The internet Tesla mythology is indeed unfortunate ('unknown genius' - for a man familiar to every physics student and with an SI unit named after him) and he w

The internet Tesla mythology is indeed unfortunate ('unknown genius' - for a man familiar to every physics student and with an SI unit named after him) and he was certainly an eccentric, self-promoter and not free of obviously misplaced ideas (he railed against the theory of relativity, for instance). Beside his genuine scientific inventions and the crazy talk of death rays, though, he seems to have been among the first to give some thought to the implications and possibility of global communications. "it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place." He didn't actually invent any of that but the vision is broad and striking, for the first decade of the 20th century.