Slashdot Mirror
Disentangling Facts From Fantasy In the World of Edison and Tesla
dsinc writes "Forbes' Alex Knapp writes about the Tesla idolatry and confusing his genius for godhood: 'Tesla wasn't an ignored god-hero. Thomas Edison wasn't the devil. They were both brilliant, strong-willed men who helped build our modern world. They both did great things and awful things. They were both brilliantly right about some things and just as brilliantly wrong about others. They had foibles, quirks, passions, misunderstandings and moments of wonder.'"
What the article does not note is that Tesla didn't really claim to have invented alternating current, but he did claim (probably validly) to having invented the a working, practical AC induction motor (while a student in Europe), which made AC practical for industry. He also claimed to have invented a practical AC generator (at least he had a patent on it that he sold to Westinghouse). Additionally he did invent and patent a working system for radio and wireless signal transmission that was essentially copied by Marconi later. Add to that the Tesla coil and the working florescent light bulb, and you have a pretty impressive set of inventions. Compared to Edison (who I admire very much also) Tesla with just a couple of assistants revolutionized a great deal of the world. Edison's real claim to fame, on the other hand, was in inventing the modern invention research team system. His actual inventions were relatively few, but with teams of some dozens of inventors he spewed out patents that made him much richer and successful than Tesla (though not as rich as he wanted - he was essentially defeated in business by J.P. Morgan). Tesla unfortunately subsided into partial insanity after his attempt at power transmission in the teens, and almost every invention after that was essentially in his head.
Edison himself wasn't a great inventor. He was a great businessman and head-of-R&D. Pioneer of inventing as a business - not as just a couple of lone experts, but a whole department of underlings systematically tackling potentially profitable issues with pooled resources. He dabbled, yes, but most of the actual inventing was done by his employees.
Um... that's not different enough.
They teach us about Thomas Edison in schools. Everyone thinks he's great. Therefore, there must be another way.
To be hip, we talk about Tesla instead. You probably haven't heard of him.
Futurist Traditionalism
It's a lot easier to be socialist when your defense and medical R&D are covered by other countries.
I wish the US would see this and stop doing so for the rest of the world. It's really annoying as a US citizen to be spending 4 times (as a percentage of GDP) on our military as Germany (I think we can trust them now). Yet we pretty much mandate it to be so.
Additionally we pay more for the same medicine because our government refuses to take a stand on this issue, while other governments do. I'd like to see a law that no medicine or medical devices can be sold in the US for over the average price in the rest of the G8.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
And AC was originally practical exactly BECAUSE Tessla managed to invent three-phase... single-phase generators would probably need to be custom designed as I'm not aware of anybody building them en-masse for the non-existent market they may fill...
Three-phase generators/motors are fundamental to what made the modern electrical world possible in the first place. Technically a single-phase motor cannot even start without an outside push...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Bell invented the telephone.
Bullshit. Philipp Reis also invented a telephone and gave the first public demonstraton in 1854 - more than two decades before Alexander Graham Bell. Maybe we all should read Mark Twain's words at the start of TFA again?
It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing—and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite — that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.
Mark Twain
And whoever uses "X invented Y" again, shall be forever banned from ever partaking in a discussion about inventions again.
“If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.” Nikola Tesla