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Internet Drive to Save Tesla Lab is Gaining Momentum

August 16, 2012 by Jeff Shepard

The site of Nikola Tesla’s last lab in Shoreham, New York, known as Wardenclyffe, is up for sale. Priced at $1.6 million, there are two interested parties in the land: the first is a not-for-profit group that would like to build a museum to honor Tesla and his work on the land; the second is a developer who wants to build a "retail establishment."

Wardenclyffe represented the culmination of Tesla’s grand plan to conduct electricity across huge distances through the Earth – an idea that proved scientifically flawed in its original conception. But the death blow to the project came after J.P. Morgan, famed financier and backer for the project, withdrew his support. Funding from other investors also dried up, and the U.S. military eventually demolished the tower during World War I.

The state has already agreed to chip in $850,000 to the not-for-profit group, known as the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, and it’s collecting donations. But the developer already has a bid in for the land.

Much credit for the swift fundraising also goes to Matthew Inman, creator of the online comic website The Oatmeal, who helped organize the fundraising effort, as well as Internet users on the popular social news website Reddit.

Inman previously drew a comic that lionized Tesla and belittled Edison as a money-grubbing businessman who simply profited from other inventors’ ideas. The comic also emphasized the idea of a rivalry between Tesla and Edison based in large part upon the "War of Currents" in the 1880s that saw Tesla’s alternating current (ac) system win over Edison’s direct current (dc) system.