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To: Tublecane

Uh, Tesla??

As far as sheer total benefit to humanity, Tesla was out in front of ALL your examples. The harnessing of alternating current was one of THE major PRACTICAL advances made by humanity.


16 posted on 01/18/2013 5:01:42 AM PST by Wonder Warthog
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To: Wonder Warthog

You have a point, though I tend to give more credit to Faraday and Maxwell for discovering electromagnetism. We hype the early industrial revolution and the later information revolution, but electric power and the internal combustion engine may have determined the way we live as much as any other single technological breakthrough. Aside from writing, I might guess.

I don’t know who gets credit for the latter, in particular. Lenoir, Daimler, Diesel, etc.


18 posted on 01/18/2013 5:13:43 AM PST by Tublecane
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To: Wonder Warthog

Oh, also, I might remind you that at issue is not what person made the largest practical technological advances since Darwin. It is who is the most important scientist since Darwin. I don’t think anything Tesla invented, or all his inventions put together, can stand for significance in our understanding of the natural world, alongside the establishment of relativity, quantum theory, the standard model of particle physics, etc.

Maybe it seems to abstract, too eggheady to you, comparing it to how our tva are lit up, or why our computers run, practically speaking. But let’s pause and inquire just how detached is theoretical physics. Would there be AC without Faraday and Maxwell? And not in the stupid way the author of the article thinks there would be no famous Einstein without Curie. Take Einstein. Some nut who scribbled stuff only ivory tower nerds cared about, something to do with an equivalence between mass and energy. Cut to 40 years later and ask the Japanese about its practical significance.


19 posted on 01/18/2013 5:34:50 AM PST by Tublecane
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