Great Britain and several other European countries (Italy, Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.), in Asia (People’s Republic of China, Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Korea, Burma, Malaysia, etc.), Africa (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, etc.), Latin America (Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, etc.) and Australia - by commemorative programmes and lectures, by special articles in the press, and by broadcasts on radio and television.