Wardenclyffe Tower

For the Allan Holdsworth album, see Wardenclyffe Tower (album).

1904 image of Wardenclyffe Tower located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. The 94 by 94 ft (29 m) brick building was designed by architect Stanford White.

Wardenclyffe Tower (1901–1917) also known as the Tesla Tower, was an early wireless transmission tower designed by Nikola Tesla in Shoreham, New York and intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting, and proof-of-concept demonstrations of FREE wireless power transmission. It was never fully operational, and the tower was demolished in 1917.

The tower was named after James S. Warden, a western lawyer and banker who had purchased land for the endeavor in Shoreham, Long Island, about sixty miles from Manhattan. Here he built a resort community known as Wardenclyffe-On-Sound. Warden believed that with the implementation of Tesla's "world system" a "Radio City" would arise in the area. He offered Tesla 200 acres (81 ha) of land close to a railway line on which to build his wireless telecommunications tower and laboratory facility.

History

Construction

Tesla Ready for Business - August 7, 1901 New-York tribune article

Tesla's Wardenclyffe plant on Long Island circa 1902 in partial stage of completion. Work on the 55-foot-diameter (17 m) cupola had not yet begun. There is a coal car parked next to the building.

Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility ca. 1898 and in 1901 construction began on the land near Long Island Sound. Architect Stanford White designed the Wardenclyffe facility main building. The tower was designed by W.D. Crow, an associate of White. Funding for Tesla's project was provided by influential industrialists and other venture capitalists. The project was initially backed by the wealthy J. P. Morgan who had invested $150,000 in the facility (more than $3 million in 2009 dollars). In June 1902, Tesla moved his laboratory operations from his West Houston Street laboratory to Wardenclyffe.

The project ran into many problems. Financiers began investing in Guglielmo Marconi's system which started regular transatlantic transmission in 1903 and seemed to be doing it with far less expensive equipment. By 1903 Tesla's project, still under construction due to numerous design changes, ran out of money and Morgan declined to fund it any further. Some in the press began turning against the project claiming it was a hoax. Tesla tried to generate more interest in Wardenclyffe by revealing its ability to transmit wireless electricity, but Morgan was not interested, and the 1903 "rich man's panic" on Wall Street dried up any further investment. By July 1904 Morgan (and the other investors) finally decided they would not provide any additional financing. In May 1905 Tesla's patents on alternating current motors and other methods of power transmission expired, halting royalty payments and causing a severe reduction of funding to the Wardenclyffe Tower. In an attempt to find alternative funding Tesla advertised the services of the Wardenclyffe facility but he was met with little success. By this time Tesla had also designed the Tesla turbine at Wardenclyffe and produced Tesla coils for sale to various businesses.

By 1905, since Tesla could not find any more backers, most of the site's activity had to be shut down. Employees were laid off in 1906, but parts of the building remained in use until 1907. In 1908, the property was foreclosed for the first time. Tesla procured a new mortgage from George C. Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The facility was partially abandoned around 1911, and the tower structure deteriorated. Between 1912 and 1915, Tesla's finances unraveled, and when the funders wanted to know how they were going to recapture their investments, Tesla was unable to give satisfactory answers. Newspaper headlines of the time labeled it "Tesla's million-dollar folly." The facility's main building was breached and vandalized around this time. Collapse of the Wardenclyffe project may have contributed to the mental breakdown Tesla experienced during this period. Coupled to the personal tragedy of Wardenclyffe was the 1895 fire at 35 South 5th Avenue, New York, in the building which housed Tesla's laboratory. In this fire, he lost much of his equipment, notes and documents. This put Tesla into a state of severe depression.

Post-Tesla era

In 1915, legal ownership of the Wardenclyffe property was transferred to George Boldt of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a $20,000 debt (about $400,000 in 2009 dollars). In July 4, 1917, during World War I, the tower was blown up with dynamite on orders of the United States Government which feared German spies were using it and that it could be used as a landmark for German submarines. Tesla was not in New York during the tower's destruction.

George Boldt wished to make the property available for sale. On April 20, 1922, Tesla lost an appeal of judgment versus his backers in the second foreclosure. This effectively locked Tesla out of any future development of the facility. In 1925, the property ownership was transferred to Walter L. Johnson of Brooklyn. On March 6, 1939, Plantacres, Inc. purchased the facility's land and subsequently leased it to Peerless Photo Products, Inc. AGFA Corporation bought the property from Peerless and sold the property to a non profit organization supported by The Oatmeal in the year 2013. The main building remains standing to this day. Agfa used the site from 1969 to 1992 then closed the facility. The site has undergone a final cleanup of waste produced during its Photo Products era. The clean up was conducted under the scrutiny of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and paid for by AGFA. In 2009 they put the property up for sale for $1,650,000. Agfa has advertised that the land can “be delivered fully cleared and level.” It says it spent $5 million through September 2008 cleaning up silver and cadmium.

Preservation efforts

On February 14, 1967, the nonprofit public benefit corporation Brookhaven Town Historical Trust was established. It selected the Wardenclyffe facility to be designated as a historic site and as the first site to be preserved by the Trust on March 3, 1967. The Brookhaven Town Historic Trust was rescinded by resolution on February 1, 1972. There were never any appointments made after a legal opinion was received; it was never set up properly. On July 7, 1976, a plaque from Yugoslavia was installed by representatives from Brookhaven National Laboratory near the entrance of the building.  It reads:

Stanford White Building at the corner of Tesla Street and New York Route 25A in July 2009

IN THIS BUILDING
DESIGNED BY STANFORD WHITE, ARCHITECT
NIKOLA TESLA
BORN SMILJAN, YUGOSLAVIA 1856—DIED NEW YORK, U.S.A. 1943
CONSTRUCTED IN 1901–1905 WARDENCLYFFE
HUGE RADIO STATION WITH ANTENNA TOWER
187 FEET HIGH /DESTROYED 1917/, WHICH
WAS TO HAVE SERVED AS HIS FIRST WORLD
COMMUNICATIONS SYSTEM.
IN MEMORY OF 120TH ANNIVERSARY OF TESLA'S BIRTH
AND 200TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE FIRST U.S.A

July 10, 1976

The sign was stolen from the property in November 2009. An anonymous benefactor is offering a $2000 reward if it is returned to the property.

Designation of the structure as a National Landmark is awaiting completion of plant decommissioning activities by its present owner.

In 1976, an application was filed to nominate the main building for listing on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). It failed to get approval. The Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc. was established in 1994 for the purpose of seeking placement of the Wardenclyffe laboratory-office building and the Tesla tower foundation on both the New York State and NRHP. Its mission is the preservation and adaptive reuse of Wardenclyffe, the century-old laboratory of electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. In October 1994 a second application for formal nomination was filed. The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation conducted inspections and determined the facility meets New York State criteria for historic designation. A second visit was made on February 25, 2009. The site cannot be registered until it is nominated by a willing owner.

Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe

Main article: Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe

In August 2012, concerned about an apparent offer to purchase the site and develop it for commercial use, The Oatmeal launched a fundraiser for the Tesla Science Center to raise $1.7 million in order to purchase the property, with the hope of eventually building a museum on the grounds. The state of New York agreed to match donations up half that amount. As of October 3, 2012, the goal of $850,000 had been reached in just over six days after a $33,333 donation from the producers of the Tesla film Fragments From Olympus - The Vision of Nikola Tesla put them over the top. A total of $1.37 million was donated, the matching grant from the State of New York brings the total collected to over $2.2 million. The surplus will be used to fund the cleaning and restoration of the property. Tesla, Wardenclyffe and the museum fundraising effort will be the subject of a new documentary being produced called Tower to the People - Tesla's Dream at Wardenclyffe Continues. On 2 May 2013, the group announced that the site had been acquired.

Facility grounds

Artistic representation of the station completed, including the tower structure.

Wardenclyffe is located near the Shoreham Post Office and Shoreham Fire House on Route 25A in Shoreham, Long Island, New York. Wardenclyffe was divided into two main sections. The tower, which was located in the back, and the main building compose the entire facility grounds. At one time the property was about 200 acres (0.81 km²). Now it consists of slightly less than 16 acres (65,000 m²).

The wood-framed tower was 186 feet (57 m) tall and the cupola 68 feet (21 m) in diameter. It had a 55-ton steel (some report it was a better conducting material, such as copper) hemispherical structure at the top (referred to as a cupola). Designed by one of Stanford White's associates, the structure was such as to allow each piece to be taken out if needed and replaced as necessary. The transmitter itself was to have been powered by a 200 kilowatt Westinghouse alternating current industrial generator. Beneath the tower, a shaft sank 120 feet (37 m) into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were placed one length after another 300 additional feet (94.4 m) in order for the machine, in Tesla's words, "to have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver."

The main building occupied the rest of the facility grounds. It included a laboratory area, instrument room, boiler room, generator room and machine shop. Inside the main building, there were electromechanical devices, electrical generators, electrical transformers, glass blowing equipment, X-ray devices, Tesla coils, a remote controlled boat, cases with bulbs and tubes, wires, cables, a library, and an office. It was constructed in the style of the Italian Renaissance.

Telefunken Station

After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless on the South Shore of Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was achieved with the Telefunken Wireless. In West Sayville, Long Island, New York, Tesla assisted in the building of three 600-foot (180 m) radio towers, creating the western wireless communication station in a North America and Europe network.

Tesla quotations

• "As soon as [the Wardenclyffe facility is] completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place ..." – "The Future of the Wireless Art," Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony, 1908, pg. 67–71.

• "It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive – blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence – by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed – only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle." – "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires as a Means for Furthering Peace," Electrical World and Engineer, January 7, 1905.

World Wireless System

Main article: World Wireless System

Transmission of electrical energy without wires

The Tesla coil wireless transmitter
U.S. patent 1,119,732

An electric current flowing through a conductor carries electrical energy. The body of the earth is an electrical conductor, nearly spherical in shape, insulated in space. It possesses an electric charge relative to the upper atmosphere beginning at about 50 kilometers elevation. When a second body, directly adjacent to Earth, is charged and discharged in rapid succession this causes an equivalent variation of Earth's electrostatic charge resulting in the passage of electric current through the ground.

The Tesla coil transmitter, both the single and dual tower forms, is an electrical machine specifically designed to create as large a displacement as possible of Earth's electric charge. It does this by alternately charging and discharging the oscillator's elevated terminal capacitance at a specific frequency, periodically altering the electrostatic charge of the earth, and consequently, with sufficient power, the pressure over its entire surface. "A connection to earth, either directly or through a condenser is essential." The placement of a grounded Tesla coil receiver tuned to the same frequency as the transmitter at another point on the surface results in the flow of electric current through the earth between the two, "while an equivalent electrical displacement occurs in the atmosphere." This current can be used at the receiver to drive an electrical load, which in the case of an individual World Wireless Telecommunications System receiver is a sensitive device using only a small amount of energy.

In 1891 and 1892, Tesla used the oscillatory transformer that bears his name in demonstration lectures delivered before meetings of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE) in New York City" and the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in London. Of two striking results that Tesla demonstrated, one was that the wireless transmission of electrical energy is possible. A later presentation, titled "On Light and Other High Frequency Phenomena" (Philadelphia/St. Louis; Franklin Institute in 1893), is a key event in the invention of radio and can also be said to have begun the development of Wardenclyffe.

Related patents

Main article: List of Nikola Tesla patents

Tesla's patents

• "Means for Generating Electric Currents," U.S. patent 514,168, February 6, 1894
• "Electrical Transformer," U.S. patent 593,138, November 2, 1897
• "Method Of Utilizing Radiant Energy," U.S. patent 685,958 November 5, 1901
• "Method of Signaling," U.S. patent 723,188, March 17, 1903
• "System of Signaling," U.S. patent 725,605, April 14, 1903
• "Art of Transmitting Electrical Energy Through the Natural Mediums," U.S. patent 787,412, April 18, 1905
• "Apparatus for Transmitting Electrical Energy," January 18, 1902, U.S. patent 1,119,732, December 1, 1914

See also

• Wireless energy transmission
• Transmission medium
• Distributed generation
• Electricity distribution
• Electric power transmission
• Friis transmission equation
• Terrestrial stationary waves
• Devices: Tesla coil, Magnifying Transmitter, Electro-mechanical oscillator

Further reading

• Anderson, Leland, "Rare Notes from Tesla on Wardenclyffe" in Electric Spacecraft – A journal of Interactive Research, Issue 26, September 14, 1998. Contains copies of rare documents from the Tesla Museum in Belgrade including Tesla's notes and sketches from 1901
• Bass, Robert W., "Self-Sustained Non-Hertzian Longitudal Wave Oscillations as a Rigorous Solution of Maxwell's Equations for Electromagnetic Radiation". Inventek Enterprises, Inc., Las Vegas, Nevada.
• "Boundless Space: A Bus Bar". The Electrical World, Vol 32, No. 19.
• Massie, Walter Wentworth, "Wireless telegraphy and telephony popularly explained ". New York, Van Nostrand. 1908.
• Rather, John, "Tesla, a Little-Recognized Genius, Left Mark in Shoreham". The New York Times. Long Island Weekly Desk.
• Tesla, Nikola, "The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires", Electrical World and Engineer, March 5, 1904.
• Tesla, Nikola, "World System of Wireless Transmission of Energy", Telegraph and Telegraph Age, October 16, 1927.

External links

• PBS Tower of Dreams the wireless global communications]
• Wardenclyffe Tower at Structurae
• Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe