There are a lot of people out there that really like Nikola Tesla. And what’s not to like? The handsome mustachioed scientist invented the modern alternating current system that powers our offices and homes, poured the foundation for wireless communication technology, and used to hang out with Mark Twain in his laboratory. (That’s Tesla, above, sitting in his lab hanging out with some lightning.) Over the years, however, Tesla’s largely lived in the shadow his lauded nemesis, Thomas Edison, who not only gets most of the credit for pioneering electricity but became filthy rich in the process. So when Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal put out a call to raise money to buy the scientist’s old lab and turn it into a museum, Tesla fans showed up in droves. They hit their goal of $850,000 on Wednesday morning, and the money’s still rolling in.The lab in question, Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island, was supposed to house the first node of Tesla’s world communication system. With a wooden tower standing 187-foot tall over a wide, 120-foot deep shaft that held the antenna, the complex cost a fortune to build back in 1901. James Pierpont Morgan alone sank $150,000 (about $3 million in today’s money) into the project which Tesla hoped would beam not only information around the planet but also electricity itself. The dream wilted at the end of that year, when Guglielmo Marconi successfully transmitted a message wirelessly across the Atlantic Ocean, dashing Tesla’s hope of pioneering the technology itself.Over the next century, the lab changed hands a number of times, and one of the owners had the tower destroyed in 1917. From 1969 to 1992, the property served as a plant for the imaging giant Agfa and ended up totally contaminated by silver and cadmium, a nasty poison. When the clean up ended in 2008, the company put it up for sale, starting speculation that developers would storm in and turn Tesla’s old lab into a shopping mall or something. There it sat for four years, until a developer came along and made an offer to buy the property and turn it into — you guessed it — a shopping mall. This is when a non-profit with the hope of building the Nikola Tesla Science Center started campaigning to raise the $1.6 million needed to buy the lab. Inman launched the crowdfunding campaign last week and with donations ranging from $3 to $33,333 handily secured the funds.This isn’t the first time Inman and the Oatmeal have played the fundraising game. Earlier this year, Inman got hit with a $20,000 defamation lawsuit from the photo site FunnyJunk and responded by asking readers for donations. He ended up raising over $220,000, all of which went to charity. Inman never planned on paying the settlement, though. Evidently, the cartoonist just wanted to take a picture of the cash and send it to FunnyJunk along with a drawing of the company’s CEO "mom seducing a kodiak bear." FunnyJunk ultimately dropped the lawsuit.There’s no word yet on what exactly the museum is going to consist of. We can only hope that a set of musical Tesla coils will make the cut.
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