Tesla's New York Laboratory Up For Sale 183
Ziest points us to NY Times piece on the battle over the site of Nicola Tesla's last failed experiment. Tesla's laboratory, called Wardenclyffe, located on Long Island, has been put up for sale by its current owner, Agfa Corp. Local residents and Tesla followers were alarmed by a real estate agent's promise that the land, listed at $1.6 million, could "be delivered fully cleared and level." Preservationists want to create a Tesla museum and education center at Wardenclyffe, anchored by the laboratory designed by Tesla's friend, Stanford White, a celebrated architect. "In 1901, Nikola Tesla began work on a global system of giant towers meant to relay through the air not only news, stock reports and even pictures but also, unbeknown to investors such as J. Pierpont Morgan, free electricity for one and all. It was the inventor's biggest project, and his most audacious. The first tower rose on rural Long Island and, by 1903, stood more than 18 stories tall. ... But the system failed for want of money, and at least partly for scientific viability. Tesla never finished his prototype tower and was forced to abandon its adjoining laboratory."
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, a loon.
Nothing there anymore except the poisoned ground.
There really isn't anything to learn there anymore.
It's not like there going to level the building and store rooms full of stuff.
OTOH, a pool of people that wanted to turn it into a museum could probably be brought together for some fund Raisers.
Hell, you do it. Contact the real estate agent and find out what kind of time you have. Get some on line organization going and hit all the Tesla Forums.
You would be the first person to do this type of thing successfully. If you really want to save it, there is no reason you can't give it a good effort. None.
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Insightful)
Magic.
He did a lot of incredibly smart things, but some of his stuff was just loony.
That might not be fair, perhaps experimentally ignorant. But with that time period and electricity, everyone was.
If wishes were horses... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd ride mine down to cash in my winning lottery ticket, buy the land, and endow part of the fund needed to launch a world-class museum. You can visit Edison's lab in Greenfield Villiage (Henry Ford Musuem, etc) in Dearborn, Michigan - which, if you ever get the chance, do it - you won't be disappointed, I guarantee.
It would be shame if Tesla doesn't become similarly remembered.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:3, Insightful)
Uhuh. I see this kind of claim all the time from creators of perpetual motion machines:
"Well, of course those 'scientists' can't replicate my results! It's because they don't understand my genius!"
Uhh ... no. If we're unable to get it to work, chances are it never worked in the first place.
Yeah, seized by the Stonemasons! Just ask Homer ...
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:3, Insightful)
It couldn't and your not missing a thing.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
My take on it was:
REALTOR: We'll sell this historic land for $1.6 million dollars
CONDO BUILDER: I'll buy that
REALTOR: Do you want us to demolish this historic site also?
MUSEUM BUILDER: Oh hell no! $2 million!
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if the damage hasn't already been done, there's a price tag on preservation: $1.6 million. Not much more than an equivalently sized residential property in the area.
What's the issue again?
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:4, Insightful)
I would have to get the books out, but I seem to recall that Wardenclyffe was partly a proof-of-concept demonstration based upon his Colorado Springs, CO experiments so I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't work like he intended. Also, one of his papers on the wireless transmission of electricity explained that a series of towers similar to Wardenclyffe would be needed throughout the world in order to achieve his goals.
However, I am willing to concede that the plans might not have worked out as Tesla had hoped for even if he did not encounter the financial issues due to a lack of full understanding of electrical theory. All told though, it would be a shame to have museums dedicated to Edison here in the US, but you have to the Tesla Museum [tesla-museum.org] in Serbia if you want to learn about him outside of books.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both should be remembered. It's important to remember that no matter how brilliant some humans are, they're still human. Genius in a specific pursuit does not imply genius in all pursuits.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike some other loon inventors back then.
Lookin' at you, Thomas Alva.
(Topsy the Elephant, RIP) [youtube.com]
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
you do realize that many of the technologies mentioned in the article do exist today (like wireless video transmission, stock quotes etc.) but in 1903 few people if any could explain how to make that work. and the other ideas, about providing wireless electricity? those arent so far fetched either
2008: Intel reproduces Nikola Tesla's 1894 implementation and Prof. John Boys group's 1988's experiments by wirelessly powering a light bulb with 75% efficiency. wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_power_transmission)
just because you and 99% of people dont understand something dosent make it a hoax. i mean hell look at how many people dont realise the internet isint some kind of truck.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
Like many innovators. Clinically speaking, he was obsessive-compulsive, and this had some very specific effects on his activities but did not prevent him from inventing a dozen things in the room I'm in right now (including radio and flourescent lighting, of course). Edison, by contrast, was a mild meglomaniac and paranoid.
Well, let's see about that....
The one I built works rather well as a air-powered motor. Oddly enough, it works like Tesla said it does (not like the modern Tesla worshippers claim, though - it won't power a spaceship to mars).
I'm not sure you know what you're talking about here. You can pump mud with a "Tesla turbine" type pump, but Tesla had some other pump designs that worked better. Also, what do you consider a "traditional turbine"? There is no single accepted turbine design, nor was there in Tesla's time. (I'm partial to the Loeffel Francis myself, but it's not all that popular outside the hydropower field.)
"Just doesn't work?" Since he was not able to complete his work, yet was able to light up lamps from a quarter mile away and throw mile-long lightning bolts, I think "just doesn't work" is a bit of a facile dismissal from an Internet naysayer.
AC power is a doddle, but yes, the universal brushless motor is indeed brilliant.
Time travel? Never heard that one. And of course, being killed by a beam of coherent energy will never happen (oh, wait, it did? Never mind).
Here's all you need to know about Tesla's insight: In 1915 he tried to convince everyone that burning petroleum was wasteful and foolish, and that we should develop sources of energy that relied on the great movements of the cosmos - spinning planets, cycling winds, geothermal, solar radiation, etc... and people said "what a loonie!"
We got no disagreements there, bud. But he was never any more subject to mental illness than the inventor of Bittorrent - his madness did not significantly affect his work, and may have helped him to focus on the insights that others blithely dismiss as insanity.
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is 75% of which power?
Unfortunately, it was 75% of received power, not transmitted power.
About 99.99% of the transmitted power went to other directions, it heated neighboring rocks and nothing else.
Unless you have a directional antenna, any sort of wireless power transmission will waste a lot of power. And, to have a directional antenna, you need to know in which direction your receiver will be. Then it starts to look pretty much like a wired power transmission setup...
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck is your point?
The guy came up with the idea way back in 1894 so who really cares about its efficacy..
Everything we plug in today has Nikola Tesla's I.P. in it. AC transmission won the current war over the DC method.
Anyone who try's to belittle Tesla's work really has no idea what they are talking about. But yeah he had lots of crazy ideas but it was 1894 for god sake! Everyone who has ever invented something useful also probably had at least 100 bad ideas as well..
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Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:3, Insightful)
it surprises me that people cant envision wireless power transfer, and free at that.
I can certainly envision it -- but I can't see how it would be free. After all, that power has to be generated somehow before it can be transferred, and generating power costs money.
It's also not clear how to broadcast power efficiently over long distances. (I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I don't know how you would do it. Narrowcasting power might be done efficiently with a laser, but broadcasting it to everyone? Hmmm)
Re:Someone with electrical knowledge explain this (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a big difference between searching google [google.com]
Recurring fees (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, $1.6m to buy the land.
Then what is your plan to pay property taxes, or upkeep to meet building codes?
You're talking a lot more than $1.6M even just to keep it as is, never mind building a museum...
Re:If past performance is a current indicator... (Score:5, Insightful)
What the heck is YOUR point? It wouldn't matter if he came up with it in 1498 - a crappy idea is a crappy idea, regardless of when it's thought up. If your "invention" requires 50,000 killowatts to power a friggin lightbulb, there's a bit of a problem there, especially when you're making use of a well known effect rather that inventing something new. Induction was discovered in 1831, so it's not like Tesla was discovering a new aspect of the physical world - he simply made use (in an extremely inefficient way) of a principle discovered by Faraday.
Which is not necessarily a good thing. The only advantage of AC current is that it can be easily modified by transformers. Long-distance power transmission (between grids) is DC because it doesn't require phase synchronization and it's less wasteful, and the difference adds up nicely over longer distances. AC didn't replace DC - the two systems are complimentary.
Also, while Tesla did invent a three phase AC generator, he didn't exactly come up with the idea of AC current, nor was he the only one working on it.
Anyone who tries to deify a mad scientist isn't firing on all cylinders.
Exactly - the problem here is that the Tesla Cult like to pretend that his 100 bad ideas were actually 100 GREAT ideas which we "can't understand yet". Which is, to be blunt, bullshit. You can idolize the man for the great things he did, if you want, as long as you're not trying to prop up his shitty ideas at the same time.
Slashdot armchair scientists strike again (Score:1, Insightful)
Some of the posts here are hilarious, the ones from people who assume to "know" what Tesla had in mind 100 years ago when he did all these things, or how he felt about things, etc.
Others even go into lengths to diagnose Tesla with some mental illnesses or call him a "loon."
Time and time again I'm reminded that /. often gathers a pool of most close minded wikipedia (and similar sites) regurgitators who have no practical experience of their own.
This "select" group could not distinguish their head from their ass if their life depended on it, yet they play heroes here.
Kudos to all the posters who were inquisitive and kept their mind open to possibilities, just like Tesla ones did, through their ideas and posts.
If it wasn't for such people, we would still be squinting at the dim DC powered lights in some dark corner of one's room...
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)