Not knitting- Tesla

I know this is a knitting blog, but I have to break from the knitting for this. I feel it relates at least in terms of creation without limiting oneself.

I have a deep fascination and love for Nikola Tesla. He had an amazing mind and his research and experiments, even 100 years later, seem like the stuff of science fiction. He is the black sheep of the technology world. No one seems ready to admit how much of a genius he was and schools overlook him completely in favor of Thomas Edison, who may have been a more stable mind, but certainly not a greater one. The world readily forgot that it was Tesla's alternating current that won out over Edison's wasteful and impractical direct current.

Out of many projects around the world, only Tesla's lab and wireless transmission tower in Long island, known as Wardenclyffe, currently remain as evidence of his most massive endeavor, part of a plan to carry news, voice and (kept from the investors) free electricity to the world. Tesla was against-the-grain thinking was hard to swallow (not to mention non-profitable) and he ran out of money before his tower could ever be completed for anything other than experiments.

The Agfa corporation currently owns the land on which the dilapidated lab and tower stand. The recently announced plans to sell it, completely razed, to the highest bidder. This would effectively erase all material evidence of Tesla's Experiments aside from obscure and far less impressive to the lay person notes and writings.

The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project seeks to preserve the lab, tower and land as well as restore it to act as a museum. From the website, their goals are:

* placement of the 16 acre site on the National Register of Historic Places
* restoration of the building and stabilization of the tower foundation
* conversion of the site into a science museum complex to be known as the
Tesla Museum and Science Center at Wardenclyffe.

The fact that even the first goal has never been done is appalling. The group needs donations to achieve these goals. I mst admit that I have some selfish motivation as well. I've never seen this place. It's one of the things I have always wanted to do. It can't be destroyed before I see it! If nothing else, go take a look at the site. Tesla was one fucking awesome freaky dude.