Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil

Of course, since he was born into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and studied in Graz, we might as well let the Austrians take credit, as the Austrians really need it (what's Austria's greatest accomplishment? convincing the world that Mozart is Austrian, and Hitler is German!)

But really, he did his best work as an American, so USA! USA! USA! :)

"Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire near the town of Gospić, in the territory of modern-day Croatia. His baptismal certificate reports that he was born on 28 June (N.S. 10 July) 1856 to father Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church.[12] His mother was Đuka Tesla, née Mandić, whose father was also a Serbian Orthodox priest."

It doesn't get any more Serbian.

Don't be so sure.

During the recent war they burned his memorial house and destroyed the monument in front of it. They also demolished his monument in the nearby town of Gospic at the beginning of the recent war and it appears they don't want it back: http://bit.ly/JnSQkg

2) In Serbia you don't have to feel indebted when someone offers you a drink. I believe this is true for many "old-school" cultures. I realize it might seem intimidating or aggressive but don't fear. Just have a drink ;)

3) Nikola Tesla was Serbian. And yes he was born in Croatia (there are lots of us)... but I have a feeling your host would've been more offended had you replied "Who?". Either way you made it out of there in one piece didn't you?

The confusion came about for two reasons. 1. that Krajina became part of Croatia (that part of Yugoslavia) and 2. the old unifying Yugoslav government claimed Tesla as one of their own, and they did what they could to rid of ethnic divides so referred to everybody as 'Yugoslav' (or 'Yugoslav from Croatia' etc.).

This gets even uglier with the recent war where nationalists from all sides attempted to claim historic figures and celebrities as their own in an effort of ethnic superiority propaganda. (The funniest example of this was the President of Croatia leading an archeological dig in a part of Croatia where he discovered that the Croatian nation pre-dated the Roman empire - it got really messy). This really muddied the waters.

Most people in the region are pretty chilled out now, though - as a Serbian I have no problem with Croatians referring to Tesla as 'one of us', just as I often refer to Croatian football players as 'one of mine' (being from the Balkans). There is a lot more that unites us as a people than divides us.

Edison, as a larger than life figure in the past 100 years seems to be untouchable. The Oatmeal comic was a rush because I was thinking "you can't say those things about Edison".

Of course, the real story is more complex than either hagiography.

Yeah, but isn't what The Oatmeal did just as bad as what grade school teachers do? If we go from "Edison is the most awesome inventor in the history of America" to "Edison is the biggest asshat in the history of America," we've gained absolutely no honesty in our discourse. The Forbes article was nuanced and factually correct, which is what we should be striving for.

Well, consider this. Let's suppose Tesla was actually the most awesome inventor, and Edison was second. Which do you want to show children? The one who was a genius, or the one who made no bones about the fact that hard work was the main ingredient to his success?

In other words, do we teach children that being smart is important, or do we teach them that hard work is important?

In the beginning DC dominated because of technical reasons. Efficient AC motors and generators were just getting invented eand transformers weren't that good.

And for various reasons some applications still use DC motors - for example only in robotics, servomotors; but consider that in the last 20 years do things like air-conditioners and elevators start to use AC motors (because of the efficiency made possible with solid-state inverters).

In other words, the presence of an extreme conflict of interest causes me to take anything the person says with a large grain of salt, but does not, to me, cast doubt on a person's good faith.

More generally, as a matter of etiquette, it seems to me that (a heuristic that encourages people not to assume good faith in response to evidence that does not include any implication of unethical behavior) is unwise. For example, the evidence here is that, "he would have been a Carnegie or a Rockefeller had DC been adopted," which is not, in itself, unethical. Therefore one should not, on the basis of this evidence alone, assume good faith any less than one did prior to this evidence.

The Oatmeal always run with something already popular to the crowd that frequent reddit and the likes.

PS: If you still think his idea of charging the ionosphere could work, watch this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhZvyGtMrk But, you can see people walking around the field prevents the bulbs from lighting up. Just, ignore the audio on this as they don't know what their talking about.

Reading the article, I would bet the comic under the second paragraph of "Tesla Wasn’t The First Person To Discover X-Rays" was what started the article. The comic is out-and-out false.

As to being a comic so why should he care. I would point the the Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Both are listed as comedies, but a lot of people report what they say as fact. The Oatmeal got a lot of play for the Game of Thrones comic so people use it as a source also.

To give a bit of political example. If I were to ask for a description of President Ford one of the first words to come to mind during the 70's would have been "clumsy" or "physically inept". This is the result of comedy sketches on SNL and not reality. Reality is he slipped on camera. He was probably one of the most physically gifted of the modern Presidents as he played center and linebacker in college. He was a star athlete.

Letting popular untruths sit, no matter the medium, tends to make them "common knowledge".

Because the comic is spreading non-sense as it is clearly evidenced in the article?

I don't believe Edison could spell Tesla on his best day

This is exactly the attitude I believe the article is opposed to, that I personally find naive as well - mythologizing people and single contributions and making science/engineering look like a game of who is more awesome. This is a conception that some popular science writing installs in many people and that could easily be cured by tracking the long history of many things we consider simple, in which at least tens of people contributed ideas that made the final invention tick. The article sums it up very well:

First of all, I’d contend that nearly every invention in the engineering or sciences is an improvement on what has come before – such as Tesla’s improvements to alternating current. That’s what innovation is. It’s a social process that occurs in a social context.

The Bengali polymath J. C. Bose demonstrated the practical uses of radiowaves - but he didn't patent it.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagadish_Chandra_Bose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_radio

Tesla/Jobs are driven by a desire to change the world. Edison/Gates by the desire to own the world. You can see the difference in all the decisions Apple made in its history, often making choices of design purity over market dominance. It ultimately dominated by sticking to its design principles, showing that sometimes the long-view wins.

I think Tesla would have thrived if he could have gone to Jobs instead of Edison for support.

I don't know enough about it to have a position on who's more correct, but the fact that it's a webcomic, and therefor somehow "unserious," doesn't imply that the author doesn't believe what he's saying. If the point is being missed, if it's not that Tesla is an overlooked genius who deserved, and deserves, more admiration, what is the point, exactly?

In fact there is no Steve Jobs vs Dennis Ritchie.Tesla vs Edison however was very real.

Good for him: It's physically impossible.

I've also heard that Morgan realized all the copper mines and refineries he had stakes in would lose value.

I'm sure there are others reasons floating around out there too, they're a dime a dozen. Frankly I doubt Morgan ever explained his real reasoning to any journalists or authors, and these stories got narrated in somewhere along the way.