Fundraiser to purchase Nikola Tesla’s laboratory reaches goal

BBC : In just one week, 21â000 people donated almost $900â000 as part of a crowd-sourced fundraiser to purchase Nikola Tesla’s laboratory in Shoreham, New York. Sponsored by the nonprofit Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe and by Matthew Inman, creator of the website The Oatmeal, the fundraising initiative will be supplemented by matching funds from the State of New York to reach the $1.6 million sale price for the property. The Tesla Science Center hopes to convert the lab into a museum dedicated to the inventor. However, there is another potential buyer, who wants to turn it into a retail business. Tesla was a Serbian immigrant best known for promoting alternating current instead of the direct current favored by Thomas Edison. Despite his technological achievements, Tesla went bankrupt, and his Shoreham lab was sold in 1917. When he died in 1943, he was still deeply in debt.