Little story:<p>So I walk into a bar in Belgrade, Serbia. Turns out to be a private party, lot's of drinking and merry-ment but my girl and I felt a bit out of place. Just before we turned for the door a man pulled me by the shoulder to the bar and started asking what we were doing there, real intimidating-like.<p>He said we could have drinks on him but I felt a little like we didn't want to be indebted to this guy. On the other hand I felt I had no choice.<p>He had asked me what I'd studied and I mentioned physics. He got the bar-tenders attention, got me a drink, and asked me "so... you say you know something about physics... tell me: 'what nationality was Nikola Tesla?'"<p>I responded "Croatian" of course. Suddenly the faces of the man, the bartender, and (so it seemed) the rest of the bar too went very gloomy, eyes piercing into me like shots of raiki (the liquor they drink).<p>I learned that night that the Serbs claim Tesla was a Serbian who lived in Croatia. The Croatians and Serbs (who hate each other very much) both claim him as their national heros.<p>Lessons:<p>- if you're in Serbia, Tesla was a Serbian (and a god)<p>- if you're in Croatia, Tesla was a Croatian (and a god)<p>- if you're anywhere else, well I guess now I know he wasn't god
I liked the play-by-play refutation of the comic, he really researched the whole thing (so I didn't have to). I learned some new things!<p>I enjoyed the tone of the comic, however, even if it was inaccurate or disputable or at times just plain wrong. For me, Edison is one of those figures, like Christopher Columbus, or George Washington, that you learn about every single year growing up, since kindergarten, and whose myth is so grand and ubiquitous that every teacher I had from elementary school up until junior year physics said the exact same thing about him. Tesla was just another of a dozen names in the textbook.<p>So in a way I understand the sentiment. You grow up being told that this is guy, Edison, is the most awesome inventor in the history of America. And because of that I always felt a certain distrust about his accomplishments (even if I'm wrong), because so much of what my teachers taught me growing up turned out to be wrong.
There is a great biography of Edison which was very eye opening to me - I did not realize how many patents he held or how many other inventions and innovations on other work he had made beyond the longer burning commercial lightbulb. <a href="http://refer.ly/a09m" rel="nofollow">http://refer.ly/a09m</a><p>Just in case you don't read the book, there is a story where they first got the lightbulb to burn for a long time... I think it was 30-something hours. And they just stayed awake sitting there in amazement watching it burn until it burned out. I feel like that awe is so in the spirit of today's modern startups when we first launch or discover something. When they "launched" the new lightbulb they strung them up all over the yard of Edison's house, and people came driving up at night for the event and it was like magic. I would give anything to have seen that.<p>I think its really cool that he improved on other people's inventions, helping make things like the telegraph and typewriter into practical, affordable, useful tools that lots of people could buy. That might not be as grand as making brand new things, but it has a huge impact on human life. He also created the phonograph, the first idea of "records" (wax scrolls) and did a ton of work on early motion pictures. The list just goes on and on, learn about him, you'll be surprised to find that what they taught you in school was just surface-level and there is really so much more there.
> Is it possible – just possible – that Edison honestly believed that AC was dangerous and honestly did not think it should be use?<p>This strikes me as pretty naive. Edison had the patents that effectively controlled the market for DC electricity. He would have been a Carnegie or a Rockefeller had DC been adopted. He had such an extreme conflict of interest that it's unreasonable to assume good faith.
>>What’s more, Edison was haunted by Dally’s death to the end of his days. It agonized him. While Dally was alive and suffering, Edison kept him on the payroll and took care of all of his expenses until the day he died. In the early 20th Century, let me assure you that keeping employees on the payroll who couldn’t work was not a common practice.
<<<p>I read in one of his biographies that in the latter years he kept a lot of employees, against his son's wishes, who were basically doing nothing for sentimental reasons because they had been with him in the early days.
Oatmeal's tactic to go viral was simple: create a good looking comic and express an extreme view, one that moves you psychologically and you think, "wow is that true? I didn't know that and I bet none of my friends do". Well played Oatmeal.
I can't understand why the writer is reacting so much to the comic. Sure, it uses blunt language, but is the writer related to Edison distantly or his childhood hero or something?<p>Unlimited wireless electricity, among other Tesla's inventions are still mind boggling 100 years later. He drove a car with an electric engine, powered wirelessly, over 100 years ago.*<p>What have we done since?<p>From a more day to day perspective:<p>- Marconi's patents for inventing radio were overturned in Tesla's prior invention of radio.<p>- Inventor of Lasers<p>- Remote Control<p>I think we've gotten over the light bulb. Still, the disposable lightbulb sells and sells, a testament to Edison's business mind.<p>Based on the number, and staggering impact of each of Tesla's inventions, I don't believe Edison could spell Tesla on his best day; especially where it camee to innovation and creating things that hadn't existed before, let alone imagined.<p>The main question about Edison vs Tesla is, why no one knows who Tesla is even though he was at least an equal to Edison, if not arguably more.<p>* There's some argument about this occurring but there are also media reports that exist.
Edison always reminds me of Steve Jobs.<p>EDIT:
1)Mocking existing/others' technologies/inventions just to claim theirs is better, even while its not. 2)Marketing skills 3)Focused on sales.<p>Sorry for upsetting you, fanboys ;)
I long waited for something like that. Good summary in the forbes article and even better links to other authors.<p>The hive minds opinions (reddit <i>cough</i>) regarding Edison/Tesla always reminded me a bit on the absurd "Moon landing history theme ride" in Futurama or the UN-Dinosaur-War-against-Nazis in "Idiocracy".
I'm glad the writer enjoyed taking the piss out of The Oatmeal, but serious articles responding to a mostly-tongue-in-cheek webcomic seem to have missed the point.<p>I wonder if he'll write an article next about how working from home doesn't actually destroy our abilities of communication and continence.
Interesting, if only because I've always been fascinated by the time period and events surrounding the adoption of electricity.<p>A really interesting book about Edison and Tesla is "Empires of Light" by Jill Jones.
Tesla vs Edison is my favorite Drunk History: <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history-vol-6-w-john-c-reilly-crispin-glover" rel="nofollow">http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ef668caf14/drunk-history-vo...</a><p>Duncan Trussell clearly disagrees with the OP. In other words, the OP is anti-oatmeal and anti-booze. What is wrong with him?
<i>"This was the fate of a lot of brilliant researchers in the early days of radiation. Like Marie and Pierre Curie, for example."</i><p>That's funny. I didn't know Pierre had any long-term, serious problems with radiation. I thought he got run over before the symptoms started showing up.
When I was a lazy, precocious child, I had my mother and experimental scientist father each repeat Thomas Edison's "My genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration", <i>over and over again</i>. If other geeks are like me, they probably grew up hating Edison's guts. It might not be true but I can understand the impulse to come to the conclusion that Edison was evil and the inspired Tesla was good.<p>Some math geeok have enjoyed calling Évariste Galois a "hero of the revolution", bringing mathematics to the people. It's a nice myth but like the myth of Tesla, probably not quite the full story.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89variste_Galois</a>
I'm glad a publication like Forbes is picking up on such internet phenomenon and setting things straight. We need this more than ever.<p>This is not much different than Steve Jobs vs. Dennis Ritchie.
The Oatmeal wrote a response to the Forbes article here --> <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response" rel="nofollow">http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response</a>
Maybe this awesome illustration by Travis Pitts gives a good picture of how people see Tesla <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/zom-bot/7227505456/sizes/o/in/photostream/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/zom-bot/7227505456/sizes/o/in/p...</a> :)
Best Tesla reading I've found is Mark Seifer's book "Wizard, the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla". The audio book is excellent as well. Gives great insight into Tesla's personality and many events in history and the people around him.
if it was just a grudge match between tesla and edison i could respect edison a little more. it is possible to get so obsessed that he would have a blind spot and go out of his way to engage a competitor. think steve jobs promising to go nuclear on android. but edison went out of his way to profit from the work of Georges Méliès.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Distribution" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Distributio...</a>
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Tesla was far smarter than Edison was. Tesla's biggest mistake was allowing himself to work for JP Morgan. Morgan didn't want that wireless junk ("Where do you put the meter?") and was happy to let Tesla work himself into obscurity while the metered, wired system we know today was put into place.<p>Tesla became aware of the position he had placed himself in and his work became focused on leaving his research to us, the future. I hope we listen because he knew what he was doing.
The author doesn't take the genius and import of the AC motor seriously, therefore I can't take him seriously. There are relatively few authentic geniuses in history; people who provide crucial fundamental insight that others just can't. Issac Newton was one. Euler was one. Tesla was one.
It sounds like someone should re-read the history books that were not written by Edison. No Tesla wasn't a god, but the fact that most of Tesla's inventions still power your life in a lot of aspects should tell you how awesome the man is.<p>Judge a man by his work, not by his rhetoric