SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Support Historic Tesla Lab With "Metals for Tesla" And "Bricks For Nik"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The historic laboratory in Suffolk County in which genius inventor Nikola Tesla did important, breakthrough work in a building designed by his friend, famed architect Stanford White, suffered a fire last year as restoration was beginning to turn the lab into a museum.

But the project of creating the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe very much continues—with its leadership working hard on it.

“Terrible,” Jane Alcorn, a driving force behind the Tesla Science Center project in Shoreham, said last week about the damage from the blaze in November. But there is “momentum to bring back Tesla’s laboratory to its former glory,” said Alcorn, a center director. 

As it declares on the opening page of its website: “Mission: Rebuild. Keep the momentum going. Donate today to see Tesla’s dream come to fruition.”

Marc Alessi, executive director of Tesla Science Center, said of the blaze: “It was heartbreaking.” He spoke last week of how firefighters from 13 departments who battled it “took it personally. It means a lot to everybody.” In 2018 Tesla’s lab in Suffolk was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The fire was “a gut punch,” said Alessi, a former New York State assemblyman and Shoreham resident. It was originally estimated to cost $3 million to repair the damage. Now, said Alessi, that’s projected at $4 million, bringing the Tesla Science Center’s total cost to $24 million which includes restoration of the lab and also building a visitor’s center on the 16.5 acre site. 

Fundraising is in high gear with grant applications being sent to foundations and the seeking of government support and donations from contributors. Since the inception of the Tesla Science Center project, some $14 million has been raised including from the state and local governments, foundations and contributors “large and small,” said Alessi.

A “Metals for Tesla” effort has begun. This month, on April 20^th, in honor of Earth Day, or any day earlier, metal that can be recycled—including metal furniture, vehicles and pipes—can be dropped off at the lab site. Details are on the Tesla Science Center website at https://teslasciencecenter.org/ 

There is “Bricks for Nik” initiative in which individuals and businesses can buy commemorative bricks. They would be placed at the base of the statue to Nikola Tesla donated by the Serbian government (Tesla’s parents were Serbs) or other paved areas on the site. In addition to names, they could include quotes and dedications. The statue was unveiled in 2003 by then Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic who called Tesla a man whose “ideas were larger than his time.” More information on this is at: https://donate.brickmarkers.com/tsc

As the book “Tesla, Inventor of the Electrical Age,” published by Princeton University Press, relates: “Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life…His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity and contributed to radio and television.” Its author is Dr. W. Bernard Carlson, a University of Virginia professor of science, technology, and society. 

Most of the world would adopt AC or alternating current. And Tesla was responsible for many more inventions, among them hydroelectric energy technology, remote control through electricity, fluorescent lighting and the bladeless turbine, notes the book. Regarding radio, Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited with originating radio but, the book points out that the U.S. Supreme Court, after Tesla’s death in 1943, determined that much of Marconi’s work was based on 17 Tesla patents. 

He went to Shoreham in 1901 to pursue his vision of providing wireless electricity. “Tesla was convinced that he could set up stationary waves in the Earth and transmit power and messages,” writes Carlson. He received a $150,000 loan from “the most powerful man on Wall Street, J.P. Morgan…to support his wireless work.” 

He had been “approached by James S. Warden, a lawyer and banker from Ohio who had relocated to Suffolk County,” purchased farmland and “christened his property Wardenclyffe.” 

He offered Tesla land. On it, the laboratory was built along with a tower 187-feet tall. Below the tower a deep “ground connection” was dug. “In many ways, Wardenclyffe was the fulfillment of Tesla’s dreams. For nearly a decade he had been planning in his imagination a system for broadcasting power around the world, and now that system was taking shape in the real world,” says Carlson. But then Morgan pulled out of the undertaking and Tesla faced huge financial problems. The tower was demolished in 1917.

        As Alcorn, a retired teacher and librarian from Shoreham, explained in a presentation at the Suffolk County Historical Society, Tesla’s “plan and dream was to…provide wireless electricity to people around the world.” He was a “visionary” with ideas that would revolutionize the world. He envisioned that not only radio signals but electricity could be sent far distances by linking into the resonance of the Earth. She said Tesla believed that if electricity could be “wirelessly” transmitted, people all over the world “would be able to tap into it”—for free.

I wrote and presented a TV program about Wardenclyffe for WVVH-TV in 2011. You can view it on YouTube by inputting “Saving Nikola Tesla’s Laboratory” and my name or by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H-UBvdPtag 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.