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Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum

There is a very good fundraiser happening at IndieGoGo:

Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum
Nikola Tesla was the father of the electric age. Despite having drop-kicked humanity into a second industrial revolution, up until recently he's been an unsung hero in history books. If you don't know who Tesla is, go read this.

Tesla's final laboratory is located in the sleepy town of Shoreham, New York. It's known as Wardenclyffe and it's where Tesla attempted to build a tower that would provide free wireless energy to the entire earth. Unfortunately, Tesla lost his funding before the project was completed and in 1917 the Wardenclyffe tower was demolished. Subsequently, the land was sold to a film and paper manufacturer.

However, the land, laboratory, and foundation beneath the tower are still there and very recently went up for sale. And right now a non-profit is trying to buy the property and turn it into a Nikola Tesla Museum. The property is listed at $1.6 million, and this non-profit has received a matching grant from New York State of up to $850k. This means that if we can raise $850k, New York State will match us for that same amount -- putting the total raised at $1.7 million.

There is currently another offer on the table from someone who wants to purchase the property potentially tear it down or turn it into a retail establishment. There is no Tesla museum in the United States, despite Tesla's extraordinary accomplishments. If we can outbid this other person and buy the land it will permanently be protected as a historic site and eventually converted into a Nikola Tesla Science Center.

The folks behind this project are a 501c non-profit organization and they've spent the past 15 years trying to find a way to save this property. This IndieGoGo account is linked directly to their bank and all the funds will go directly to them.

Even if we raise the full amount and end up with $1.7 million, this isn't enough to build an actual museum / science center. But it will effectively put the property into the right hands so it can eventually be renovated into something fitting for one of the greatest inventors of our time.

Internet, this is where you come in: HELP ME BUILD A GODDAMN TESLA MUSEUM.

The Wardenclyffe (Long Island, NY) site is exceptional -- Tesla selected it for its good ground and the building was designed by Stanford White. It was Tesla's last large lab. There is an excellent page that covers the highlights of Tesla's inventions at The Oatmeal. His contributions are prevalent everywhere -- he invented (and took out patents for) elements of digital switching and digital logic gates. Here is the website for the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe. Let's face it folks -- this is the man who gave us the system of electrical generation, transformation, distribution and utilization that we still use today. 110/220/440 volts? 60 cycles per second (Hz)? Three phase? All Tesla. Worked then and they are still the optimum numbers to use. Other nations use 100V and 50Hz because they didn't want to pay licensing fees to Tesla. Their grid is not as efficient. Ten Volts or ten Hertz was enough of a distance to satisfy the lawyers... Edison was a douchebag -- he took other people's ideas and marketed them. His name is not respected in the Engineering community. You measure the flow of current in Amperes. You measure the potential in Volts. You measure power in Watts. You measure Magnetic Flux in Teslas. What do you measure in Edisons?


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Tesla was the real deal. It is about time that he gets a fitting memorial and museum in his name... Posted by DaveH at August 15, 2012 10:24 PM