Kurtoons Online

For those who came in late, or just don’t remember because it’s been so long, Wardenclyffe was the location of a project Nikola Tesla started trying to broadcast electrical power. It was mentioned way back in Chapter 25 and again when we met Frank in Chapter 35.

Once again, I am fudging the dates of things. In our timeline, Tesla began work building his tower in Wardenclyffe in 1901 with financial backing from J. P. Morgan. His idea was to out-do Marconi’s wireless telegraphy with a system that used the earth to conduct electricity. As the project progressed, Tesla revised his plans making it bigger and better, but Morgan was unwilling to fund the expansion, and a stock market panic further ate into the project’s funds. Tesla tried to find alternate sources of money, but a series of misfortunes, including a possible nervous breakdown, doomed the project.

In Hannibal’s timeline, I’m assuming that Tesla was more successful financially and was able to get backing to start a company of his own, but that other projects distracted him from his dream of turning the whole planet into a battery. He never completely abandoned it, though.

In doing some research while writing the above, I also discovered that I had been working under some false assumptions in this chapter.  Tesla’s Wardenclyffe project was not about “Free Broadcast Power”, but rather transmitting power which could be accessed at any point on Earth and that he had plans on how to monetize the system.  He just needed to build it first.  But that would have wrecked Frank’s motivation for plotting against him, and spoiled Ginger’s joke.