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 Picture industries into what they were - but he still invented the v1, and sometimes v2 version of these technologies.
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.
He was a somewhat distant father, until his children were old enough to join him in the business - he was a good man - but generally contemptuous with convention, and conventional thinking (often seen in people regarded as 'visionaries') - in business dealings, he certainly was an asshole, but thats not unheard of in his time.
Tesla by modern standards was.. somewhat crazy - out of the two I consider Edison to have a greater vision, and to be a far more transformative figure - and honestly someone who left a larger lasting impact on the world.
I've been to Edisons home, and his final lab in West Orange NJ - I think very very highly of the man - but I also think he was an asshole.
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.
A lot of people are okay with testing things like drugs on animals. You can at least imagine a scenario where Edison was driven by concern for public welfare, thinking the higher voltage used by Tesla was going to cause disasters and trying to make people aware of the danger.
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.
I've seen this thinking before: So the moral question is, 'if we can give animals (1) artificial/unnatural, but (2) reasonably enjoyable, and (3) relatively pain free,' for (4) some benefit to the machine of society, is that just? Interestingly, many modern liberal thinkers say no, but when this same moral questioning is applied to humans, you run into what the anti-liberal terrorist Ted Kraczynski was arguing about.
In other words, as of now you and I both live and probably work in society, sacrificing our natural freedom and state in nature to enjoy comforts and safety of our technological civilization; and yes, to die in a hospital rather than in nature.
Anyways I'm not suggesting any answers, just juxtaposing the same ideas applied unequally, which suggests an implicit collective answer of 'yes'to your question; or at least a tolerance to that answer.
And it's unfortunately partially unworldly thinking about these social contracts anyways: in the real world, farms are still grossly mistreating animals, as does civilization to people, where outcomes stem too often from money and violence; not always from social contracts / commitments to morals--which brings us full circle to the life of Tesla and his struggles with bullying.
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.
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.
I don't need to meet him - his contemporaries speak enough about his manner, and way of doing business for me to feel okay making the pronouncement - bear in mind, many of my closest friends are an asshole much the way, edison, gates and jobs are/were - being an asshole does not make you a bad person - it just means you may have little patience for convention.
Keep in mind that Edison was constantly being sued by his rivals (Edison nearly always won). Any successful businessman is going to have legions of detractors.
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.
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? You don't need compulsory programs: abortion clinics are very efficient and completely voluntary.
Ill respond by simply pointing out that eugenics doesn’t work to remove “dysgenic” traits Nazi Germany eliminated 70-100% of their schizophrenics and just a generation or two later Germany has levels of schizophrenic patients same as everyone else. It even had higher than normal levels after the eradication. Killing off people with shitty genetic traits simply doesn’t work to reduce it in your population.
Surely there must be some traits we could improve by selective breeding. Strength, intelligence, better digestion. Applying that study to anything other than schizophrenia is a faulty generalization. My post was not meant to promote any violent resolution. Your comment was fascinating and I'll take a deeper look at that paper.
Why not really? It doesn’t affect anyone currently alive and only helps promote better genes, which is what the human race is doing now anyway, but very inefficiently.
I’d like to see it happen. The only thing that gives me pause is what if we accidentally make humans with critical genetic flaws we did not see coming, or low genetic diversity.
Eugenics doesn’t inherently lead to human rights violations.
You can define better genes objectively by looking at genes of people that live the longest and with the least health issues. Natural selection is poor at selecting for traits that lead to longevity.
Because longevity isn't essential to our survival. You're suggesting that diverting energy away from other traits in favour of longevity would have no negative impact.
IMO there are all sorts of possible negative side effects that might emerge. Like a longer life making us more cautious, individualistic, and short sighted (not personally but on a species scale). You could argue this is already happening due to environmental comforts and medical advances. In fact dramatically tweaking a trait like longevity for a new generation would likely have a massive impact on their personality and culture... talk about a generation gap.
> Eugenics doesn’t inherently lead to human rights violations
Right, but it does in practice.
What if we found that Japanese people lived the longest? Would we only allow Japanese to breed? Or bias towards them? How would you qualify how “Japanese” someone’s genes are?
Can you not see how this leads to a toxic culture of racism?
Theoretically, maybe it doesn't but practically, it has terrible consequences, especially in countries where human rights aren't a thing anyway, it will lead to dystopian concepts. I would suggest to read up on eugenics a bitZ
Your comment doesn't contain an argument, and it is even attacking a strawman as the GP did explicitly call out non-compulsory as an aspect of it. But I will bite anyway.
Taken GP's reasoning to the extreme, what do you think if the state prohibit someone from having children if (hypothetically) it is known at 100% certainty that their offsprings will inherit a horrible genetic diseases that causes pain and suffering their whole lives, and their life expectancy is 15 years?
Bit too big brother for me... and very short sighted. Diversity in both genetics and environment have been essential to survival and evolution. Haven't we already proven that monoculture is a bad thing in the long term? I'm reminded of the bananas from the 60s...
We're not nearly competent enough yet to play god at this level. It's scary knowing there are egos chomping at the bit to do it.
To be fair to Tesla, and to history, this was pretty normal at the time. The Supreme Court even endorsed it: in fact, they didn't even just endorse it, it was appatently so important that they ruled in 1927 in Buck vs Bell that sterilization of the unfit did not violated due process (what!?).[1]
It took generations of education, whatever you want to call it, to change our collective minds.
It's ironic this comment is attempting to eliminate comparisons between the two, when it was actually fashionable to let Tesla's story languish in obscurity for nearly 70 years while beautifying Edison towards some sainthood.
As a kid really into science I was a little appaled when I learned how little Tesla was included in curriculum, despite his enormous impact on today's age.
The recent attention on Tesla barely existed 10-12 years ago. I remember reading random websites wondering why he wasn't better known.
Beginning to give him his due has nothing to do with Edison for me, only that Tesla easily has a place right next to Edison and anyone else, which he was denied at the cost of folks like Edison.
In the eyes of some, part of the smell test Edison didn't pass was Tesla appeared genuinely an order of magnitude higher in some cases in innovating entirely new areas and received very little long term recognition for it. Tesla's didn't just make AC, he invented radio, xrays, transmitting electricity wirelessly, and using the ionosphere in new ways. It was straight up mad science perhaps a little like Einstein or Da Vinci.
Edison was a great business man. He did appear to take a prolific spitball approach to innovation in the eyes of some.
Edisons treatment of his contemporaries, can't be explained away when it wasn't held against him ultimately. It's fine to defend one's self, if one is that talented.. why proactively trash others? It didn't seem the same about Tesla, maybe because he wasn't American?
I don't know how Edison's top 10 inventions might compare to Tesla's top 10 innovations.
This is about giving Tesla his due for a society that was focused instead on a cult of personality towards others instead of recognizing things on their merit.
Interesting titbit (from In The Plex IIRC), one of the big motivators for Page and Brin to found Google, after failing to sell PageRank to existing search engines, was the story of Tesla. Page apparently read about him as a teen and was haunted by how much more Tesla could have achieved if he had been more business savvy.
Fair enough. One can respect both of them without denigrating either. I'm something of a Tesla fan-boy, but I have no problem saying that Edison was a great inventor who did a lot to make the world a better place.
I wonder if it's similar to the popular perception of Jobs and Woz. Steve Jobs is often regarded (for the right reasons) as an arrogant, unforgiving CEO who excelled by exploiting the works of a benign genius. The truth is, however exceptional Woz was, there are far more brilliant hackers than people who transform industries.
If Woz wouldn't have happeded to Steve, he would have been nothing. But if Steve wouldn't have happened to Woz, he still would have had a great career at HP.
I was thinking about the same thing reading the comments here. Both may have innovated in their own ways but the overlap between their worlds may have helped propel certain innovations forward.
It's also popular to say Edison did not invent the light bulb. It is correct that he was not the first to invent a glowing wire. Edison's key innovation was the thin, high resistance filament which used high voltage and low current. That design was said to be impossible by all the experts of the time, but it is what made the light bulb practical and useful.
Edison's light bulb was attacked on all fronts in patent court for years, and he beat them all.
He invented the light bulb.
Ironically for Elon Musk, early electric cars mostly used Edison batteries.
"Swan's carbon rod lamp and carbon filament lamp, while functional, were still relatively impractical due to low resistance (needing very expensive thick copper wiring) and short running life."
It also mentions the high current.
As I remarked, Edison's breakthrough was the thin-filament high voltage, low current lamp, which made it practical.
Don't forget the audio recording industry, electric car batteries, mining advancements, the carbon telephone microphone, innumerable major advances in telegraphy, the electric power utility, etc.
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.