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Trelowarren-Wardenclyffe Part I: Enterprise
Trelowarren-Wardenclyffe Part II: Full Disclosure
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This is a current project which will result in a scattering of pieces surrounding the history of Wardenclyffe which was scientist/inventor Nikola Tesla's uncompleted radio communications and wireless power station.
Tesla never completed Wardenclyffe, which eventually may have powered New York City, due to a lack of funds. His financial backer J.P. Morgan withdrew funding when he realised that Tesla, whose goal was to improve the quality of life through science, intended to distribute wireless electricity for free. I am interested in the economic condition of the late 19th/early 20th century - a time when laissez faire capitalism was the order the day (not dissimilar to its resurgence in full force in the latter part of the 20th century), and the relationship between technological innovation and economics.
Tesla had planned a second site for a communications/power station somewhere on the southwest coast of England which would theoretically be able to power London. This project is partly my imagining of that second site in a location I've selected - Trelowarren (for reasons similar to Tesla's selection of Wardenclyffe) and partly an exploration of the history behind the cut-throat competition among scientists in Tesla's time and the tension between economic self-promotion and the idealism of science - both as understood under modernist ideals of progress. |
