Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was at the peak of his commercial credibility in 1900. His polyphase alternating-current induction-motor patents (1888) had been the technological foundation of the Westinghouse-built Niagara Falls power station that began commercial operation in November 1896. The royalties had been re-negotiated downward — Tesla had famously torn up his original $2.50-per-horsepower contract to save Westinghouse from bankruptcy — but he was still the most prominent practical electrical engineer in the United States.
In March 1901 he persuaded J.P. Morgan to put up $150,000 (about $5.6 million in 2025 dollars) for a wireless transmission station that would, Tesla claimed, send commercial radio-telegraph messages across the Atlantic. The actual project was substantially larger than Morgan had been told.
What Tesla was actually building
The Wardenclyffe site at Shoreham, Long Island, comprised a 100-foot-square brick laboratory building designed by Stanford White and a 187-foot wooden tower topped with a 55-ton steel-and-copper electrode that Tesla called the “magnifying transmitter.” The tower’s foundation extended 120 feet underground through a network of iron pipes designed to couple electrical energy directly into the Earth.
Tesla’s intent — disclosed in his 1900 paper “The Problem of Increasing Human Energy” but not in his pitch to Morgan — was to use the Earth itself as a transmission medium. Wardenclyffe would broadcast not just radio signals but electrical power, picked up by simple resonant receivers anywhere on the planet. Lamps, motors, and ship propulsion would all draw power from the Earth at no marginal cost.
March 1903
On 12 December 1901 Guglielmo Marconi transmitted the letter S in Morse code across the Atlantic from Cornwall to Newfoundland using equipment based on Tesla patents but operated by Marconi’s own company. Marconi had beaten Tesla to the commercial transatlantic radio market.
Morgan met with Tesla in March 1903. Tesla disclosed the wireless-power project. Morgan refused further funding. His reported objection has often been summarised as “if anyone can draw power from the air, where do we put the meter?” The exact wording is not in the archive; the financial decision is.
Tesla continued partial construction with smaller backers through 1905. Wardenclyffe never transmitted anything across the Atlantic. The tower stood unused on the Long Island shore for fourteen years.
July 1917
Tesla mortgaged the Wardenclyffe site to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in 1915 in exchange for unpaid hotel bills. He declared bankruptcy in March 1916. The Waldorf-Astoria took possession of the site and arranged the demolition. The tower was dynamited on 4 July 1917 and the steel sold for $1,750.
The official cited reason for the wartime demolition was a US Navy concern that German submarines might use the tower as a navigational beacon. Tesla maintained for the rest of his life that Morgan’s investment-banking network had quietly engineered the demolition to prevent the wireless-power demonstration.
The brick laboratory building survived. It was bought by the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe in 2013 (after a $1.37 million crowdfunding campaign organised by the cartoonist Matthew Inman) and is now a museum.