$850K pours into Tesla lab fundraising effort in just 6 days
An online fundraising drive just launched to help a nonprofit group purchase the property around the former Tesla laboratory in Shoreham raised nearly $1 million after just six days.
Nikola tesla
That figure is good enough to have already passed the group’s goal.
The campaign, called “Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum,” was organized in part by Matthew Inman, an artist who runs the popular webcomic “The Oatmeal.”
According to the fundraiser’s website, Mr. Inman hoped to raise $850,000, enough money to trigger a New York State grant that would add enough funds to purchase the roughly 16-acre property — currently listed at $1.6 million — to turn it into a museum dedicated to famed inventor Nikola Tesla.
As of Aug. 23, the campaign has raised more than $980,000 for the nonprofit.
Mr. Tesla, a contemporary rival of Thomas Edison and a pioneer in the use of alternating current, radio, and x-rays, conducted experiments at the Wardenclyffe laboratory, which was built in 1901 in Shoreham.
The property was leased to a photography company years after Mr. Tesla’s death. That company dumped waste on the property. Wardenclyffe was later purchased by an imaging company that is trying to sell the land.
