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The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#61

Post by adventured »

Aloha wrote: post #11
WalterBright wrote: post #5

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 Pictur…

The historical record indicates Edison treated people dramatically better than Jobs did. The factual record to support that is overwhelming and covered in about a dozen books. Read about the enjoyment his fellow inventors had in working with him in the early busy days. Read about the praise he received from his fellow workers before he became famous. He was not known as an asshole.

The only thing Edison appears to have acted like an asshole in regards to, is some of his business dealings. Some of which is more attributable to the people that were actually operating the numerous business ventures (which he was not in most of the cases).

The case for Edison being like Jobs in terms of the asshole quality, is barely existent. It's mostly a modern myth popularized to attack Edison for Tesla's benefit.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#62

Post by rxhernandez »

WalterBright wrote: post #41
ronald_raygun wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the AC/DC wars Edison fought with Tesla, he'd electrocute animals to show how dangerous AC was. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/thomas-edison-histo...

That's more of an indication of how our modern sensibilities have changed. When I was a kid I was taken to the local zoo, where lions were displayed in small, bare concrete cages. I felt sorry for them, and did not enjoy the trip. But that doesn't mean the zookeepers were bad people, people just thought differently about animals in those days.

You're right, it really is too difficult to live and let live. It's really too difficult to think, is everyone benefitting all that much from the pain I'm inflecting on whatever I'm hurting. Please, these are adults that knew what they were doing and that the pain they were causing didn't satisfy some need, but some want. If you don't want to go down in history as an asshole, don't be a dick when you or your tribe are only benefitting beyond basic needs and necessities.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#63

Post by pvaldes »

andai wrote: post #45
pvaldes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And electrocution is seen currently as the method of choice in all modern slaughterhouses of the planet to kill humanely animals for meat, instantly and saving a lot of this nervous excitation called pain. Edison has saved more animal pain than the whole Peta team probably.

How would you respond if I electrocuted you, saying my intention was to save you from pain?

I would be fuming if somebody electrocute me, that's for sure; but much better than if they kill me with a rusty axe. That would be very impolite and unforgeivable.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#64

Post by Sone7 »

lanbanger wrote: post #57

Tesla had many great ideas, but was lazy and had a bad habit of disappearing off down on a tangent that his investors had not been told about, and had not agreed to invest in. I recommend this book ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/494.Wizard ) to anyone who wants to know the full story.

Tesla was lazy? Can you call a man lazy, as an extreme example, who slept 16 hours a day and output half of what Tesla did?

Da Vinci did the same shit with tangents/investors, and slept multiple times a day. Was he lazy too?

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#65

Post by pcf »

andai wrote: post #49
lerie82 wrote: post #2

Perhaps one of my favorite people of all time, you can find some decent documentaries on YouTube as well. It's hard to sum him up in an article so if you're interested in any of the things he accomplished, check out some videos and books about him, truly an extraordinary man that had so much taken from him with no credit given.

I recommend his autobiography, My Inventions, it is very excellent. Apart from everything else, the man has a way with words.

A short title, freely available here: * http://www.teslasautobiography.com * https://freeditorial.com/en/books/my-inventions--2

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#66

Post by vinceguidry »

dsego wrote: post #55
andai wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truth can be (often is) politically incorrect.

That doesn't make any sense. Edit: Serious question, is that rhetoric, platitude, bromide, something else?

Truth isn't just fact, it's also narrative. Trying to separate the two is impossible, therefore truth can often be political.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#67

Post by emanreus »

smallstepforman wrote: post #37
joering2 wrote: post #25

My tinfoil hat tells me that either neither Tesla nor Einstein were humans, OR both were in some sort of communication with aliens. I know on its face it sounds like horseshit... but with over 100 billion people ever lived on earth... how come we have so few geniuses that truly push the whole human kind forward 10x faster than all people combined thru a previous ten centuries? Even more - if we assume its just a coin…

There are probably many geniouses that came and went through the ages, the problem is that of “financial stability / partnerships”. If I’m too busy making Widgets for a company in order to feed my family, I dont have any energy left to do Creative stuff. Isaac Newton was wealthy so could devote time to pursue the sciences, the rest of us are preparing TPG reports for the bean counters. The person who can cure cancer…

Do the startup thing. Tesla worked as a ditch digger for $2 a day after his startup went belly up. He was 30, I think. That must have been depressing. A then a year later he confounded another company and developed the AC induction motor.

You might end up as MGTOW because your socialite wife probably won't be on the same page, but hey... No balls, no glory.

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#69

Post by RobertRoberts »

WalterBright wrote: post #39
glossbar wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you meet him? How would you know he was an ahole? Just asking, as I see this far too much. Is Elon an ahole? Is Gates an ahole?

It's usually a mistake to judge people from another time using modern sensibilities. It's like thinking people from the 1800's were all grim because they look grim in photographs. But that was just an artifact of them having to hold still for the long exposure times. I bet those people would think people of our time are horribly ill-mannered and rude.

Slavery

Re: The Extraordinary Life of Nikola Tesla

#70

Post by wellboy »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #47
jeffwass wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those that denigrate Edison in favour of Tesla often ignore or aren’t aware of Tesla’s own dark side. Here’s an article, a few years ago and also from Smithsonian Magazine, telling of some of Tesla’s disturbing opinions. For example, advocating forced eugenics to weed out ‘undesirables’ from the human race. He felt that the forced sterilisation of criminals and mentally ill in Nazi Germany didn’t go far enough. https…

I'll play devil's advocate , since there's more truth to Tesla's words than you're giving him credit for. The comforts of modern society allow the proliferation of dysgenic traits. The system rewards reckless breeding of people who don't have the means to support children. Genetic selection happens whether we talk about it or not. We meddled with better pets, livestock and crops. Why not give improved humans a try? Y…

So you're saying we should give eugenics a try?
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