Posted on 01/07/2023 7:10:02 AM PST by EEGator
80 years ago today, the greatest electrical engineer ever passed away. Feel free to share any nerd comments, or arguments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla
Edison was a conniving asshole.
He’s behind the use of the electric chair.
He also had stray dogs rounded up and publicly electrocuted to show the danger of AC.
He electrocuted an elephant as well.
He had patents filed in his name that were the fruits of men working for him.
It’s hard to think that Tesla lived until the mid 40’s.
Seems further away, right?
I like how they modeled him for the evil genius in numerous cartoons.
I like dogs better than humans…
Either I misread what you wrote or someone mis-understands. From only a few days ago in a Story channel episode the whole of the Morgan-Edison and Westinghouse-Tesla affair was played out refreshing my memory of the late 1890s chain of events. It is very complicated but in at least part of it:
Morgan was irritated that Edison had been so arrogant as to consider Tesla a non-competitor but that was clearly not true. Morgan told Edison to bury Tesla’s AC and he could not. His efforts to discredit AC all backfired including the electric chair and killing an elephant. Morgan bought Edison out and sent him packing.
Westinghouse and Tesla had beat Morgan in notoriety for having very successfully electrified the Chicago Exposition at a cost of $250,000 or so.
This gave Westinghouse a leg up for the Niagara power plant and he won the contract
Realizing that Tesla had the right answer Morgan made up his mind to gain access to Tesla’s work by any means necessary.
Westinghouse was going broke, Morgan had beat him to the ground with threatened law suits about patent infringement amongst other things. Westinghouse could not afford to defend himself and so began to negotiate with the devil, Morgan.
Morgan was willing to refinance Westinghouse by assuming Tesla’s patents but the terms of Tesla’s patent agreements were too rich and the refinance package to Westinghouse would not be funded without patent term concessions
In the story, Tesla tore up the patent agreements believing that they were so essential and that he was key to their implementation that he would be rewarded in time.
Morgan took the patents and used them in the foundation of creating General Electric.
By all accounts George Westinghouse was a very good man and though Westinghouse survived and did OK, it was GE and Morgan that became the power by the threat of legal action against Westinghouse under what seem to have been very made up charges. None of these people, including Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie were anything short of brutally ruthless even to the point of buying McKinley the presidency.
To this day it is the reason I have never thought well of GE even though I have done projects with them.
I’m sure both sides would want to claim a genius.
Agreed.
A great mind. But a quirky fellow
I read Man out of Time by Margaret Cheney when I was a kid.
True. Less goofy than Howard Hughes though...
“ He had patents filed in his name that were the fruits of men working for him.”
That is standard practice.
Yes, but it’s BS to say he invented them.
Lots of things are standard practice that shouldn’t be.
True words
Would have liked to have been listening to the conversations between Tesla and Mark Twain.
Now it’s done by assigning the patent.
Inventor gets a bonus.
Company gets royalties.
It all depends on contracts inventors working under.
That would have been awesome.
I work in electrical distribution design/engineering.
I’m not certain how it applies to myself currently.
I’ll look into it.
Thanks for the clarification.
This was prompted by a demand by J.P. Morgan as a condition of badly needed financing for Westinghouse. He willingly did this as a sacrifice on behalf of civilization, and not on an irrational whim.
“I agree. Maxwell >> Tesla. I think Tesla himself would agree.”
He might have, but we’ll never know.
Knowledge is additive, and thus the “Standing on the shoulders of giants”.
I found it odd that I wasn’t taught of Tesla previous to university classes.
Either way, both are so far above me I can’t argue the true basis for who’s “better” having thought about it.
Universities usually give a better agreement in terms of inventor receiving royalties.
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