edison or tesla

[samina]

i was roaming at different websites to learn history of ac generators. i am surprised to see that some website made edison a superhero while others mentioned him as a mafia don!!!! I am not an American so i don't know the real story- which one should i believe?? I think this childish battle between edision and tesla fan are making a bad impression of ur country,,

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

i was roaming at different websites to learn history of ac generators. i am surprised to see that some website made edison a superhero while others mentioned him as a mafia don!!!! I am not an American so i don't know the real story- which one should i believe?? I think this childish battle between edision and tesla fan are making a bad impression of ur country,,

I thought it was Edison and Westinghouse? - nothing to do with Tesla.

I don't see as it gives a 'bad impression' in any way, history is what it is - 'sugar coating ' it doesn't help anything.

 

[Reloadron]

It depends on who you ask. Personally I saw Tesla and his thinking far superiour to that of Edison's. Gee, also one merit of my country is free speach and free thinking. That gives me the right to make the statement I just made.

Just My Opinion and Take..............
Ron

 

[samina]

thanks ron
i am working with history of power generation which is a part of my thesis. so the actual history is important for me .
free thinking and speech is important . But does making fun of respective persons should be couraged??Their contribution can not be ignored. To make one superhero other cannot be considered as mafia don... it is my opinion.. ofcourse it is not necessary that my opinion should be correct.
thanks again.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

It depends on who you ask. Personally I saw Tesla and his thinking far superiour to that of Edison's.

I think Tesla is greatly over-rated, he did some great work - but he did some absolute crap as well

Unfortunately many people seem to think of him as some omnipotent 'god like' figure, and believe everything he did and said.

For those of us who watch Sanctury (got to love Amanda Tapping), we all know he was really a vampire anyway!

 

[Reloadron]

Yeah, now that you mention it he does have that vampire likeness about him.

I think my main dislike of Edison was his electrocution of an elephant to make a point. Therefore everytime it's a pick one and only one I generally go the Tesla route.

Thinking about it Nigel. You have a point with the vampire thing.

Ron

 

[crutschow]

The battle was between DC power transmission, which was developed and favored by Edison, and AC power transmission, which was designed by Tesla and developed by Westinghouse. (Of course, we know who won.) Here is a reasonably balanced account of that.

My view is that Edison was a genius inventor and promoter, who succeeded with hard work and common-sense intelligence, but obviously was wrong about power transmission. Tesla had a genius intellectual mind who developed some remarkable ideas and machines. But I think the saying "there is a fine line between genius and insanity" may apply to Tesla. Some of the things he proposed were clearly not practical, and it's doubtful he did all the things he said he did (since there's no evidence to support them).

 

[carbonzit]

This little dust-up between the two "great men" seems to have a parallel to the battles between Sarnoff and Armstrong over the development of FM transmission (not to mention corporate malfeasance on the part of Sarnoff's RCA).

And yes, Tesla was some kind of genius; he was also something of a nutcase, of the Wilhelm Reich variety ("orgone energy" and other bamboozlements).

 

[DerStrom8]

This reminds me of a high school paper I wrote

In my opinion, Edison was a real jerk who often took advantage of people. Yeah, he was smart and could be considered a genius, but he was still an idiot. One of the facts I heard about him that caused me to really dislike him happened during the "Battle of the Currents". As Edison was fighting for the use of DC power, and Tesla was fighting for the use of AC power (which Tesla alone discovered the means to generate), Edison found it necessary to prove how "dangerous" AC electricity was. Several demonstrations took place in public, one of which was what reloadron mentioned, and that was the killing of an elephant (video here). He used far too many volts than would be used in homes, which made this demonstration very unrealistic. However, he also hired several neighborhood children to steal small cats and dogs out of their owners' yards, and Edison would use them for his demonstrations as well, killing them with AC electricity. He was a very cruel man and is not worthy of the credit he has been given.
Tesla fought back, but used himself as the subject of his demonstrations. He would demonstrate the effect of AC on his own body. If you ask me, Tesla was one of the greatest scientists the world has ever seen, and should be given much more credit.
That's my opinion, anyway.
Der Strom

 

[RCinFLA]

I agree Edison was an a--hole. Tesla originally worked for Edison until Edison reniged on a deal with Tesla.

Edison was a businessman (and ruthless). Tesla was not. Edison was an empirical experimenter. Tesla was an engineer. Edison did not have the education or technical knowledge to understand A.C. Edison did not like engineers, believing all they teach you in college is why things cannot be done. It was reported that during job interviews with prospective hires, Edison would take the candidate out to lunch. If the interviewee put salt or pepper on their food before tasting it they were automatically rejected, because they were making an unbased assumption.

Tesla died broke and alone.

Another classic rivalry was Deforest versus Armstrong over invention of FM radio. In this case, Deforest was the Edison and Armstrong was the Tesla. Deforest really did not have the foggiest idea on how FM techically worked. (Sarnoff was a manager/promoter for RCA, not technical, as businessman he was just interested in not having to pay any royalty for using FM technology, trying to keep a monopoly for RCA. Sarnoff saw the potential of radio as communications broadcast to the masses where previous thought for radio was point to point. Sarnoff promoted AM radio broadcast. FM broadcast became a threat to Sarnoff and RCA monopoly.)

A more recent good story is how Bill Gates sold IBM a per unit royalty based PC computer operating system software he did not have.

 

[trash]

Everybody has an opinion and some is based on reasonable evidence. A lot these days tends to be from the lunatic fringe who view Tesla as an electrical messiah and the government or Edison etc held him down.

My personal opinion is that both men had their merits and genius and their faults.
Edison appears to have achieved his results as he would say, "99% perspiration and 1% inspiration"
While Tesla appears to had a more "thinking outside of the box" approach.

In both cases they had success and failure. And not because of some sinister external influence.
One just has too look at some of their failed patents to understand at times they did not have any actual results.

One thing might be said for Edison that he was probably a little more cunning and the better or more ruthless business man.
If an opportunity presented itself, he would take it and not let anything get in his way.
While it might be considered amoral to behave like this, it is he that we associate with inventing the lightbulb rather than those who's shoulders he stood upon.

His behaviour with regards to AC vs DC is the most highlighted example.

In general treat each case fresh and consider that history is sometimes re-written to suit a point of view.

 

[cr0sh]

One thing might be said for Edison that he was probably a little more cunning and the better or more ruthless business man.
If an opportunity presented itself, he would take it and not let anything get in his way.

Cunning and ruthless; certainly he was one helluva inventive businessman - the "Bill Gates" of his day in that regard.

But his record as a good father and husband - not so much, unfortunately...

 

[DerStrom8]

Edison not only took advantage of opportunities--He took advantage of the people who presented them. He was the better businessman because he cared mainly about money. Tesla cared more about the people. During the time that Tesla worked for Edison, he often found himself fixing Edison's mistakes. If you ask me, the one who cares about people more than money is the better of the two.

 

[shortbus=]

Edison not only took advantage of opportunities--He took advantage of the people who presented them. He was the better businessman because he cared mainly about money. Tesla cared more about the people. During the time that Tesla worked for Edison, he often found himself fixing Edison's mistakes. If you ask me, the one who cares about people more than money is the better of the two.

So... Edison was a Republican and Tesla was a Democrat?

 

[Reloadron]

So... Edison was a Republican and Tesla was a Democrat?

Don't even go there,

That was funny.

Ron

 

[DerStrom8]

So... Edison was a Republican and Tesla was a Democrat?

LOL!
I don't normally say "lol" in forum posts, but that is hilarious!

 

[Ratchit]

Don't forget the German immigrant Charles Steinmetz, the "Wizard of Schenectady", who made significant contributions to electrical applications. He was a good solid engineer and mathematician, and not prone to scientific delusions. My high school teacher said that General Electric considered him so valuable that they give him a blank check for a salary. He just filled in what he needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Proteus_Steinmetz

Ratch

 

[QuietMan]

A lot of work credited to Edison was done by other people. One of of Edison's biggest inventions was the research laboratory. Guess who got the full credit for any work that came out of it? Edison did do some original work, but he was very into self promotion and had no qualms about claiming or minimizing other peoples work to build himself up.

Between the two, I suspect Tesla did a lot more original work and science. Tesla was not just an inventor, he was a true scientist, discovering new concepts as well as creating new devices. In my mind there is no doubt which was the greater person, both in ethics and in intelligence.

 

[Brabdon73]

Nikola Tesla was as far as i am concerend the father to the birth of electricity as we know ithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

 

[squishy36]

Your job as a historian is to sort through the inevitable bias, ego, and ignorance in the material you track down. The challenge, of course, is to sort though all the crap and try to arrive at something near the truth. This means finding the verifiable facts. It's hard because you're researching something 100 years old. It's also hard because you won't have access to lots of details buried in libraries that don't put this information on the web (I'd conservatively estimate that the web has at best a few percent of the information needed to do a thorough job). Thus, you have to realize your report will be biased up front too, at least from the paucity of verifiable information.

Remember that human beings are emotional beings and cannot help injecting their feelings, biases, and opinions into things. At least you recognize the flaws of a lot of material on the web; hopefully, your report will be more factual, objective, and even-tempered.