A fundraiser is underway to save scientist Nikola Tesla's old laboratory, named Wardenclyffe, and to turn the site into a museum. The fundraising is spearheaded by Matthew Inman, creator of the webcomic site The Oatmeal. The property has been embattled for years between its owner, the Agfa Corporation, and the nonprofit organization that wants to save it and enter it in the National Register of Historic Places.

Tesla originally intended for Wardenclyffe to be a vector for trans-Atlantic wireless communications, broadcasting, and wireless power. The site consisted of an (incomplete) 18-story-high transmission tower that topped off a laboratory surrounded by 16 acres of land in Shoreham, Long Island in 1903. By 1917, Tesla had sold the site for $20,000 to pay bills at the Waldorf. That same year, the transmission tower was blown up by the buyers and sold for scrap. Tesla's wireless dreams were never realized.

The site is now owned by the Agfa Corporation, an imaging company that used the land from 1969 to 1992. The site was put up for sale in February 2009, according to the New York Times, but has yet to find a buyer. A nonprofit named the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project Inc. was formed in 1994 seeking to place the site on the National Register of Historic Places. The nonprofit filed for preservation, and inspections showed it met criteria, but the property can't be entered into the registry without a formal nomination from its owner.

Agfa has in the past insisted on selling the property rather than donating it. Speaking to the New York Times, Christopher M. Santomassimo, Agfa’s general counsel, said that Agfa "is simply not in a position to donate the property outright."

Enter Matthew Inman, who recently completed a successful fundraiser for the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. Inman put up a page on the Oatmeal asking readers to donate money in an effort to help the nonprofit group purchase Wardenclyffe. The goal: $850,000.



"There is no Tesla museum in the United States," Inman writes—a travesty, he believes, given that Tesla championed alternating current to provide electric power, and laid the groundwork for technologies including radio, radar, and X-rays. If the nonprofit group can collect $850,000, the state of New York has committed to match the funds, giving it enough to meet Agfa's asking price of $1.6 million.

Wardenclyffe was not Tesla's only laboratory in his lifetime. Before Wardenclyffe, his base of operations was in Manhattan at 46 East Houston Street. After that, he set up in Colorado Springs, where some of the most famous photos of his demonstrations of wireless power were taken. But the Colorado Springs lab was torn down in 1904, its lumber sold to pay a judgment against Tesla by the local power company. His former Manhattan base is now the home of a dry cleaner and a Subway sandwich shop.

"I'm hopeful we can raise enough to buy the land, but 850k is a ton of money even for a massive crowdfunding campaign," Inman told Ars via e-mail. In the fundraiser post, Inman calls on some corporations that have expressed admiration for or affiliation with Tesla to pitch in, including Google and Tesla Motors. Inman is also requesting donations from J.P. Morgan, as J. Pierpont Morgan himself financed the original construction of Wardenclyffe to the tune of $3 million in today's money. Perhaps a century is enough time for forgive old debts and shell out some new ones.

But Inman and the Tesla Wardenclyffe Project Inc. may not need much corporate help—in less than 24 hours, the fundraiser has surged past $329,000.