Nikola Tesla built this to send messages, telephone calls and even pictures across the Atlantic using the Earth itself as the conductor. The tower was 186 feet of wood frame under a cupola 68 feet across, and under it he sank a shaft lined with wood and steel, ten by twelve feet, 120 feet straight down, because the ground connection was the whole point of the design. It never worked as intended. J.P. Morgan refused more money in 1901, Marconi got a signal across the Atlantic that December, and the investors went with the system that had already done it; by 1906 the place was abandoned. On 4 July 1917 the Smiley Steel Company dynamited the tower and the scrap fetched $1,750. The Stanford White brick laboratory is still standing. A nonprofit bought the remaining 16 acres of the original 200 in 2013 to make it the Tesla Science Center, and a fire damaged the main building in November 2023. Shoreham, Long Island.
Shoreham, New York
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