Best regards,
Theo Paijmans
By Scott Thomsen, The Gazette, Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jan. 23--The International Tesla Society, an eclectic scientific group
that
gave straight-laced Colorado Springs a bit of a weird side, is headed
for
liquidation in bankruptcy court later this month.
In its Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing Dec. 9, the group listed $71,452 in
debts and no assets. The case is to be heard in a meeting of creditors
Jan.
29 at the Colorado Springs Federal Building and Courthouse, 212 N.
Wahsatch
Ave.
It appears to bring an end to the avant-garde organization that formed
in
1984 to operate a museum on Bijou Street and to sponsor an annual
symposium
of idealistic and eccentric inventors to honor Nikola Tesla, a gifted
inventor whose career also included some rather wacky turns.
Tesla's innovations in alternating current changed the world, but
whose
other concepts -- such as how to transmit electricity without wires --
never made it into mainstream science. A brilliant inventor, he spent
several months experimenting in Colorado Springs in 1899.
Hundreds of inventors, tinkerers and conspiracy theorists came to the
Tesla
festival each year hoping to follow in his innovative footsteps. They
sought to create cars that run on water alone, anti-gravity devices,
perpetual motion machines and medical cures.
"There were a lot of flakes all the time, but also a lot of mainstream
scientists," said Roy Stewart, the owner of Tesseract Design and
Instrument
in Boulder and a former society member.
Stewart is now concerned the society's museum collection may get lost
in
the bankruptcy shuffle.
The rooms in the green office building on Bijou Street once held notes
on
Tesla's experiments, articles about his research, signed photos and
letters. The museum also included reproductions of the inventor's
creations, such as a working Tesla coil -- a high voltage transformer
Tesla
used to create energy fields.
Today the rooms are empty.
Colorado Springs attorney Robert Mason, who represents the Tesla
Society,
said the owner of the office building locked the museum's doors last
month.
Workers packed and removed everything inside, according to people who
work
in the nearby offices. What remains is a weathered brown metal sign
with
chipped white letters.
Mason said the collection is actually owned by many different people
who
loaned items to the museum. He said he is unsure where the collection
is
being kept.
"I can't tell you where it is," Mason said. "It hasn't been sold."
Stewart has asked the city of Colorado Springs to acquire and preserve
the
collection.
"My only concern is keeping the information intact," he said. "It
might be
too late. I might be closing the barn door."
Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum Director Bill Holmes said he heard of
the
Tesla Society's bankruptcy this week and wants to learn more about the
collection.
"It's something we should look into," Holmes said. "They may have
great
stuff, maybe not."
Mason said he did not know what led the Tesla Society into debt.
J.W. McGinnis, president of the group, did not return phone calls from
The
Gazette.
Many of the 54 organizations the Tesla Society owes money to are
publishing
and broadcast companies. The largest debts are $13,680 to Protocol
Services
of Colorado Springs and $8,850 to WWCR, an international religious and
talk radio station, broadcasting on AM and shortwave radio from
Nashville,
Tenn.
The Tesla Society operated a one-hour weekly radio program but hadn't
paid
its bills on time in more than a year, WWCR General Manager George
McClintock said. "(The debt problem) was a gradual buildup over
several
years," he said.
"They would never get all the way caught up" in paying bills,
McClintock
said. "It's unfortunate that a nonprofit organization would allow
itself to
get into that situation."
Roy Thompson, president of Protocol Services, said the 3,300-member
Tesla
society hired his company to run its 1997 symposium at the Sheraton
Hotel.
"They didn't pay us a penny."
Thompson said the group made at least $50,000 on the symposium but
appeared
to be juggling money constantly to pay back debts.
Joan Grant, a former Tesla official, said she has not worked with the
group
for four years but was shocked to learn of its demise.
"I'm real sorry to see this," she said. "I loved it for bringing
awareness
of Tesla and what he had done."