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The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 116 posts

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#11

These days it's fashionable to venerate Tesla and denigrate Edison. Tesla's contributions to AC motors and power are great and beyond dispute. The others, not so much. For those who like to denigrate Edison by comparison, I challenge to read "Edison" by Josephson and maintain that opinion. I.e. Tesla transformed AC power, Edison transformed multiple foundational industries.

Edison was an asshole - but he was a brilliant polymath asshole - I can draw a line, an almost direct line between the methods of Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison.

Edison can be an asshole, without denigrating any of his brilliance, or suppressing any of Teslas.

It's interesting though - Edison was often the disruptor of industries - but he was not the man who turned Electrical Power, the Phonograph, or the Motion Picture industries into what they were - but he still invented the v1, and sometimes v2 version of these technologies.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#12
post #7

I still think my favorite development in the Tesla saga was when a cartoonist (The Oatmeal) got the Internet and then Elon Musk to help him save Wardenclyff from the dozers.

I live only a few miles from the site and drive past it regularly. It's been interesting to watch the progress from an abandoned and overgrown property entirely unrecognizable as the site of anything of interest morphing into a recognition of Tesla. It's not there yet, but it's a work n progress and definitely easy to see the progress.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#15

I have a genuine question about Tesla. I've read some of his speeches/presentations, and he has credited his interest in inductors and electrical fields to, among other things, papers or texts written by William Crookes. I can't find which texts, though. Does anyone know? See, the thing about Crookes is, he seems to have veered towards paranormal stuff towards the end of his career and a lot of the literature surroun…

See "William Crookes and the Commercialisation of Science" by William H. Brock

Crooks is an interesting character. He was one of the few who witnessed the "lost" experiments of David Huges so he had a preview of what was coming in radio technology.

see page 263 at goo.gl/J1fiSA

and https://www.le.ac.uk/ebulletin-archive/ebulletin/features/20...

and https://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/10/22...

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#16
Something most authors don’t mention, but I’ve read in the book by Andy Kessler: (1):

Apparently Tesla not only invented the first electronical wirelessly controlled battery powered device, he also invented the first electronic ligical circuit then, the author claimed, all in year 1899.

1) “How We Got Here: A Slightly Irreverent History of Technology and Markets”

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#19
post #8

I have a genuine question about Tesla. I've read some of his speeches/presentations, and he has credited his interest in inductors and electrical fields to, among other things, papers or texts written by William Crookes. I can't find which texts, though. Does anyone know? See, the thing about Crookes is, he seems to have veered towards paranormal stuff towards the end of his career and a lot of the literature surroun…

Now I know that there needs to be a survival horror game where Nikola Tesla fights eldritch abominations in Gilded Age New York.

Using mathematics... See the Laundry series by Charles Stross.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#20

These days it's fashionable to venerate Tesla and denigrate Edison. Tesla's contributions to AC motors and power are great and beyond dispute. The others, not so much. For those who like to denigrate Edison by comparison, I challenge to read "Edison" by Josephson and maintain that opinion. I.e. Tesla transformed AC power, Edison transformed multiple foundational industries.

funfact: though Elon Musk has a company named after Tesla, in an interview, he has said Edison is the better role model.

e.g. It's not that Edison invented a light bulb - he created the first power grid. It's like inventing an internet client, and the internet.

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