Nobody care about my jolt,and survived.Reaching to move a cloth
covered transformer wire. A tube rectifier in an old radio.

 

Tesla was a one of the most brilliant engineers in history. The ironic thing is he never fully profited from all his work and died with a lot of debt. He contributed so much to to the practical science of electricity yet the average person has never heard his name. Edison is the one who gets all the recognition, but he wasn't half the engineer Tesla was.

Tesla received royalties from his work. He wasn't destitute....and he didn't die from 'natural causes' either. knowhatimsayin?

 

Tesla received royalties from his work.

He didn't receive nearly enough royalties--Many of his ideas were stolen and passed off by someone else (i.e. Marconi) as their own. Tesla most definitely was not given the recognition that he deserved.

 

The court ruled in Telsa favor,the court ruled against Marconi
years later. The same thing happened in the case about F.M..
R.C.A. could not make a deal and they had A.M. for T.V. sound.
They did a end around,they went to congress and had the law
changed to modified the curcuits just enough to get the F.M., Its
amazing how well they were using the courts that early with
good results,I guess that where lobbying started and never
changed. We should search the attorneys names for that era
and see what names come up and find what street they had
in Washington and New York.The congress that was in power
and what party.History is repeating,creed will be with us forever.

 

It's typical of societies to completely fail to recognise they are in the presence of a great mind until long after they have gone. Especially if the great mind is humble, thoughtful and more interested in growth than in shameless self promotion.

 

Tesla did work with/for Edison for a while, and IMO Edison was the dumber of the two. Tesla often found himself fixing Edison's mistakes, like broken DC dynamos and very poor wiring (which Edison sometimes installed himself) that frequently caused house fires and electrocutions.
Edison was very prideful man, and he would not let Tesla really work with him. In my opinion, if Tesla was forced to work with Edison, it would be like forcing a college student to write a joint paper with a chimpanzee.
Ok, that may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my point

I fully agree. I should have said "If Tesla and Edison had successfully worked together"...

Edison got most of his ideas by theft or hiring the person with the idea to keep from paying for it, then taking all the credit for them. When he tried this with Tesla, it turned into the storm we generally know about as "History". I don't have much love for Edison, I guess the current analog would be Microsoft/Bill Gates for intellectual hijacking/buying out competition, or suing them into non-existence.

 

Reminds me of a gaming thing we have in gaming. The major player is IGT, they control about 80% of the floor in most casinos. They will either sue you, or buy you depending on what you have that will help them.

How much more would Tesla have contributed to the world had it not allowed Edison to screw him over. Most get the recognition they deserve long after their deaths. Like Jim Thorpe, who should have really gotten Athlete of the Century not Tiger Woods.

 

There are good books on Tesla. If you really want to get an idea of his achievements read one.

 

There are good books on Tesla. If you really want to get an idea of his achievements read one.

For a real blast, check out his book, "My Inventions"

 

For a real blast, check out his book, "My Inventions"

http://www.mcnabb.com/music/tesla/bio.pdf

 

http://www.mcnabb.com/music/tesla/bio.pdf

And this one actually has illustrations

http://books.google.com/books?id=fX...&resnum=1&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

I fully agree. I should have said "If Tesla and Edison had successfully worked together"...

Edison got most of his ideas by theft or hiring the person with the idea to keep from paying for it, then taking all the credit for them. When he tried this with Tesla, it turned into the storm we generally know about as "History". I don't have much love for Edison, I guess the current analog would be Microsoft/Bill Gates for intellectual hijacking/buying out competition, or suing them into non-existence.

Edison hire Tesla and promised him a huge reward if he could improve the efficiency of his DC motor by 10percent.

Tesla improved them by 25% and asked for his money.
Edison refused to pay,saying that Tesla had no sense of American humor,and that he was joking about the bonus.
Tesla quit in anger and was hired by G Westinghouse,who provided a lab and all materials for Tesla to develop his AC motor. Westinghouse promised Tesla 1 penny per horsepower for every AC motor he made.
The depression hit,and Westinghouse went to Tesla begging him to tear up the contract, telling him that he would go bankrupt if he didn't.
Being gullible,and a good person,he tore up the contract.
Morse was a visitor to Tesla's lab,where Tesla had schematics and formulas for a wireless radio transmitter on a chalk board.
Morse took this information and got a patent, and got credit for the first wireless transmission to Europe.
The patent was taken away from Morse,and given to Tesla,posthumously.
At the time of Morse's theft,Tesla was working on wireless power transmission,but lost funding.
When he died, all of his records were seized by the government, and classified as top secret and all of the towers were scrapped.
No one will ever know what other devices he had in his files or details about wireless power transmission, or a "Death Ray" that could destroy a target from hundreds of mils away.
Some recent research is being done on charging vehicles while they are in motion,which could be a rediscovery of Tesla's wireless power technology.
The world owes a great debt to Tesla.
Nearly everything using A/C today is due to his genius.
He is an unsung hero in my book.

 

Nine years - eight months - - - would seem like a good sleep for this thread. The oldest I've ever seen revived. But I did find it an interesting read.

My vote would be for Tesla. But nobody's counting.

 

Tesla has an SI unit of measurement named after him. He's been recognized for his engineering (his scientific ideas have not passed the test of time) accomplishments lavishly.

 

Edison, like Steve Jobs, were shrewd business people, who BTW happened to be in a technology-related business.

They were shameless self-promoters, but also were bright enough to surround themselves with extremely talented people.

They also rode their people very hard, but to their credit, they also worked beyond-extremely-hard. When they focused on an issue, they were driven by the devil.

Both experienced spectacular successes and tremendous failures. And were kicked out from the companies they had created.

 

I see Edison and Jobs as two characters that cannot be compared. Edison was an innovator and inventor, but he was no businessman and was driven by his ego so much that his arrogance made him fail to see the folly of promoting DC current for the electricity distribution network. What's more, I believe that he did indeed see the enormous drawbacks that it had, but since he had already bet his name behind it, he was too obstinate to admit his mistake and backtrack.

Jobs, on the other hand, was not only an innovator but also an excellent businessman. He had a vision of minimalist simplicity that drove all of the products he created and promoted. It was not his ego that drove him (although he did have a generous amount of it), but rather the vision of a company focused on world betterment products.

 

Edison was an innovator and inventor

Maybe an innovator, but an inventor? He took other peoples ideas and made his people find a way to make them work, he himself did very little but crack a whip. Then he took the others work and made money and patents from it.

 

Maybe an innovator, but an inventor? He took other peoples ideas and made his people find a way to make them work, he himself did very little but crack a whip. Then he took the others work and made money and patents from it.

He did invent one or two things ... but yes, he tried to be a businessman by renting other people's creativity (nothing wrong with that). But it does rub me the wrong way that he took advantage of others not as well placed as he was, and he never gave them credit for it.

On a side note, there's an urban legend that says that Mr Edison's mother was either Mexican or of Mexican ancestry. The name Alba is very common down here. It was brought by early Spaniards migrating into the country.

 

Edison sounds like another leader I can think of. Taking credit for others accomplishments.

Elon Musk?
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/elon-musk-coronavirus-pandemic-tweets/611887/

 

@nsaspook; Not quite. But lets not play guessing games. We all have our opinions. And opinions are like arse holes. Everybody has one. Some stink.