A Lax representation for the Born-Infeld equation

We study the Born-Infeld equation from a Lagrangian point of view emphasizing the duality symmetry present in such systems. We obtain the Hamiltonian formulation directly from the Lagrangian. We also show that this system admits a dispersionless nonstandard Lax representation which directly leads to all the conserved charges (including the ones not previously obtained). We also present the generating function for these charges and point out various other properties of this system.