They did it! They built a goddamn Tesla Museum
Last August, I had posted (
here and
here) about a fundraising effort to purchase Nikola Tesla's final laboratory and establish a museum. The group behind this needed to raise $850,000 and the State of New York would match funds.
They blew past this mark in a few days and managed to raise $1,370,511 over the course of the fundraising session (45 days).
There is a nice article over at
EDN Magazine:
Tesla museum is a go!
Score one for smart science and engineering-loving people.
Over the summer, we shared that a not-for-profit group was trying to scrape together enough funding through crowd sourcing to buy the land Tesla�s last lab sits on in Shoreham, NY.
The land was up for sale, priced at $1.6 million, and had a bid on it by a developer looking to build a retail establishment. But if, by chance, the group was able to get the cash and secure the land, they planned to build a Tesla museum.
Since then the group, now calling themselves Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, raised about $1.4 million made up of corporate and individual donations, as well as government funding.
The group reported earlier this month that it has purchased the land. Plans to build a museum honoring Tesla and his work are moving ahead.
Now, keeping any museum alive is in a resource challenge in itself. Finding people to manage the day to day operations, working with local and state governments -- Just keeping the lights on can be a financial challenge (hey, someone should figure out a way to transmit energy wirelessly and inexpensively or something �).
But here�s more good news: In the short six weeks that the group did fundraising, hundreds of people volunteered their time and professional expertise to get the project started and to transform the 100-plus year-old brick building into a world-renowned museum and interactive science education center. Contact the group here if you�d like to contribute resources, experience, financial or otherwise.
No word yet from the group on when the museum will be open for visitors, but we�ll be watching and you can count on EDN taking a trip out to Shoreham to check it out. Let us know if you plan to visit or offer support in the comments field below.
The group can be found here:
Tesla Science Center.
Time to knock Edison and Marconi off their pedestals and put them in their proper place in the history books...
Posted by DaveH at October 13, 2012 11:36 AM