
Edison: Never waste time inventing things that people would not want to buy - skbohra123
http://www.thomasedison.com/biography.html
======
RandomJoeHacker
It is interesting how, any mention of Edison on the internet quickly turns
away from his achievements to an impromptu discussion of how he was a dick and
tried to fuck Tesla over. Every single comment in this thread is about Tesla.
This amuses me greatly.

~~~
pinchyfingers
Yes, it sucks that Edison screwed over Tesla, but how about the fact that he
had serious BALLS?

And Steve Jobs wasn't a dick at all? C'mon.

Edison was a great entrepreneur. Despite his personal failings, he had the
vision and determination to bring a lot of great things into the world.

~~~
RandomJoeHacker
Yes I see the correlation, come to think of it Steve did kind of screw Woz
over that breakout game.

Anyway maybe it doesn't suck at all, I believe Tesla needed to learn the
customs of the American entrepreneurship if he was about to start his business
there. And, um... I am afraid he didn't. :(

------
aortega
Edison was exactly the kind of person that I do not want to become.

~~~
RandomJoeHacker
He is the exact opposite of what defines a "hacker".

~~~
aortega
Unfortunately, many modern hackers (myself included heh) are adopting Edison's
method: Build before learn, try everything, bruteforce a solution, skip math.
Hackerspaces are particulary guilty of this non-optimal behaviour. The
opposite of this is a man of science.

------
twentysix
Relevant : <http://flyingmoose.org/truthfic/tesla.htm>

The other side of the coin. Edison had a large vested interest in the DC power
plants which he had been building.Therefore he was opposed to introducing AC
power plants and transmission because it would not make him money.

~~~
foenix
Edison was the father of FUD: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)>

He electrocuted an elephant (Topsy) in New York just to prove how "unsafe" AC
design was.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Honestly? Your reply is what's FUD. I clicked on that link ready to be
outraged, until I saw this:

 _Topsy belonged to the Forepaugh Circus and spent the last years of her life
at Coney Island's Luna Park. Because she had killed three men in as many years
(including a severely abusive trainer who attempted to feed her a lit
cigarette),[1] Topsy was deemed a threat to people by her owners and killed by
electrocution on January 4, 1903, at the age of 28.[2] Inventor Thomas Edison
captured the event on film. He would release it later that year under the
title Electrocuting an Elephant._

He didn't electrocute an elephant just to prove the unsafety of AC, he filmed
an electrocution of a previously (even wrongly) condemned elephant. Yes, he
may have been a heartless bastard to take advantage of the death sentence of a
beautiful (innocent?) animal to further his own goals, but it wasn't as
senseless a killing as your reply would suggest, and certainly not him that
did it. He was the guy behind the camera.

------
hicheve
Edison was my hero when I was a kid. I used to believe of Edison as one of the
greatest inventors of all time. As I admired him, I started digging about him.
Slowly I realized Edison was one of the greediest, heartless, criminal of all
time. He not only bought and stole inventions of others, he cashed on killing
of people. Most people know how he screwed Tesla. What many people don't know
about Edison is that his employees created electric chair which is considered
as device of cruel punishment. So, he made money by selling this device of
painful death. He even took opportunity to film the electrocution and killing
of Topsy (elephant) to demonstrate superiority of his DC system over Tesla's
AC.

Edison is an example of what one should never become in life.

------
philip1209
Edison: Never invent anything if you can fuck over Tesla to get it for free.

------
Jun8
If you think that the Edison-Tesla fuckover was epic, read aboit how Sarnoff
screwed up and stole Farnsworth invention, i.e. the TV (incidentially, part of
that story explains why there's no channel 1 on TVs in the US).

------
ktizo
Edison: Never waste time inventing things that can be stolen on the way to the
patent office.

~~~
ngokevin
Tesla: do as much cool stuff as you can, no matter what kinds of trolls get in
your way.

~~~
aortega
The Tesla vs Edison personality duel is equivalent to Knowledge vs Brute-
force, Science vs Business, etc. At the end, Edison may be more known for the
general population, but the standard unit of magnetism is named after Tesla.

~~~
deepinit_arek
What Edison >>actually invented<< ( not steal or buy )?

~~~
ktizo
Well, according to The Simpsons, it was a chair with an extra set of hinged
legs to stop you falling over backwards when you swung on it...

