Oatmeal Fundraiser a Success; Non-Profit Buys Land For Tesla Museum

Ars Technica reports that The Oatmeal's successful fund-raiser has borne fruit; on Friday the non-profit to which Oatmeal founder Matthew Inman's Indiegogo campaign's money was directed completed part of its goal to purchase and turn into a museum Nikola Tesla's former estate Wardenclyffe. There's plenty of work before the land can be a proper museum, but now it is in the hands of the non-profit organization Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe.

Comments

Oatmeally goodness

[dlingman]

Awesome. I look forward to being able to visit this shrine when it is completed. Tesla Rocks.

Re:Oatmeally goodness

[craigminah]

I hope you're referring to Tesla the engineer and not Tesla the rock band. If so I concur...

Truly looking forward to this

[Pecisk]

First, this is first such geek driven museum I know. While museums are all about preserving knowledge, not everyone in geekdom is fan of history, especially history of science. Hopefully it will drive more new geeks to know and study about history - again, especially history of great discoveries. History and understanding people within it could make geeks not only gurus in technologies, but also humans too. Trust me, not all social sciences are worthless :)

Second, this is Tesla. No matter his personal demons (we all have them), he is underlooked in history of technology and science and needs popularity boost, especially after that "ubercapitalist" Edison pushed Tesla from spotlight - just because he got more money.

And we really need to celebrate more such people as Tesla, and less Jobs or Gates.

Re:Truly looking forward to this

[Pecisk]

"We would have not had personal computers as we know them today. We probably would be using 3270 terminals and paying time per hour to dial into a nearby mainframe."

Biggest myth ever spelled about Apple and Jobs. Again, as Gates, he was very successful creating commercial product, BUT ideas was out there already. Xerox labs has been working on prototypes and ideas, there were lot of commercants interested in such kind of thing. Accorn was on the rise in UK, with it's RISC based computing platform. It was everywhere.

So no, Jobs didn't bring us PC as we know them today. But he and Gates made sure that we remember them doing so. Again, this is what I am against. They have their place in history. But they didn't kickstarted this.

"We would still be using CDs instead of MP3 players. Before the iPod, MP3 players were regarded as geek chic if best."

Wow, this is actually Apple fanboism at it's best. iPod was nice step into mass market, but clearly there were better alternatives - they just didn't had that massive marketing machine behind Apple products. And this is in fact ignoring progress - if Apple wouldn't haven't done it, someone else would. Loss compression algorithms were already a reality for very long time at that moment.

"We would still be buying music, for $19.00 an album, for that one good song, from crowded CD stores, as opposed to just tapping/clicking twice on iTMS."

False, again. There were many shops already who has possibility to buy music online - Apple just used his muscle to get permissions from majority of main labels to sell them at one place. In fact, for very long time, ultra monopoly of online sales of iTMS slowed down improvements in this area. So no, haven't been there iTunes and iPod, there would be something in their places. Just cashing in on obvious.

"We would still be using Motorola RAZR clones and saying that a phone that calls and texts is good enough. Apple invented the smartphone as we know it."

Only American could said that, because well rest of the world were more lucky. Nokia had smartphones, even Linux had smartphones when Apple came and again cashed in.

"We would still be using Motorola RAZR clones and saying that a phone that calls and texts is good enough. Apple invented the smartphone as we know it."

Nevermind Nokia already had Internet tablet as experimental hardware, and they were working on useful commercial product when iPad came along.

What can I give to Jobs and Apple that they know how to cash in. They were very convinced in what they were doing. But that's all. In the end, I think world would be better without current Apple strategy.

Re:Truly looking forward to this

[Nerdfest]

Jobs was an Edison, not a Tesla. As with Edison, the truth will catch up to the legend.

Tesla ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla this, Tesla that.

When will we have some recognition for the world's greatest inventor, Thomas Edison?

Fun with Tesla

[Clueless Moron]

If you meet a Croat, tell him Tesla was Serbian. If you meet a Serb, tell him Tesla was Croatian. Watch the sparks fly.

(Tesla was born in what is now Croatia, but was ethnically Serbian).

Re:Fun with Tesla

[TimHunter]

Watch the sparks fly.

I see what you did there.