It's All About the Grid

You know it's all about the Grid.

It's all about who controls the power and the means of transmission of that power.

The good thing about what is going on now in terms of renewable energy is that it has the possibility of decentralizing the generation of power and the transmission of it. The famous but not nearly famous enough scientist Niloka Tesla was around when the Electrical Grid Started and was instrumental in getting it possible in the first place.

Ironically his goal was to centralize and then let it out to the world in a world wide web that would be free for everyone to use. Maybe we should call Nikola Tesla the real Father of the Internet.

The following article by my friend E.D. Faraday sheds some light on Tesla and gets one thinking about where the Grid is headed today.


LEGEND IN LIGHT

Peserving the (Almost) Lost Long Island History of Electrical Genius Nikola Tesla
by Edward Dylan Faraday

Originally Published in canvas Magazine on Long Island January 2007 (http://www.canvasli.com/ )

Lying in ruins off Route 25A in Shoreham, N.Y. is the former laboratory of Nikola Tesla, forgotten father of modern electricity, radio and wireless communications. With an astonishing career of more than 700 patents, including a 1928 flying machine that was a combination airplane and helicopter, Tesla literally lit up the world—and airwaves—with his genius.

After immigrating to America from Serbia in 1884, Tesla developed a system of alternating current electricity, which was later sold to George Westinghouse and became the de facto standard when Thomas Edison’s direct current system was proven less practical in its ability to transmit power over long distances.

At the turn of the century, Tesla proclaimed a vision of creating the first worldwide wireless broadcasting system. Borrowing money from banker JP Morgan, Tesla bought land on the cliffs of Long Island Sound at a site called Wardenclyffe, and in 1902 he commissioned architect Stanford White, who made his own home at Box Hill in St. James, N.Y., to build a stately brick laboratory with a magnificent 187-foot tower crowned by a spaceship-like steel sphere. There was even a private track spur off of the LIRR track that went directly to the Wardenclyffe laboratory.

Tesla’s dream, which seemed like science fiction at the time, was to use the tower to broadcast news, stock market reports, and private messages across the ocean. He proclaimed to Morgan, “When wireless is fully applied, the Earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts.”What Tesla did not tell Morgan was that he also planned to transmit electricity from his tower to the whole world, without wires, using the ionosphere, which is the air mass surrounding the Earth.

So why is Tesla the genius you’ve never heard about? And why is his former laboratory, built by one of America’s most celebrated architects, lying in ruins as a designated hazardous waste disposal site in Shoreham, N.Y.?

The demise of the Tesla tower starts with Tesla himself. After inventing alternating current electricity and helping enable America and the world to electrify, Tesla’s life kept taking downward turns. Conspiracy theorists think his dreams of broadcasting free electricity throughout the world without wires was the start of his misfortune, since wealthy oligarchs who controlled the electrical grid would not have been able to profit if they did not control the means of transmission.

While Tesla remained productive long after his failed Shoreham project, he became increasingly alienated from the outside world. Many of his ideas seemed too fantastic at the time. At one point he even claimed to have received radio messages from aliens in space. He died, destitute, of heart failure in 1943. It was only after his death that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tesla’s patent that recognized him as the inventor of radio.

Immediately after his death, Tesla’s personal papers disappeared and it was later discovered that J. Edgar Hoover instructed the FBI’s Office of Alien Property to seize and classify them top secret despite the fact that Tesla held U.S. citizenship.

Wardenclyffe Tower, never finished after Tesla lost the financial support of Morgan, was eventually seized by creditors and torn down in 1917. The Shoreham laboratory then went through a series of owners, including RCA and Peerless Photo Products. Then after 60 years of industrial activity, the site was declared a hazardous waste site and decommissioned.

Yet, Tesla’s Long Island legacy may soon be restored.

In 1997, New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaimed July 10 Nikola Tesla Day and Friends of Science East in Shoreham, N.Y., and other Tesla-related organizations are attempting to restore and designate the laboratory a National Historic Landmark.

The first phase of hazardous waste cleanup at the lab site has already been finished and it has been reported that Mortsel, Belgium-based AGFA, which now owns the site, has expressed interest in donating all or part of the 16-acre site to establish a Tesla Museum.

HELP SAVE TESLA’S LAB

If you would like to voice your support, please send an e-mail to teslamuseum@canvasli.com. We will forward your e-mails to Long Island officials to make your voice heard.

For more information, contact the following organizations:
Tesla Memorial Society of New YorkP.O. Box 863867Ridgewood, NY 11386
(718) 417 5102
teslasociety@aol.comwww.TeslaSociety.com

Friends of Science East, Inc.P.O. Box 552 Shoreham, NY 11786 (631) 929-8685teslamuseum@hotmail.com Tesla Wardenclyffe Project, Inc.P.O. Box 8041Breckenridge, CO 80424-8041(970) 453-9293
info@teslascience.org