Tesla Tower or Wardenclyffe Tower:
Wardenclyffe Tower(1901-1917), also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early experimental transmission station designed and build by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York in 1901-1902.
The tower went 187 feet(57 m) up into the sky. The base was framed with wood, but the giant ball on the top, 68 feet in diameter, was made of steel. In the ground below, there were said to be tunnels and an "iron root system" that went deep into Earth. Nikola Tesla, the inventor and engineer who helped electrify America, believed the tower was the start of a system that could deliver electricity, without wires to the whole world.
Nikola Tesla
At the beginning of the 20th century, Tesla had become famous for his work on AC power. But he had other big ideas. At his laboratory in Colorado, he had conducted experiments with wireless transmission, typing to send electricity through the ground. His notes on this work are hard to draw conclusion form. But it seems that in the last one instance he had some success. At the very least, he come back east convinced that he could make this idea a reality, on a much larger scale.
Construction started: 1901
Height: 57m
Opened: 1901
Location: Shoreham, Long Island, New York
Architect: Nikola Tesla
Added to NRHP: July 27, 2018
After shopping his idea to the some of the richest men in the world, Tesla secured backing - a solid $150,000 - from J.P. Morgan. The investor was most interested in the idea of wireless communication (as Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, had recently been demonstrating his system for wireless telegraphy, sending message from ships to back to land) but Tesla had bigger ideas.
Stanford White
In an attempt to satisfy Tesla's debts, the tower was demolished for scrap in 1917 and the property taken in foreclosure in 1922. For 50 years, Wardenclyffe was a processing facility producing photography supplies. Many buildings were added to the site and the land it occupies has been trimmed down to 16 acres(6.5 ha) but the original, 94 by 94 ft.(29 by 29 m), brick building designed by Stanford White remains standing to this day.
In the 1980s and 2000s, hazardous waste from the photographic era was cleaned up, and the site was sold and cleared for new development. A grassroots campaign to save the site succeeded in purchasing the property in 2003, with plans to build a future museum dedicated to Nikola Tesla in 2008 the property was listed the National Register of Historic Places.
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