Signal to Mars Put Tesla's Lab In Town History

By Bill McTernan

Shoreham — The people of this North Shore village thought the end of the world had come one summer night in 1902, when ghostly flashes of light and crackling blasts shattered the stillness.

In a way they were right, for the imagination of the erratic genius was working to put an end to the old world by opening the doors of a new one. The flashing, crackling pyrotechnic display was coming from the laboratory of Nikola Tesla, who was busily engaged in an attempt to send signals to Mars. Tesla's primitive probe of outer space failed, but his achievements in electrical research have made his name a standard word in the language of the laboratory. Today, the two-story brick laboratory where Tesla worked for 10 years is occupied by Peerless Photo Products Inc., which makes photographic papers there.

Now the Town of Brookhaven has announced plans to designate the laboratory as a town's first historic site. The man responsible for the move is Councilman Robert E. Reid. Reid said he had known of the laboratory's history for years. The board set up the Brookhaven Historic Trust on Feb. 14 and subsequently designated Tesla's laboratory on Reid's recommendation. He said a plaque will be affixed to the building and a blue and gold marker set up outside. The trust was set up by the board to implement a new town policy of marking historical sites.

Reid unearthed the story of the attempted signals to Mars in his research on Tesla, a Yugoslavian-born inventor. To send the electrical impulses, Reid said, Tesla had a 280-foot high steel tower built on a hill near the laboratory, about a mile inland. At the outbreak of World War I, the government, fearing it would be put to subversive use, had the tower demolished, Reid said. Tesla's Shoreham laboratory was designed by Stanford White, Reid said. White, the leading New York architect at the turn of the century, also designed Penn Station, the Garden City Hotel, the Gateway Hotel in Bellport, the Swope Estates in Sands Point and the Greek Revival Bible House in Kings Point. White was shot to death in 1906 by financier Harry K. Thaw, as the result of a sensational love triangle involving Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit.

Reid said he recalls various stories about Tesla such as how the scientist would eat nothing that had not been cooked by electricity, and how he had his food delivered from the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by special messenger. He also said Tesla would work through the night in his Shoreham laboratory, alone except for a guard who kept strangers away.

Tesla attended school in Austria and Prague and came to the U.S. in 1884. He worked with Thomas Edison for three years and, in 1887, formed the Tesla Electric Co. and developed a brushless electric motor. In 1895, Tesla's revolutionary induction motor and polyphase system for the generation and transmission of electric energy made possible the first large-scale harnessing of the energy of Niagara Falls. Today, much of the world's electricity is generated, transmitted and turned back into mechanical power by means of Tesla's motor and system.