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$900,000 Raised For Buying Tesla's Lab
icebraining writes "As Slashdot reported earlier, The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman launched a funding campaign to help the Tesla Science Center, a 503(c) non-profit, buy the place of Tesla's final laboratory, the Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, New York.
Well, thanks to 21511 contributors, it has already raised $912,080, well above the original $850,000 goal. But it's not too late to help: any money raised above the goal will be used by the organization to build a museum dedicated to Tesla."
I would expect this endeavor to generate some electricity and buzz.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
I totally love the idea of preserving this site.
Think they'll sell working copies of those nifty steampunk stun guns in the gift shop?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
A small error, but the original goal was $850,000 - which is slightly important, as it was the required goal to attain matched funding from local government.
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
So that we can travel back in time and build a Tesla museum in 1917 Shoreham, New York!
While I'm aware that'll probably be the last of their worries, it would complete the location and make it more 'monumental'.
It's probably more than I could easily justify but I figured it was for a good cause and I really wanted one of the limited signed comic books :-)
Why not use the extra money to fund some actual research in electrical engineering? I don't think there's a better way to "honor the memory" of a great scientist/engineer.
From this article "The fundraiser goal was reached in six days, put over the top by $33,333 from an anonymous donor." ... I wonder who this anonymous donor may be.
Unfortunately, due to a mysterious "bank routing error", all $900,000 was deposited into the accounts of the estate of Thomas Edison.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Tesla was a crazy genius, in that regard I think it would be more fitting to have (at least part) of the museum have live/interactive and interesting things to do and try, rather than just gazing at collectibles and ooh-and-aah-ing at antiquities (how very awesome those still might be). Perhaps a MAKER lab or something or making a bulb glow with wireless electricity, have a Tesla coil play a song on your $MP3_PLAYER. If you read The Oatmeal's Tesla cartoon, you'd already have quite some nice ideas.
If I had millions of dollars, I would have plenty of things to spend it on, giving it away would not be on top of my list of things to do with my money.
Posting anon due to mod points used in this thread.
I remember it Vividly. They had a massive Tesla coil, and would fire it up with us inside the room. Then they gave us fluorescent striplights to hold, which would light up in our hands, without any wires! To this day I remember the event as the defining moment when I thought Science was awesome! My dad took me there when I was something like 9-10 years old. Loads of his old papers, demonstrations of his experiments, etc... totally awesome. There was also a room where his ashes were kept, but we were not allowed near the urn itself.
I hope that a corresponding Museum in the US would do for your kids as my visit all those years ago inspired me. Hopefully your insurance companies and health&safety people will not shut this idea down.
- Ogi_Unixnut
That's nice, but it reflects Tesla's work in his "dumb RF" period. Tesla's AC work was great, but his concept of RF was bogus. He thought the ionosphere was a conductive layer. What the Wardencliffe tower was supposed to do was use UV lamps to ionize a path up to the ionosphere so a high voltage could be pushed up to it, like a lightning bolt in reverse. Then, having energized the conductive layer, a receiver in another location far away could pick up the signal, or maybe even power. Tesla wrote this up; there's no mystery about this.
It would have been spectacular to watch, but useless as a communications system. The ionosphere isn't a big conductive plate in the sky. Also, the way to make radio work is to make better receivers, not more powerful transmitters. When Marconi first sent signals across the Atlantic, his transmit RF power was about 10KW. Tesla was planning to use megawatts on the transmit side, but didn't have anything new on the receive side.
In my view, building a museum to Tesla is important, so the actual genius, vision and true importance for humankind (Tesla) is highlighted, versus the treachery and deviousness that gets you riches (Edison).
The way I see it, this museum is not only going to educate people about what Tesla did for us all, how he enabled the modern society of the West, how he made life easier, what kind of thinker and innovator he was. No, for me this museum will also be a big "Fuck you Edison".
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Museum? I told 'em we already got one.
Now if we can only get Tesla in the rock and roll hall of fame, he'll be one up on that upstart Einstein
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Sometimes to find out what works and what doesn't, you actually have to try and end up failing. It doesn't make Tesla stupid, just that he was willing to test a theory that had some potential with the current understanding at the time.
Right, because government never spent money on a museum before.
Government does spend money on efforts to increase tourism, which brings money to the local economy. A Tesla museum in theory would bring more visitors to spend money (if nothing else, on food, gas, hotel, shopping, etc). There's nothing new here. Requiring the $850k to be raised is a test to confirm this is something people would want to come see.
Please continue your thought; don't leave us hanging.
Who is this researcher? What is their project? Tell us about it.
You might have noticed the Oatmeal guy didn't persuade people "Hey, let's spend a lot of money to buy any old lab and make some kind of museum." He was much more specific. That is why the money is flowing.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Extend the list by replying!
There is a small Telsa Museum of Science that offers demonstrations of telsa coils and teaches kids about Telsa... I think it may be in Colorado? Hard to find an address there sadly.
That said your idea is great and I hope the new place does similar things.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The museum you linked to is in Belgrade...
Perhaps you meant the one in the U.S.?
http://teslamuseum.us
Still, even though technically there's already such a museum, it would be great to have another on the land with Telsa's workshop. It's not like you can't go to multiple places to learn about Edison.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you want start-up capital for your venture or product, you need someone with money. Kickstarter changes that paradigm, but still, it's exceedingly difficult to launch an Apple or Microsoft with $5k in seed money from Kickstarter, at least, not these days. Costs to entry are so high and regulations so great that you really need someone with that IP experience AND the money available to weather storms.
Also, don't expect that a lawyer won't fuck you just as quickly as a businessman.
Well, the Slashdot-effect put the site down in a flash!
Site's still up.
I saw a request for funding being argued the other day by this guy by an "infographic." You end up with about five words on the screen before you have to scoll your wheel three times to get to the next four words. For such a project in the name of science, you would think that they wouldn't insult my intelligence.
It's funny how far just a short paragraph can go, but oh no, paragraphs are old and outdated. You're better off spending ten minutes reading a ten-word infographic than you are spending one minute reading a 200-word paragraph.
All in the name of "YAY! SCIENCE!!!" rather than science or literacy.
The Statue of Liberty wouldn't have been built unless Americans paid for and built it's pedastel/ base. That was a huge amount of money at the time, all paid for by private citizens, many of them schoolchildren donating saved pennies. http://www.statueofliberty.org/Statue_History.html I think the Tesla Museum will be great! Here is thee BBC news story link.: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19343855
I read in the last /. Tesla story that the Colorado museum closed several years ago due to lack of funds.
And it was built on public land and has been maintained and renovated with public money. The really big difference between 1886 and today is that corporations and their executives felt an obligation to society (even the robber barons) so actually contributed to the effort. Good luck financing anything like that today, as modern business ethics classes teach that if it doesn't increase shareholder value then the executive class is pretty much forbidden to do it. This is what we get for letting a bunch of MBAs and lawyers who have never done an honest day's work run our society.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
I read in the last /. Tesla story that the Colorado museum closed several years ago due to lack of funds.
That's not the same one - the website mentions there was some other, unrelated group in Colorado Springs that is not them, that was probably the one that closed.
This one might also be closed - however it still has a website, and the demonstration section mentions a showtime of this year:
SHOW TIME: March 3rd and 4th 2012
The contact phone is still working, although only taking messages - I left a message asking about when Telsa demonstrations are held, and where this is located.
What would be cool is if the Telsa foundation getting the money to buy the land, would share some of the largess with this older museum (again, if still operating).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/08/22/gop_convention_held_in_stadium_built_with_public_funds.html
Perhaps the RNC should change their slogan to "Someone else built this with mostly government money".
Why is Snark Required?
Every single thing he claimed to have invented had been demonstrated by someone else, somewhere else years earlier....
Right.... Here's a list of only 111 of his 278 patents: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nikola_Tesla_patents
Why don't you tell us who really invented all this stuff.
I got a call back, and the museum is still there and open. It's not just a drop-by kind of museum though, you have to go when they are holding shows... mostly arranged beforehand.
It sounds interesting though as he has some original Telsa equipment and it sounds like he explains quite a lot of the history.
It is still in Colorado Springs, he gives out the address when you arrange for a show.
He is (I think understandably) miffed about the other Telsa effort, and thinks that charlatans abound in the whole area of presenting Telsa material.. he's especially annoyed that they seem to be trying to ignore he exists by claiming there are no Telsa museums in the U.S. In fact he is renaming it to "The Telsa Museum of America" just to drive home the point he actually has a museum and they do not...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know what they are going to do, but still I donated $25.
I've lost the original quote, but Bertrand Russell said something like, "When you have an elected government you end up with people in charge who are in it for the money, or in it for the power. These are the two groups that you least want in charge. A better solution would be to give the position (president, prime minister, whatever) to someone who didn't WANT the job."
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin