Bonneville America Forums Forums Off Topic Discussion Forums Lounge The Greatest Geek who ever lived!!!

????

Harley Davidson could do with a guy like Tesla,

Amazingly inaccurate. Tesla was a great inventor who did not use the patent process to protect his inventions, but the world did not conspire against him. Nor was Edison the satin described in this cartoon. Keep in mind it is called a cartoon because accuracy is not paramount in the writing process.

Edison was a hard nosed businessman. And his ego was way larger than his ability to "invent" things, most of which were "appropriated" from his scientists working in his lab. Like most people, Edison had good and bad points to his personality. But I'll bet he would make a lousy dinner guest unless you were very rich and influential.

His name is on the inventions that ultimately created my industry, sadly I know little more than RCA & GE about him. I'll bet he suffered that odd lack of social graces that many other 'genius' types have been noted as lacking.

Isaac Newton - "Invented" calculus, then kept it a secret for 23 years.

They say the line between madness and genius can run mighty thin...

Interesting book
http://www.amazon.com/A-Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171

Well, first gentlemen, I believe the people we're talkin' about here are NOT "Geeks", but are actually "Nerds"...using the lastest definition of these two terms, of course...AND dimissing at this time that whole old carny sideshow definition of "Geeks" too, of course.

And so, allow me to add another name here...a gentleman of whom without HIS invention of the movable type printing press, the whole Age of Enlightenment might have been pushed back centuries...one Johannes Gutenberg!

For it could be argued that if NOT for THIS "nerd's" invention, the idea of The Masses having information at their disposal might've never caught on.

One of the stories told about Edison which does make me chuckle is; His huge lab works, composed of many buidings, unexepectedly caught fire in the middle of the night. He lived just a short distance from the lab complex with his wife and children. After the fire was reported, by then already totally out of control, he told his wife, "Hurry and wake the children so they can watch this. It's the biggest fire they'll ever see!"

the difference is this, Tesla was a Scientist, Edison at best was an engineer and at worst was a business man.
Scientist discover, Engineers apply what scientist discover.

There is just too much revisionist scientific history to comment on in that link. We are to believe at one point Tesla didn't understand patents, then we are told everyone used his patented inventions in their "discoveries". We are to believe that the science of electronics started when Tesla entered the field, that's not how science works. Even Tesla worked on theories and patents of others, both past and present in his time.

Yes, Tesla died, heavily in debt, in a two room hotel apartment subsisting on milk and crackers ( and vegetables). He was a confirmed vegan most of his life. He had many offers to be a millionaire and declined, most attribute that to his pride, paranoia or OCD.

His so called towers weren't torn down because of the threat of "free" electricity. They were scraped by his landlord, who he had signed over the rights to, for real estate development.

Many Tesla supporters never mention his support of eugenics, although many elite progressives in the first half of the 20th century did.

Many repeat Teslas' story of Edison's promise of some huge amount of money, the truth is that Edison was most likely joking if he said it at all, considering the amount was most likely more that the net worth of the Edison labs at the time. Most likely it was a dispute over the amount of a raise Edison offered.

I think both men should be celebrated. Edison for his inventions and entrepreneurship, he's probably more Henry Ford than a great scientist. Tesla for his inventions, physics and engineering, unlike Edison he had formal education, although he dropped out of two universities.

neither of them have sh¡t on da Vinci, that man was genius at it's purest form