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12.10

By Donald Christiansen

Among the many engineering colleagues I have worked with over the years, a small but significant number have exhibited a strong interest in preserving artifacts and landmarks relating to the electrical engineering profession and to technology in general. I am pleased to count myself among them. Recently my preservation instincts were again aroused when, in a matter of days, I learned of threats to three endangered sites.

In Flint, Michigan, a complex of closed General Motors factories now owned by the Motors Liquidation Company has become a target for theft and crimes of assault. The properties were ceded by GM to Motors Liquidation in July 2009, and
over the next three months thieves removed more than 150,000 pounds of
copper piping, tubing, etc. from the abandoned plants. Although
authorities were aware of this, the thefts continued. The "copper gang"
would use GM's own flatbed rail cars to roll the loot to a hole in the
fence, where they would load it on trucks bound for scrap dealers. In
March 2010 11 suspects were arrested, by which time the value of the
stolen copper exceeded $1 million. The vandalism has continued and more
participants have since been arrested.

This depressing news reminded me of my travels to Detroit several years ago when I visited and photographed the headquarters of the Packard Motor Car Company shortly before it was scheduled for demolition. The GM buildings in Flint now face a similar fate.

A U.S. Navy Icon

In Philadelphia, still afloat since its launch in 1892, the sleek cruiser USS Olympia seems headed for scrapping. In need of drydocking after years in the water without hull maintenance, the ship has a remote chance of gaining required funding. The Navy itself has thus far indicated it will not contribute. Ironically, except for the weather deck, much above the waterline has been preserved in pristine condition. The Olympia’s chief claim to fame is its historic role as the flagship of Commodore Dewey at the 1898 Battle of Manila. The ship also served in World War I, and later in peace-keeping tours in the Mediterranean and Asiatic seas, and carried the remains of the first World War’s Unknown Soldier from France to Washington, D.C. Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman called the Olympia “an engineering marvel for its time,” one of the first naval ships to boast electricity, refrigeration, powered steering gear, and high-speed reciprocating engines capable of driving her at 22 knots. She is now the oldest steel warship still afloat. I learned of her scheduled closing to visitors because of her deteriorating condition and visited several days prior to that. I was fortunate in being permitted to take photographs in off-limits areas of the ship.  (I have since learned of a proposal to keep the ship open through 31 December and on a limited schedule thereafter, pending a determination of steps available to save it from scrapping.)

Tesla’s Last Stand

Fans of Nikola Tesla are aware of his countless successful inventions, as well as his most controversial proposal, the transmission of electric power worldwide via the ionosphere. The Wardenclyffe Laboratory in Shoreham, New York, was the center of interest and activity in Tesla’s energy transmission concept. Its iconic 187-foot wooden tower made the site famous, if not notorious. It intrigued local farmers and could be seen across Long Island Sound by Connecticut residents.

The tower, intended to be the centerpiece of his global communications and energy transmission system, was not completed, in part because former friends and backers, including J. P. Morgan and George Westinghouse, withheld funding. It was demolished in 1917 for scrap value.

An important survivor on the 16-acre site is Tesla’s original laboratory building, a nearly 10,000-square-foot brownstone structure designed by architect Stanford White. It is reportedly the last remaining research facility used by Tesla.

At one time it contained a machine shop, glass-blowing and X-ray equipment, generators and transformers, and generous supplies of wire and cable. It was also used to manufacture Tesla coils, which were in great demand at the time. There was also an instrument room, a library, and an office.

Tesla’s deepening debt, a result of both research and equipment costs and personal spending, caused him to deed Wardenclyffe to the Waldorf-Astoria in 1915. (He had lived in high style at the Waldorf for many years.)

In later years the Wardenclyffe property was acquired by Agfa-Geveart, the Belgian photographic film company. It was closed in 1987 as demand for film faded. It has since undergone a cleanup for heavy metals as a New York State Superfund site. Agfa recently listed it for sale at $1.65 million. The non-profit Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe is working toward the preservation of the Tesla laboratory, hoping to restore and open it to the public as a science center and museum.

It will not be an easy challenge. Besides funding to acquire the laboratory building, more will be needed to rehabilitate it. Its boarded windows and locked doorways can hardly be seen through dense overgrowth. The public is restrained from entering the property by a 6-foot-high chain-link fence with barbed-wire on top. That has not deterred the vandals. Agfa’s auxiliary buildings are covered with graffiti, and anything of value has long disappeared from the laboratory building itself. Those interested in participating in the conservation effort may contact Jane Alcorn, president of the Tesla Science Center, at 631-929-8685.

Resources

For more about Tesla:

The Nikola Tesla Museum, Belgrade, Serbia. Contains 160,000 original Tesla documents, 2000 books and journals, 1000 plans and drawings. http://www.tesla-museum.org/meni_en.htm.

Martin, T.C., The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla, Second Edition, 1893, republished by Barnes and Noble, 1995.

Tesla, N., “The Transmission of Electrical Energy Without Wires,” Electrical World, Mar. 5, 1904.

Tesla, N., System of Transmission of Electrical Energy, Sep. 2, 1897, U. S. Patent No. 645576 Mar. 20, 1900.

Cheney, M., Tesla: Man Out of Time, Prentice Hall, 1987, Barnes and Noble, 1993.

For more about Wardenclyffe:

Nikola Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, www.teslasciencecenter.org

Anderson, L.I., “Wardenclyffe: A Forfeited Dream,” Long Island Forum, Aug.-Sep. 1968.

Photographs and illustrations of the Wardenclyffe tower can be found at http://spectrum.ieee.org/tesla-tower

For more about USS Olympia:

Cooling, B.F., USS Olympia: Herald of Empire, Naval Institute Press, 2007.

Loviglio, J., “Olympia, 2-war naval veteran, battles for survival,” AP, Sept. 6, 2010.

Friends of the Cruiser Olympia. http://cruiserolympia.org

For more about the abandonment of General Motors’ Flint, Michigan factories:

Vlasic, B., and N. Bunkley, “Decaying Reminders of Another Era,” The New York Times (Large Print Weekly), Sep. 20-26, 2010.

For more about preservation organizations:

The National Trust for Historic Preservation. http://www.PreservationNation.org

The Society for Industrial Archeology. www.sia-web.org

Preservation League of New York State. www.preservenys.org

The Preservationist. Published semiannually by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. www.nysparks.com

The historic-preservation movement in the United States gained impetus following the unpopular demolition of the iconic Charles McKim-designed Pennsylvania Station in 1966. For more on this:

Diehl, L. B., The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station, Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Moore, P., The Destruction of Penn Station, Distributed Art Publishers, 2000.

Donald Christiansen is the former editor and publisher of IEEE Spectrum and an independent publishing consultant. He is a Fellow of the IEEE. He can be reached at donchristiansen@ieee.org.