People still think Marconi invented radio, for example.
Absolutely. I read what is considered to be the best biography on Tesla a few months ago (written in 1982, by Margaret Cheney (no relation as far as I know). I already knew more about Tesla than 95% of Americans. It was both a great and depressing book. In fact, many of Tesla's attributes I can see within myself. Tesla liked money, but wasn't obsessed with it. It wasn't his driving force every day. I am the same way. It's one of the reasons why I joined the military.
I only know of one soldier who knows who Tesla is, and it's only through a movie. Personally, I think that's sad. First of all, Tesla was arguably the greatest inventor in modern times. But more than that, not many people like to read anymore. I'm playfully ridiculed occasionally because I love to do research (on basically anything and everything).
I read, voraciously, the same biography. Cheney is an amazing biographer. The level of research she did for that book is astounding.
The afterward of that book was interesting too, admissions from the Feds that there were concentric levels of security around Tesla’s work.
I’m an electrical engineer. It’s astounding what is NOT being done in the area of high frequency power, given the eye-witnessed evidence of what Tesla was able to do with it.
It’s 2007, and it was only a week ago that somebody finally announced a method for transmitting power wirelessly, something Tesla was doing in 1918 in Denver. There’s a scene from The Prestige that alludes to it - where Tesla and the magician are standing in a field of light bulbs, and the field lights up. Tesla walks over to a bulb, picks it out of the ground like a carrot, and it goes out. Minute he grips the base of the bulb, the bulb lights up again.
As you know, what the Feds didn’t confiscate got burned up in the lab fire he had around 1904 or thereabouts. Had Tesla been as assiduous about filing patents as Edison was, the world would be a far different place.