The author was (literally) smarter than Einstein. But it was all by intuition not mathematical formalism.
Yes, a very sad story, very sad.
He had the patents for the first radio, but Marconi stole them. He had the patents and royalties for AC current, but gave them away. J. P. Morgan reneged on promises, and of course Edison screwed him over from the start.
In short, he died penniless in a cheap hotel.
Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration - Thomas Edison.
His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor’s instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle. - the current author