'Science rock star' celebrated in Shoreham
The two men staring through the wrought-iron bars surrounding the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe looked like two kids who arrived at the amusement park five minutes too late. They didn’t know an official tour was necessary to enter the grounds, but that didn’t stop them from gazing at the distant workshop of a scientist who gave us stable electric power, remote control, advancements in radio and predicted things like computers and cellphones.
“His ideas were groundbreaking,” says Chris Licata, 67, a Tesla fan and a Charleston, South Carolina, resident who grew up on Long Island and was visiting his brother, Joseph, 60, in Medford. “He was almost too far ahead of his time. His creativity was unworldly.”
Comments like these are not unusual at the 16-acre center in Shoreham that is something of a magnet for those dazzled by the inventor Nikola Tesla and his achievements. Awestruck devotees staring through the fence aren’t rare either.
“Last week we had some people from Germany,” says Jane Alcorn, a board member at the center and one of those responsible for saving the lab from the wrecking ball. “The week before that it was a couple from Switzerland.”
Part of the allure is that it was not just the inventor’s last workshop, it was the site of a project on a global scale, one that has generated tales of secret tunnels, lost documents and government conspiracies. Tesla thought big.
“Give me the money,” he told financier J.P. Morgan, “and I will advance this world a century.”
Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe executive director Marc Alessi, left, and Jane Alcorn, founder and board member, stand outside Nikola Tesla's former laboratory in Shoreham on Aug. 24, 2022. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
Birthday celebration
Visitors will have the chance on Sept. 16 and 17 to stroll the compound. The annual event is usually held in July, the month of Tesla’s birthday, but was delayed this year because of problems transporting a replica of the Tesla coil that will be on display. The 40-foot transformer shoots out artificial bolts of electricity like those in the famous photo of the inventor sitting next to one reading a book as lightning flashes around him.
More than just a mysterious genius, he was reportedly the best dressed man on Fifth Avenue. He had a droll sense of humor and played a mean game of pool. Tall with deep-set blue eyes, he brushed aside the advances of women, saying he was dedicated to science. He never married. He hung out with friends such as Mark Twain, Stanford White and Rudyard Kipling and later lost a fortune because of an abysmal business sense. Tesla had largely been forgotten until his emaciated body was found in 1943 by a maid in a room at the New Yorker Hotel.
He was 86 and had been dead for three days.
“It amazes me how he draws people,” says Alcorn, who later let the brothers inside and gave them a tour. An example of this captivation is the last-minute crowdfunding drive on the internet in 2012 that saved the lab, she says. “We had contributions from South Africa, France, all around the world. We had a guy show up who wanted to put his crystals all around the tower’s base so they could be charged.”
The center is on a long-term mission to turn the lab into a global science center filled with historical artifacts but focused on new technologies related to his legacy. For now, the area is mostly vacant except for a family of deer that scamper out of sight. Leftover structures from a photo emulsion company dot the grounds. The lab itself was designed in 1901 by storied architect and Tesla friend Stanford White, and the inventor began working there the next year. Now boarded up, it sits on the grounds grimly as if waiting for the lanky wizard to show up and start again. Inside is a spooky warren of abandoned rooms with a tapestry of peeling paint.
A bronze sculpture of Tesla in the southeast corner was presented to the center in 2013 by the president of Serbia. He had planned to give it to the United Nations before finding out about the lab’s salvation and deciding to place it at Wardenclyffe.
An array of donation bricks set in a patio around the statue are tributes, such as, “You blinded ME with science.” A few are marriage proposals. One is a wink to science geeks still hoping to find plans for Tesla’s “death ray” and other fantastic creations in his hidden workshop somewhere on the grounds.
“To Open Secret Lab Entrance Press Here,” one says. But, alas, nothing happens.
‘A tragedy’
An octagonal concrete footprint that looks like the site of an ancient ritual is the only remnant of what would have been his crowning achievement. This was the base of a giant, wireless communications tower that Tesla believed would provide voice, pictures and power worldwide.
What could have been his greatest triumph was torpedoed by a hotel bill, the 18-story structure torn down in 1917 for scrap metal.
“It was a tragedy for Tesla,” says Joseph Sikorski, a Babylon resident who produced the 2015 documentary “Tower to the People.” “It was the dream of his lifetime and he put everything he had in it.”
Myth and fact are intertwined like grape vines when it comes to the inventor. Obviously, he was brilliant. Even today some believe that, considering his scientific leaps, he was an alien sent to help earthlings. The tinfoil-hat theory that amuses Alcorn the most?
“He was from Venus,” she says.
Actually, Tesla was born to Serbian parents in 1856 in Smiljan, Lika, once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now in Croatia. His parents were renowned for their extraordinary ability to memorize entire books, a gift they passed to their son. His mother created small kitchen inventions, which inspired his career. His clergyman father demanded he join the church and only sent him to college to fulfill a promise made when his son seemed to be dying from cholera.
Although a top student intrigued by electricity, he never graduated because of a gambling addiction. His first career break came in 1882 when he was offered a job at the Paris office of Thomas Edison. Two years later, he sailed for America and was hired by Edison’s New York lab, where he often worked day and night.
At first, the two admired each other. After Tesla finished a marathon project for a promised $50,000 bonus, Edison said he was only kidding. The Serbian, who spoke nine languages, simply didn’t understand English enough to get the joke, Edison said.
The two remained civil competitors all their lives. They did respect each other; when Tesla’s lab burned down in 1895, Edison offered to let him use his own laboratory.
After six months, Tesla quit and formed his own electronics firm backed by two businessmen. They later withdrew to form their own concern, taking control of his patents. This left the inventor so broke he was reduced to digging ditches for $2 a day. He was rescued in 1886 by two other businessmen more experienced in the field who set up another corporation and helped him build a lab in Manhattan. This was where he came up with a motor that ran on alternating current (known as A/C) much better than Edison’s bulky and inefficient direct current, or D/C, system. Edison realized it was a game-changer that would lose him millions.
The “War of the Currents” began.
Design battle
The Westinghouse electric company took up Tesla’s cause, while Edison set out to prove A/C was too dangerous. He recommended using it on criminals, leading to the first electric chair. And he electrocuted dogs and cats in public to discredit Tesla.
Tesla’s equipment eventually was recognized as superior when Westinghouse won the bid to electrify the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. Two-hundred thousand light bulbs turned it into a famed “City of Light.” This convinced the 27 million visitors that alternating current was safe. Another triumph followed when the company installed A/C generators at Niagara Falls to create the world’s first hydroelectric power. Tesla, an environmentalist, was pleased since it ran on clean energy — what he called “the wheelwork of nature.”
The new reigning “wizard” of science astounded the world with invention after invention. He impressed lab visitors with X-rays and colorful fluorescent neon lights. Members of the press were so skeptical of his remote-controlled boat, they thought he had a trained monkey moving it around.
Although too idealistic to be a good businessman — he tore up a royalties contract worth millions to help George Westinghouse out of financial troubles — he knew the value of public relations. Tesla, in fact, is responsible for what might be the first deepfake. The famous photo of him reading next to his coil amid swarms of bolts was created with a series of photo exposures. He wasn’t even in the room when it was electrified.
In 1901, he bought 200 acres at Wardenclyffe, named after its previous owner, James Warden, to work on his greatest project. It was a giant wireless tower that would tap into the Earth’s magnetic field to send communications worldwide.
“He was on a mission to change the world for mankind,” says Marc J. Seifer, a Rhode Island author who grew up in West Hempstead and wrote “Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla” (Citadel Press, 2016).
The 1901 venture was backed by the wealthiest man in the world, J.P. Morgan. All went well at first. But a stock market crash skyrocketed construction costs. The inventor was hounded by debt collectors. Morgan refused to advance more money. At last, Tesla was forced to sign over the property to the Waldorf-Astoria, where he had been living, to cover his hotel expenses.
Nikola Tesla sits in front of a spiral coil used in his wireless power experiments at his East Houston Street laboratory in Manhattan. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Four years ago, Seifer worked on “The Tesla Files,” a five-part History Channel show. The dramatized documentary examined the scientist’s history, inventions and research — some so futuristic he believes it may have led to today’s present-day weaponry, such as the U.S. Navy’s electromagnetic rail gun cannon.
Ground-penetrating radar of Wardenclyffe provided by the channel showed a series of elaborate tunnels deep in the earth joined at the tower’s base. One was connected to an ornate spiral staircase in the lab.
Maybe it was the site of the fabled secret office. Maybe not.
What is known is that after Tesla died, his files were confiscated by the government for national security reasons during World War II, but only 50 of the 80 trunks were reported, Siefer says. He adds that military intelligence kept the files for a decade before shipping them (or, most of them) to Belgrade, where a museum was being built in his honor.
Would the tower have worked? “Scientists today say no,” Alcorn says. “But they are finding out more and more every day.”
Seifer says, yes. He points to a 1915 story in The New York Times that notes Tesla was hired by the German electric company Telefunken to help power its wireless radio transmissions in Sayville. He advised Telefunken to use something like his ground terminal. The company’s range increased threefold.
“The one Tesla quote that blows my mind is that he said his [Wardenclyffe] tower would have turned the Earth into a giant brain,” Seifer says.
Officials at the center have uncovered at least two underground tunnels, possibly to a work space or the underground part of the tower. But what is down there, no one knows. As a nonprofit museum and historical site, any such examinations will have to wait for archaeologists, explains executive director Marc Alessi.
Mythology and conspiracy theories they keep at arm’s length. “We’re trying very hard not to say things that we don’t know are true,” says Alessi. “We want to show Tesla as he was, warts and all.”
Interest renewed
The appearance of the electric Tesla car has brought new appreciation for Nikola Tesla’s work. Elon Musk, who contributed a million dollars to the restoration project, says he named his vehicle after Tesla because of his A/C induction motor. A series of books in recent years also have pumped up Tesla’s notoriety.
“He’s a science rock star now,” Sikorski says.
A 2017 film dramatized “The Current War.” Websites have crowned Nikola Tesla the “Greatest Geek of All Time.” There is even a virtual reality mystery game called The Invisible Hours. In it, the scientist is found dead in his mansion and players have to figure out who was the killer among the invited guests. One is Thomas Edison.
Sikorski believes the internet also aided Tesla’s comeback.
That is evidenced by how the Wardenclyffe site was saved in the first place. Alcorn was living nearby when she was told by a neighbor about the lab’s origin. Impressed after reading about Tesla, she started an effort to buy the workshop. Her initial funding requests netted only a few thousand dollars. The effort was noticed in the nick of time by internet cartoonist and Tesla admirer Matt Inman. He started a crowdfunding drive that attracted Tesla followers worldwide and raked in
$1.3 million, enough to snatch the property from a developer. Last year, the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation gave $168,188 to the center.
Alcorn still remembers when the group was handed the keys nine years ago. She expected an emotional rush entering the lab — but felt nothing. Then she strolled out to the center of the concrete octagon.
“I got this tingle,” she says. “And I thought to myself, Nikola Tesla actually stood here.”
William Purdoski II, 5, of Shirley, inquires about the Tesla coil during a commemorative celebration of Nikola Tesla on his 161st birthday and 100th anniversary of the dismantling of his legendary wireless transmitting tower at the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe on June 8 2017. Credit: Johnny Milano
Celebrate Nikola Tesla's birthday
WHAT Tesla Science Center’s annual celebration of Nikola Tesla includes a 40-foot Tesla coil replica that will be activated during a night show dedicated to the scientist’s legacy, modern technology and spirit. There will be robotics, amateur radio and drone demonstrations, and a “Dr. Who” time machine. Tesla car owners will have their vehicles on view; visitors can buy Frequency, a Paumanok Vineyards wine. Food and beverages will be available for purchase.
WHEN | WHERE Sept. 16-17 at Wardenclyffe, 5 Randall Rd., Shoreham
INFO Member admission is $20 for adults, $8 ages 5 to 17, and $50 for families of two adults and their children. Nonmember admission is $25 for adults, $22 senior citizens, veterans and students, $10 for youths, and $60 for families of two adults and their children; free for children younger than 5. teslasciencecenter.org, 631-886-2632
This is a modal window.
Updated 20 minutes ago Sachem school stays open ... Newsday investigation: Suffolk CPS ... Judge to rule on track star's lawsuit ... What's up on LI
