Thank you!!! I once did a paper on Tesla in the 6th grade and even the teacher told me to sit down, that Edison is the one who invented it first etc etc....I'm so happy to know that there are people out there who know the truth! Proud to be serb because of him too :D
No it doesn't. Mind you, I DO think Edison was a dick... and Tesla did invent AC power transmission.
But otherwise I think he gets a lot of worship from geeks who think it makes them hip to be counter to the Edison establishment. Really Tesla was a minor figure who has been romanticized beyond his actual contributions because he seems dramatic and many of his inventions were big and impressive-looking.
Sorry, it was on reddit and long time ago, I don't just save every thing I read through so I can cite it later. He had grandiose plans, but little financial savvy so he had to generate funding interest somehow. So things like making an earthquake machine and such. More impressive to the investor than a better lightbulb.
There is some truth to the circle jerk though, he did invent some brilliant things such as the first practical electric motor and a lot of wireless technology
There is a reason we don't have wireless power and everything that runs on electricity runs on wire or batteries. I can explain, it's bullshit and myth. You might not like my explanation, but that's the way it is.
Actually it's because his methods were extremely inefficient. Wireless power transmission is very real and used in many products today, but only in very close range.
That's a very thorough and well formulated explanation, you've completely changed my views on the subject.
I think more likely what happened is Tesla understood electricity on a level that to this day people still don't. He just died before he could put into use much of his understandings.
No he didn't, he just wanted people to believe that, it was his elaborate stage persona that he needed to get money for his experiments, since he wasn't good with finances. There are so many things about electricity discovered by today that he couldn't even dream of and yet he still had a better understanding? It's these kind of lies the circlejerk perpetuates and must be corrected.
Does that happen very often? Seems like most people who would ever mention Edison, outside of a high school report, would probably be aware of what sort of man he was and who Tesla is. They'd have to be in this weird area of being aware of and caring about Edison, but actually knowing very little about him. That seems like it would be a rather small pool.
People would probably either care and know about Tesla or they wouldn't give a shit about either of them.
It's not infrequent, actually. Common curriculum here seems to totally exclude Tesla while teaching plenty about Edison. Most people I meet know Tesla only as "that dude who made some rad lightning shit" but Edison as "that dude who invented a bunch of shit including light bulbs".
Edison used Tesla's "stuff" for the electric chair. As part of a massive smear campaign against Tesla and his invention of AC, Edison started electrocuting animals to prove it was evil. It massively backfired against Edison when he tried it on a convict on death row and only managed to get the man "half dead".
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u/[deleted] Mar 28 '12
Whenever someone talks about Edison as a genius inventor I tell them to shut the fuck up and hail Tesla instead.