Yugoslavia - 100 Dinara - p-139a - 1994 dated Foreign Paper Money

Foreign Paper Money. N. Tesla portrait/Tesla Museum.

Nikola Tesla (/?t?sl?/ TESS-l?; Serbian Cyrillic: ?????? ?????, pronounced [n?kola têsla]; 10 July [O.S. 28 June] 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Born and raised in the Austrian Empire, Tesla studied engineering and physics in the 1870s without receiving a degree, gaining practical experience in the early 1880s working in telephony and at Continental Edison in the new electric power industry. In 1884 he emigrated to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen. He worked for a short time at the Edison Machine Works in New York City before he struck out on his own. With the help of partners to finance and market his ideas, Tesla set up laboratories and companies in New York to develop a range of electrical and mechanical devices. His alternating current (AC) induction motor and related polyphase AC patents, licensed by Westinghouse Electric in 1888, earned him a considerable amount of money and became the cornerstone of the polyphase system which that company eventually marketed.

Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first-ever exhibited. Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs. In 1893, he made pronouncements on the possibility of wireless communication with his devices. Tesla tried to put these ideas to practical use in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project, an intercontinental wireless communication and power transmitter, but ran out of funding before he could complete it.

After Wardenclyffe, Tesla experimented with a series of inventions in the 1910s and 1920s with varying degrees of success. Having spent most of his money, Tesla lived in a series of New York hotels, leaving behind unpaid bills. He died in New York City in January 1943. Tesla's work fell into relative obscurity following his death, until 1960, when the General Conference on Weights and Measures named the SI unit of magnetic flux density the tesla in his honor. There has been a resurgence in popular interest in Tesla since the 1990s.

The dinar (Cyrillic script: ?????) was the currency of the three Yugoslav states: the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (formerly the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes), the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia between 1918 and 2006. The dinar was subdivided into 100 para (Cyrillic script: ????).

In the early 1990s, economic mismanagement made the government bankrupt and forced it to take money from the savings of the country's citizens. This caused severe and prolonged hyperinflation, which has been described as the worst in history. Large amounts of money were printed, with coins becoming redundant and inflation rates reaching over one billion per cent per year. This hyperinflation caused five revaluations between 1990 and 1994; in total there were eight distinct dinari. Six of the eight have been given distinguishing names and separate ISO 4217 codes. The highest denomination banknote was 500 billion dinars, which became worthless a fortnight after it was printed.

Until 1918, the dinar was the currency of Serbia. It then became the currency of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, circulating alongside the krone in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, with 1 dinar = 4 kronen. The first coins and banknotes bearing the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes were issued in 1920, until which time Serbian coins and banknotes circulated. In 1929, the name of the country changed to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and this was reflected on the currency.

In 1931, an exchange rate of 56.4 dinara to the U.S. dollar was set, which changed to 44 dinara in 1933. In 1937, a tourist exchange rate of 250 dinara to the British pound was established.

In 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded and split up, with the dinar remaining currency in Nedi?'s Serbia as Serbian dinar). The kuna was introduced in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (Independent State of Croatia) at par with the dinar, whilst the Bulgarian lev, Italian lira and German Reichsmark circulated in those part of Yugoslavia occupied by these countries.

In 1945, as Yugoslavia began to be reconstituted, the Yugoslav dinar replaced the Serbian dinar, Independent State of Croatia kuna and other occupation currencies, with the rates of exchanged being 1 Yugoslav dinar = 20 Serbian dinara = 40 kuna.

Yugoslavia was a founding member of the International Monetary Fund. At the time, other Communist countries avoided signing up to it. The dinar was initially pegged to the US dollar at a rate of 50 dinars to the dollar. By 1955, the peg had been depreciated to 300 dinars to the dollar, but this was only applicable to a limited number of transactions. For the vast majority of transactions, a system of multiple exchange rates with differing levels of government intervention applied. Depending on the transaction the system offered over 200 different exchange rates ranging from 600 or so dinars to the dollar to over 1,150. This multiple exchange rate system was abolished in 1961 and replaced with a single pegged rate of 750 dinars to the dollar.

On 1 January 1966, the first of five revaluations took place, at a ratio of 100 to 1.

The revalued currency was initially pegged to the US dollar at a rate of 12.50 dinars to the dollar. In late 1971, this was revised to 17 dinars to the dollar. Following the Nixon Shock, Yugoslavia adopted a market exchange rate system. A foreign exchange market was established in Belgrade in which only banks could participate; this set the exchange rates for the entire country. This allowed the dinar to float (or perhaps more accurately, sink) more or less freely. Under this system, the exchange rate reached about 29 dinars to the dollar in 1981, 127 dinars to the dollar by 1984, and 457 dinars to the dollar by 1987.

Yugoslavia's chronic inflation was poorly managed. Between 1971 and 1991, Yugoslavia's annualized inflation was 76 percent. Only Brazil and Zaire had higher levels of inflation.

The second revaluation took place on 1 January 1990, at a ratio of 10,000 to 1. During this period, the constituent republics began to leave the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Four of the six republics declared independence and issued their own currencies shortly after. This was the last dinar that bore the coat of arms and the name of the "Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" in multiple languages.

Serbian enclaves in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in occupied territories in Croatia also issued currencies in dinar, equivalent to and revalued together with the Yugoslav dinar. These were the Krajina dinar and the Republika Srpska dinar.

The third revaluation took place on 1 July 1992, at a ratio of 10 to 1. Hyperinflation in the country began during this currency's period of circulation. This dinar was issued in the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which consisted of the remaining republics of Serbia and Montenegro. People started to use foreign hard currency, such as Deutschmarks, to mitigate some of the problems of hyperinflation. (This federation split in 2006 and Montenegro currently uses the Euro as its currency, though it does not mint it.)

Yugoslavia re-denominated the dinar for the fourth time on 1 October 1993, at a ratio of 1 million to 1. This did not mitigate the hyperinflation, and the 1993 dinar (ISO 4217 code: YUO) lasted for only three months.

Coinage became redundant. The 1993 dinar had the largest denomination out of all incarnations of Yugoslavian currency: the banknote, featuring Jovan Jovanovi? Zmaj had a face value of 500 billion (5×10¹¹) dinara (right). Wages became worthless; if paid in cash, workers had to rush out and spend their wages before they lost their value overnight. Many businesses started to pay wages in goods instead, and a simple barter system developed. Businesses with good connections to politicians could still get access to hard currency. Some shops, instead of rewriting their prices several times a day, started pricing goods in "bods" (points), often equivalent to hard currency such as one Deutschmark. The winter of 1993 was particularly hard for pensioners; if a monthly pension was spent immediately, it was still barely enough to buy three litres of milk. Many people relied on connections to friends and family abroad (who could provide hard currency) or in the countryside (who could grow food).

Yugoslavia re-denominated the dinar for the fifth time on 1 January 1994, at a ratio of 1 billion (10⁹) to 1.

The 1994 dinar (ISO 4217 code: YUG) was the shortest-lived out of all incarnations of Yugoslavian currency, as hyperinflation continued to intensify, and only one coin (1 dinar) was issued for it. Towards the end of the 1994 dinar, the National Bank overprinted and reissued 10 million dinara banknotes from the 1992 dinar (right).

On 24 January 1994, the novi dinar (nominative plural: novi dinari, Cyrillic script: ???? ?????, ???? ??????; genitive plural: novih dinara, Cyrillic: ????? ??????; novi means new) was introduced. This was not a revaluation of the dinar. Instead, the novi dinar was pegged at par to the Deutsche Mark. On the day of the introduction of the novi dinar, the exchange rate of the previous dinar to the Deutsche Mark, and, hence, to the novi dinar, was approximately 1 DM = 13 million dinara. Despite not being pegged to the newest currency, the previous dinar did not fall further in value, remaining at about 12 million "1994" dinar to the novi dinar. The overall impact of the hyperinflation was that 1 novi dinar equalled approximately 1.2×10²⁷ third (hard) dinara from before 1990, 1.2×10²⁹ Federation dinara, or 2.4 ×10³⁰ pre-war dinara. The "novi" portion of the name was abandoned in 2000.

In 2003, as Yugoslavia became the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the Yugoslav dinar in the constituent Republic of Serbia was replaced by the Serbian dinar (CSD) at par.

On 6 November 1999, Montenegro decided that, besides the Yugoslav dinar, the Deutsche Mark would also be an official currency. On 13 November 2000, the dinar was dropped in Montenegro and the Deutsche Mark (by that time defined in terms of the euro) became the only currency there. In 2006, with the end of Serbia and Montenegro's union following Montenegro's independence declaration, the dinar, by then only used in Serbia, was replaced by the Serbian dinar.

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