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The Oatmeal's Fundraiser Tops $1M Toward Tesla Museum
The Oatmeal's call to raise funds for a museum celebrating Nikola Tesla seems to have electrified enough people. From Digital Trends: "The Oatmeal has raised over $1 million on IndieGoGo in an effort to secure Wardenclyffe, the site of Tesla's final laboratory, to build a museum dedicated to Tesla. ... [Oatmeal founder and artist Matthew] Inman’s original goal of $850,000 would buy just half of the cost of the property, but the state of New York has agreed to match contributions, bringing total funds up to $1.7 million. Raising the capital to build a museum from the property will be another cost, but from the looks of it, with 36 days left and having already surpassed the $1 million mark, there should be funds to spare."
He would probably buy it and install a McDonald's...
this a good thing :D
If they are to build it, I would visit a Tesla museum with my children, especially if they can have hands-on attractions. What kid wouldn't be inspired by a live Tesla coil? I know I was when I was a child.
If only he had gotten as much attention as the media now tend to spend on famous trash, the world would be a much better place.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I superficially glanced at this but couldn't figure out if the museum audience is supposed to be:
1) 10 years old
2) -or- electrical engineers and fellow travelers
3) -or- homeopathic crystal therapy conspiracy theory vampire worshipers
Its pretty hard to appeal equally to all 3, so I'm curious which audience the museum is aimed at.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's meant for the 10 year old electrical engineers working on homeopathic crystal therapies for vampires.
I very recently visited Zagreb, Croatia and went to the technical museum there. It holds a permanent Tesla exhibition with daily shows featuring some of his more prominant works in action.
Still, it was very lacking in both information and content. The exhibitioner was not able to perform the show in English (for a mostly non-croat audience), and did not have sufficient understanding of the technology to discuss it in his native language. They did not seem to understand how, exactly, the inventions work. Which, sadly, holds true for many of physicists in this world.
I have great expectations of this museum, and I sincerely hope that it will bring justice to the genius that was Tesla. I hope they find skilled physicists who can convey the physics behind the inventions to visitors, and to hold shows that will capture the attention and minds of the young.
-j
The first thing that should be added to this museum is the papers that the FBI snatched from his estate when he died. Of course if our crooked government holds true, these were probably handed out to Hoover's buddies to either make a profit off of, or just bury.
Take the Red Pill.
That way we can be sure to be able to deal with him.
Unless he becomes a Zombie. Better build a flamethrower into it.
"If only he had gotten as much attention as the media now tend to spend on famous trash, the world would be a much better place."
Tesla was actually quite famous in his day. His fame might have fallen by the time he died, but Time magazine did feature him in its cover. See:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Nikola_Tesla_on_Time_Magazine_1931.jpg
Surely, at a time where TV broadcasting was in its infancy at best, appearing on the cover of Time is as good a claim a fame as appearing on Fox News or American Idol.
Blame his failure to equal the status of Edison, not to mention Einstein, on his decision to withdraw from society in his later years.
There's apparently one in Belgrade. There is another small one in Colorado Springs - I've been there.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Kickstarter project for transferring energy wirelessly over the Ether(net).
I wish him success, but he should be aware that there was a Tesla museum in Colorado Springs that was unable to make a go of it. It entered Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 1998.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Bummer. I visited it in 1996 and it was pretty cool then.
Please use the money to rebuild the WardenClyffe tower to Tesla's original specs. Build the working version that he never had the funding to complete! Wireless electricity for all :-)
The new museum could try zapping passers by with tesla coils.. that would draw a crowd quickly. Well until they realised it wasn't really bacon,,,
The current one, which is extremely limited in scope by any measure, is actually basically in someone's basement and can be visited by appointment only.
I have not been to it either yet, but I did talk to the guy on the phone.
It is appointment only, you have to come up with a group of four or more, but they have Telsa artifacts and they use some of them as part of a stage show. It sounds interesting enough I plan to go sometime if I can get a few friends together.
I still also donated money to the Oatmeal effort, but some respect should be given for a guy who has tried to maintain a decent Telsa collection for years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The NPR article about this story mentioned that the property is now owned by
AGFA of Belgium, and once required the U.S. EPA to declare it a Superfund cleanup
site, a cleanup that took 'years' to complete. Usually such cleanups are funded by
taxpayers (not the rich ones of course) and costs run into multi-millions of dollars. If
the cleanup was necessitated by AGFA's operations there, why isn't AGFA DONATING
the property? Seems like it would be a good publicity move if nothing else. Then the
group that raised the money would be able to get the museum ready for the public.
You must have never seen a large Tesla coil in real life. The beautiful play of electric plasma, the ear-grinding buzz, the smell of ozone...
Tesla coils aren't cool because of Red Alert. Red Alert is cool because of Tesla coils.
Hazmat cleanup is gonna cost 'em. Good luck with that...