Footnotes to Long Island History
Radio Pioneer at
Shoreham
September 13, 1951
by
Thomas R. Bayles
Caption: Pioneering
in radio was what Nikola Tesla, inventor and electrician, intended when
he built the huge tower and laboratory building shown above. The
structures were built in 1902. Through a remarkable coincidence,
Tesla’s tower was within two miles of the present site of the RCA
broadcasting transmitters at Rocky Point.
Radio broadcasting
was visualized several years before it was actually put into successful
operation, by Nikola Tesla, an inventor and electrician who experimented
for some time at Shoreham.
He was born in 1857
in Austria Hungary and studied engineering in the scientific schools in
his own country and worked for some time as engineer for the Austrian
Government.
In 1884 Tesla came to
America and was employed in the Edison plant at Orange, N.J., and later
at Pittsburgh. He devoted much of his time to experimental work and
research. He anticipated the radio and believed that electric energy
could be broadcast so that one would only have to tune in for electric
light and power.
During the winter of
1902 Tesla started construction at Shoreham of a huge tower and
experimental power house, just across from the railroad station.
The tower was 200
feet high with a stairway leading to the platform near the top. Below
the tower was a well 120 feet deep and 12 feet square, which was cased
its entire depth with 8-inch timbers. A staircase led down to the
bottom where there were four tunnels nearly 100 feet in length. The
tower was constructed mostly of wood, although 50 tons of iron and
steel, and 50,000 bolts were used.
Nearby was erected
the experimental plant, which was a brick building 100 feet square, and
contained a boiler room, engine and dynamo room, machine shop and
laboratory. Electrical equipment of various kinds was furnished by the
Westinghouse company.
What Tesla intended
to do with this was the question that perplexed the people living in
that part of the town.
The height of the
tower and its peculiar dome-shaped top led to the belief that Tesla
intended to utilize the sun’s rays to generate electricity.
Nothing much was ever
learned to Tesla’s plans and experiments, everything being conducted
under great secrecy. He worked on the theory that messages could be
transmitted between any points on the globe, using the earth as a
medium, and many people believed that this was the reason for the deep
well under the tower. No one was ever able to find out from Tesla what
all the machinery in the power house was for. Visitors were not welcome
and were told politely to keep away.
Tesla was a man of
great vision, and his experiments and inventions were really the
foundation of wireless, although Marconi received most of the honor and
credit for its development. The tower was dismantled during World War
I, and the brick building was finally converted into a factory for
making film.
It seems singular
that within two miles of Tesla’s experiment station the Radio
Corporation of America years later established at Rocky Point one of the
most powerful broadcasting stations in the world.