Slashdot Mirror
Tesla's New York Laboratory Up For Sale
Ziest points us to NY Times piece on the battle over the site of Nicola Tesla's last failed experiment. Tesla's laboratory, called Wardenclyffe, located on Long Island, has been put up for sale by its current owner, Agfa Corp. Local residents and Tesla followers were alarmed by a real estate agent's promise that the land, listed at $1.6 million, could "be delivered fully cleared and level." Preservationists want to create a Tesla museum and education center at Wardenclyffe, anchored by the laboratory designed by Tesla's friend, Stanford White, a celebrated architect. "In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious. The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. ... But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory."
Also, a loon.
Nothing there anymore except the poisoned ground.
There really isn't anything to learn there anymore.
It's not like there going to level the building and store rooms full of stuff.
OTOH, a pool of people that wanted to turn it into a museum could probably be brought together for some fund Raisers.
Hell, you do it. Contact the real estate agent and find out what kind of time you have. Get some on line organization going and hit all the Tesla Forums.
You would be the first person to do this type of thing successfully. If you really want to save it, there is no reason you can't give it a good effort. None.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, if the damage hasn't already been done, there's a price tag on preservation: $1.6 million. Not much more than an equivalently sized residential property in the area.
What's the issue again?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Both should be remembered. It's important to remember that no matter how brilliant some humans are, they're still human. Genius in a specific pursuit does not imply genius in all pursuits.
A loon who understood how alternating current works.
Unlike some other loon inventors back then.
Lookin' at you, Thomas Alva.
(Topsy the Elephant, RIP)
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
you do realize that many of the technologies mentioned in the article do exist today (like wireless video transmission, stock quotes etc.) but in 1903 few people if any could explain how to make that work. and the other ideas, about providing wireless electricity? those arent so far fetched either
2008: Intel reproduces Nikola Tesla's 1894 implementation and Prof. John Boys group's 1988's experiments by wirelessly powering a light bulb with 75% efficiency. wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transmission)
just because you and 99% of people dont understand something dosent make it a hoax. i mean hell look at how many people dont realise the internet isint some kind of truck.
i wage a holy war against the apostrophe.
Like many innovators. Clinically speaking, he was obsessive-compulsive, and this had some very specific effects on his activities but did not prevent him from inventing a dozen things in the room I'm in right now (including radio and flourescent lighting, of course). Edison, by contrast, was a mild meglomaniac and paranoid.
Well, let's see about that....
The one I built works rather well as a air-powered motor. Oddly enough, it works like Tesla said it does (not like the modern Tesla worshippers claim, though - it won't power a spaceship to mars).
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. You can pump mud with a "Tesla turbine" type pump, but Tesla had some other pump designs that worked better. Also, what do you consider a "traditional turbine"? There is no single accepted turbine design, nor was there in Tesla's time. (I'm partial to the Loeffel Francis myself, but it's not all that popular outside the hydropower field.)
"Just doesn't work?" Since he was not able to complete his work, yet was able to light up lamps from a quarter mile away and throw mile-long lightning bolts, I think "just doesn't work" is a bit of a facile dismissal from an Internet naysayer.
AC power is a doddle, but yes, the universal brushless motor is indeed brilliant.
Time travel? Never heard that one. And of course, being killed by a beam of coherent energy will never happen (oh, wait, it did? Never mind).
Here's all you need to know about Tesla's insight: In 1915 he tried to convince everyone that burning petroleum was wasteful and foolish, and that we should develop sources of energy that relied on the great movements of the cosmos - spinning planets, cycling winds, geothermal, solar radiation, etc... and people said "what a loonie!"
We got no disagreements there, bud. But he was never any more subject to mental illness than the inventor of Bittorrent - his madness did not significantly affect his work, and may have helped him to focus on the insights that others blithely dismiss as insanity.
The problem is 75% of which power?
Unfortunately, it was 75% of received power, not transmitted power.
About 99.99% of the transmitted power went to other directions, it heated neighboring rocks and nothing else.
Unless you have a directional antenna, any sort of wireless power transmission will waste a lot of power. And, to have a directional antenna, you need to know in which direction your receiver will be. Then it starts to look pretty much like a wired power transmission setup...
What the heck is your point?
The guy came up with the idea way back in 1894 so who really cares about its efficacy..
Everything we plug in today has Nikola Tesla's I.P. in it. AC transmission won the current war over the DC method.
Anyone who try's to belittle Tesla's work really has no idea what they are talking about. But yeah he had lots of crazy ideas but it was 1894 for god sake! Everyone who has ever invented something useful also probably had at least 100 bad ideas as well..
ae
There's a big difference between searching google
What the heck is YOUR point? It wouldn't matter if he came up with it in 1498 - a crappy idea is a crappy idea, regardless of when it's thought up. If your "invention" requires 50,000 killowatts to power a friggin lightbulb, there's a bit of a problem there, especially when you're making use of a well known effect rather that inventing something new. Induction was discovered in 1831, so it's not like Tesla was discovering a new aspect of the physical world - he simply made use (in an extremely inefficient way) of a principle discovered by Faraday.
Which is not necessarily a good thing. The only advantage of AC current is that it can be easily modified by transformers. Long-distance power transmission (between grids) is DC because it doesn't require phase synchronization and it's less wasteful, and the difference adds up nicely over longer distances. AC didn't replace DC - the two systems are complimentary.
Also, while Tesla did invent a three phase AC generator, he didn't exactly come up with the idea of AC current, nor was he the only one working on it.
Anyone who tries to deify a mad scientist isn't firing on all cylinders.
Exactly - the problem here is that the Tesla Cult like to pretend that his 100 bad ideas were actually 100 GREAT ideas which we "can't understand yet". Which is, to be blunt, bullshit. You can idolize the man for the great things he did, if you want, as long as you're not trying to prop up his shitty ideas at the same time.