Tesla's Big Tower to be Sold for Debt

GREAT INVENTOR'S PET SCHEME SEEMS TO HAVE RECEIVED A BLOW 

JUDGMENT IS FOR $1.108.20

Structure Was 150 Feet High in Air and 150 Feet Shaft in Ground — Has Been a Mystery Ever Since It Was Built — Magnificent Ideas.

(Special to the Brooklyn Times.)

Riverhead, L. I., June 12. The Tower of Wonders at Wardenclyffe, where Nikola Tesla, the inventor, preserved such mystery and where it was whispered scientific experiments were to be carried on greater in scope than any ever before attempted, is for sale. The Sheriff of Suffolk County to-day advertised the en- tire property to be disposed of to satisfy a judgment held by Dr. James S. Warden. The Tesla property consists of 200 acres and the wonderful steel tower 150 feet high and with a shaft sunk 150 feet in the ground. Tesla has spent a fortune in rearing the huge steel mass, which ever since its building has been the theme for discussion among the puzzled laymen of the Island. 

What did Tesla intend to do? This is the question that for a long time perplexed the people living in the Wading River and Wardenclyffe neighborhood. It was at first believed that he intended experimenting with a project to store solar rays and transmit their power in some merchantable form. In a scientific treatise, he had promulgated the belief that It was possible to attract dolar energy and find a market for the stored power. The height of the tower and its peculiar dome-shaped top readily lent. substance to the belief that Tesla did. Indeed, Intend to utilize the sun's rays for motive power.

However, nothing has ever been learned of the Tower of Wonders. Tesla himself is a brave fellow, not seeking notoriety, and steadfastly holding to his belief, recently endorsed by Edison, that in regard to electricity the human race knows little or nothing. Just previous to building the tower, Tesla expounded the theory that, messages could be transmitted between any points on the globe, using the earth a medium, and there were not lacking people who asserted that his huge shaft was sunk 150 feet in the ground in order that messages might be transmitted through the earth's substance.

The tower itself is a bare steel structure. Near the base is a machine house of some kind. This is filled with intricate machinery. No one, so far as it known, has ever been able to find out from Tesla or his men just what the machinery is for and what was or is to be done with it. Visitors are not welcome and they are told very politely that the property is private and trespassing is not desired. Niles and Johnson, of Wall street, are the attorneys for the sale. The judgment is for $1,108.20, and will probably be settled.

Nikola Tesla came into prominence many years ago as an inventor. In 1884 he took out citizenship papers and since that time has lived in America. He has of late years spent nearly all of his time on his scheme of world telegraphy and telephony and in designing plans for the transmission of power without a direct medium. He is a man of the most splendid visions and may prove to be as far ahead of the scientific world as Kepler was when his astronomical theories were scoffed at as dreams.