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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

"up until recently he's been an unsung hero in history books"

Tesla must be the most sung unsung hero in history. I hear more about him than Edison nowadays, by quite a bit.

I think part of that is the narrative that his wilder inventions were "suppressed". Things like wireless power transmission, which as designed by Tesla, (1) is ridiculously inefficient and (2) would cause significant collateral damage. The narrative of the competing current systems (AC versus DC) was inflated into some kind of larger ideological conflict between Edison and Tesla themselves, and we like to root for the underdog (even though Tesla won that debate). I suspect that the biggest part of his modern popularity is just due to retro aesthetics you see in video games like BioShock and Fallout, or appearances in media such as The Prestige.

He deserves museums, but not hero worhsip.

When you combine David Bowie with anything it adopts a certain cachet that cuts across many different groups. Tesla's some kind of hacker hipster, the patron saint of sorts of many in this generation.

Some of his theories fit your description but his overall theories on wireless technologies (not just wireless power transmission) are legitimate.

I'm not sure who "deserves" hero worship but if anyone did, Tesla does.

> but not hero worhsip

Does anyone?

Giving Tesla credit as a brilliant and prolific inventor -- and in particular, giving him credit for electricity and related electrical technology -- is a new meme.

Twenty years ago it was all about Edison in science textbooks and in popular science. Tesla was a footnote.

I never heard of Tesla growing up, which is either a sign that my school gave a poor education or a sign that we've recently gone back and looked at this part of our history again. (Or a sign that I was a lazy kid who slept in science class.)

I swear anymore he is more sung than many prototypical sung heros.

I mean, I've hardly heard anything about Martin Luther King Jr. in the last year, but I've probably seen something on Tesla (The Oppressed Forgotten Genius) every week.

Maybe it is because you frequent tech forums and sites over sites covering human right and humanitarian issues. MLK has a museum, national historic site and a national holiday, and many many roads. Well deservedly.

Nowadays. I was almost completely unaware of him in science and history education. Tesla coil was all he got credit for, if that. Maybe history/science books have changed since the 90s.

I think he gets a lot of "street cred" and hoopla among hackers and techies and the like, but you'll never learn about him in elementary school. Every single second grader in the country knows who Edison is. The rest of America has no idea who Tesla is.

I did.

yeh, they even named a car company after him.

Yeah, I clearly remember being taught about him in science class, certainly more than they taught us about Edison.

I just mentioned this article to a workmate and he didn't even know who Tesla was =(

Hence the "up until recently".

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