The idea was ambitious but not unreasonable, Guglielmo Marconi having just sent the first tentative signals across the Atlantic in 1901. But the Long Islanders living next to the huge tower would have been more shocked - perhaps literally - if Tesla had carried out his second plan, which was so audacious he hid it initially even from J.P. Morgan, the financier who was bankrolling the operation. Tesla wanted to use the tower for wirelessly transmitting not just signals but also useful amounts of electrical power. His strategy for accomplishing that feat was vague, but it seems he had notions of sending power wirelessly to such things as airships in flight and automobiles on the move.
Tesla never did quite finish the enormous tower - Morgan got fed up and cut off funds. Tesla abandoned the lab, which fell into disrepair, and in 1917 the tower was unceremoniously demolished.
Decades later, Tesla’s laboratory was turned into a factory for photographic paper, an operation that left enough toxic waste on the grounds to have the property qualify as a Superfund site. Today the elegant brick lab building is abandoned once again. Plywood covers its windows. All that remains of the tower is its huge octagonal footing, now overgrown with trees.
Scientists and engineers these days, of course, appreciate Tesla’s enormous if rather quirky brilliance—he invented the induction motor, for one thing, and he championed alternating current when Thomas Edison would have none of it, for another. So it’s no surprise that some of Tesla’s admirers are seeking to preserve his old laboratory.
More the next time soon...
