Science Locales Long Island, Brookhaven Laboratory, Tesla, and Radio History

In keeping with the new tradition of putting something pretty up here at least once a week, here are scenes located near the Shelter Island area on Long Island. Looking back over these pictures it occurred to me, the Shelter Island Quantum Mechanics Conference movie could be turned into a science of Long Island mini-series. In addition to the famous conference, Tesla's last lab is on the island, the site of the first transatlantic transmission is there, Marconi's original radio shack is ironically just a few short miles from Tesla's lab and the old RCA transmit and receive antenna farm locations are there as well. Oh yeah, and Brookhaven is there as well.

As I mentioned before, we hung out on Long Island, fairly close to Shelter Island, at Brookhaven National Laboratory doing research for two years. When we headed out to Long Island from New Mexico, I had no idea just how much historic science had taken place in the area. OK, first, a map to keep everything in perspective location-wise.

View TeslaTwain in a larger map

Of course, we knew about BNL, but I didn't know how pretty it was or that it was also a kind of wildlife preserve and that it played host to wild turkeys and geese every year. Notice we're safe drivers even while photographing wildlife :)

The discovery I was most impressed with was that we were living a few miles from Tesla's last laboratory, Wardenclyffe.

Soon after finding out about Tesla's lab, we got involved in the effort to save it. The group in charge has made huge strides towards doing just that, including involving +Matthew Inman in their cause. In the course of working with the Tesla Science Center[1], we found out that Tesla used to live at the New Yorker and got a guided tour of the sub-basements still complete with the electrical generating equipment they had during Tesla's stay. The hotel's engineer likes to think this is where Tesla spent much of his time.

Getting back to Long Island, it's gorgeous outside most of the time in a wet sort of way!

I later found out that these concrete and iron structures were to keep enemy aircraft from landing on the beach during World War II.

References:

1. Tesla Science Center
http://www.teslasciencecenter.org/

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