Lindy Filmmakers' Donation Pushes Tesla Fundraiser to Goal

Thanks to a donation from a pair of alumni and indie filmmakers, Joseph Sikorski and Michael Calomino, the viral fundraiser on indiegogo.com to raise enough to preserve Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe lab in Shoreham surpassed its goal of $850,000 last Tuesday.

The indie filmmakers of Fragments from Olympus - The Vision of Nikola Tesla made a $33,333 donation, allowing the week-and-half-old fundraiser to reach its goal.

The fundraiser was started by Matthew Inman, a web comic creator better known as The Oatmeal, to attempt to save Wardenclyffe.

His effort soon went , much to the delight of Tesla and Wardenclyffe supporters, including , president of the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe non-profit who's been working for years to spread the word about the importance of preserving this part of history.

Sikorski and Calomino understand that importance, to put a spotlight on the inventor's life and work. The film has already begun production, and is now certain scenes on the Wardenclyffe property in Shoreham.

To make the donation that put the fundraiser over the top, Sikorski used money from his filmʼs budget, and raised some additional last-minute funds.

Now with the $850,000 goal reached, matching funds for the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe will be released, allowing the non-profit group led by Alcorn to purchase the property for a new museum.

“Itʼs a sequence of priorities," Sikorski said in a release. "The first thing was to support all of the efforts to preserve this valuable piece of history. Itʼs all part of the vindication of Tesla, who sacrificed so much and died penniless. Telling his story is the next part.”

There are still 33 days left in the fundraiser, and as of Monday more than $1.1 has now been raised.

Alcorn recently told Patch the non-profit plans to wait out the duration of the fundraiser to see how much could be raised to help cover future costs of the creation of the museum.

"Not only do we need the matching funds, but there'll be certainly many other costs in this project," Alcorn said. "Plus we want to make the site safe and secure, and begin the clean-up of the vegetation and the buildings as soon as we could, but it's going to take a lot of preparation to do that, and obviously that means money. We’ll see how high we can go with this."