$900,000 Raised For Buying Tesla's Lab

icebraining writes "As Slashdot reported earlier, The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman launched a funding campaign to help the Tesla Science Center, a 503(c) non-profit, buy the place of Tesla's final laboratory, the Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, New York. Well, thanks to 21511 contributors, it has already raised $912,080, well above the original $850,000 goal. But it's not too late to help: any money raised above the goal will be used by the organization to build a museum dedicated to Tesla."

Anonymous donor

[cachimaster]

From this article [arstechnica.com] "The fundraiser goal was reached in six days, put over the top by $33,333 from an anonymous donor." ... I wonder who this anonymous donor [twitter.com] may be.

Re:I hope they reinstate the tower

[nido]

The heirs to JP Morgan's energy industry would NOT be very happy about the revival of Tesla's vision of free wireless power for all.

Remember that JP Morgan pulled his funding when Tesla didn't know how to incorporate an electric meter into his system for extracting energy from the aether ("higgs field" is the latest term, I think).

A 'live' museum, not a 'dead' one

[belgianguy]

Tesla was a crazy genius, in that regard I think it would be more fitting to have (at least part) of the museum have live/interactive and interesting things to do and try, rather than just gazing at collectibles and ooh-and-aah-ing at antiquities (how very awesome those still might be). Perhaps a MAKER lab or something or making a bulb glow with wireless electricity, have a Tesla coil play a song on your $MP3_PLAYER. If you read The Oatmeal's Tesla cartoon, you'd already have quite some nice ideas.

Re:Museum?

[MozeeToby]

City Museum in St Louis manages to do a lot of things that you'd think their insurance company would have a heart attack (and I'm sure they get charged an arm and a leg for their coverage). Point being, it's doable if you create the right environment and get the right resources behind you.

Tesla's Musem in Belgrade does this

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anon due to mod points used in this thread.

I remember it Vividly. They had a massive Tesla coil, and would fire it up with us inside the room. Then they gave us fluorescent striplights to hold, which would light up in our hands, without any wires! To this day I remember the event as the defining moment when I thought Science was awesome! My dad took me there when I was something like 9-10 years old. Loads of his old papers, demonstrations of his experiments, etc... totally awesome. There was also a room where his ashes were kept, but we were not allowed near the urn itself.

I hope that a corresponding Museum in the US would do for your kids as my visit all those years ago inspired me. Hopefully your insurance companies and health&safety people will not shut this idea down.

- Ogi_Unixnut

Re:Museum?

[drkim]

What you propose is actually only half doable. There are things Tesla did back then that we still don't know how to do today. It's a testament to his genius, which is legendary.

Name one.

Ball lightning.