Slashdot Mirror
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...
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
"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)
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.