World’s geeks go weak at the knees as Elon Musk donates $1m to The Oatmeal’s Tesla museum

If you cast your minds back a couple of years, you might recall that The Oatmeal, the popular cartoon site run by Matthew Inman, was running a crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising funds to save a historic landmark used by history’s greatest geek Nikola Tesla.

Wardencliffe Tower — built in Long Island, New York — was intended an early wireless transmission tower designed by Tesla and intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony, broadcasting, and to demonstrate the transmission of power without interconnecting wires.

As you might also remember, the crowdfunding campaign succeeded but it was only enough to buy the property and money still needed to be raised to actually build a museum on the property.

Enter Elon Musk.

In a recent review for the Tesla Model S, Inamn implored the electric car company’s founder to help fund the museum, even bringing in William H Terbo — Tesla’s oldest living relative — to strengthen his case.

And now, it looks like Musk has come to the party. In a new post on The Oatmeal, Inman says that the Tesla and Space X founder has agreed to donate US$1-million to the building of the museum.

In addition, Musk promised that he will build a Tesla Supercharger station in the museum parking lot so that the cars bearing the name of the scientist can visit it without any fear of running out of juice on the way back.

The news, auspiciously, came on Tesla’s 158th birthday.