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This probably isn't news to anyone with any preliminary knowledge of history, but Edison is a major asshat.
Literally everything he did Tesla did a couple dozen times better.
Lets go over this.
1. He promised Tesla a million dollars to fix his machines. Tesla does so because he's actually intelligent unlike Edison. When Tesla asks for the money Edison responds "you don't understand our American humour"
and he never receives the money.
2. Pets start to go missing around Edison's lab. Turns out Edison was paying schoolboys a quarter, to kidnap cats and dogs so he could ELECTRUCUTE THEM to make people scared of Tesla's invention. Yeah he's that big of a dic*bag.
3. He buys all of his inventions and patents making literally none of them.
4. Tesla's plan was to make power free and he had working ideas. The only thing he needed was the cash. Edison wanted to monopolize it. Yeah he's really inferior to Tesla as a person.
5. His best invention was a way to steal credit.
6. Tesla only ran down to the patent office with his best ideas. Edison went with everything his schoolboys found.
7. Google a picture of Tesla. He's 6'6 and absurdly good looking. Then google a picture of Edison. Yeah.......and Tesla was celibate and Edison was whoring. Another thing he was denied from sharing with the world. Ba dum tish.
8. Edison style of electricity was dramatically less efficient and quickly went out of style for Tesla's style of electricity. Tesla never got to see his successes and Edison his failings.
9. The final thing is that he was affluent and Tesla died broke and sad.
The majority of humans are really stupid aren't they?

This was posted a while ago, but this thread seems a good place to re post it:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

So you found the epic rap battle then?

I guess you've never heard of being a cutthroat businessman? Especially back then, competition was nasty. It was how people succeeded. Being an "asshat" would mean looking at historical actions without any real context.

Historical context would only be relevant here if he was judging another time by the morals of the present, and the morals involved were particularly different between the the two periods.

I suspect most people would still have viewed Edison as an asshat back then had they known of the magnitude of his deceits and tomfoolery. The morals between the two periods have changed, but not that substantially that historical context can be pulled.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I guess you've never heard of being a cutthroat businessman? Especially back then, competition was nasty. It was how people succeeded. Being an "asshat" would mean looking at historical actions without any real context.

We can look at the context and still recognize it as assbagery; understanding why he was a douchebag doesn't make him not a douchebag.

Also remember, while Tesla's stuff was innovative, much of it was rather impractical. But lately, Tesla worship has become popular. I would wager the OP has never heard of Edison's competiton with Westinghouse...

Edison was a pioneer. Like many of the pioneers of his time, he borrowed and stole ideas from his competitors, making a more marketable version of what they did. Up until WWI, inventoes and innovators were ruthlessly cutthroat. That's why some succeeded and some didn't.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Up until WWI, inventoes and innovators were ruthlessly cutthroat. That's why some succeeded and some didn't.

What on earth gives you that idea? Inventors came in all shapes and sizes, from all ends of the social spectrum, with a plethora of different moralities and motives. Modern morality didn't evolve overnight the second we signed the Treaty of Versailles.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Edison was a pioneer.

Lewis and Clark were pioneers. Buzz Aldrin was a pioneer. Edison was a businessman. He is an important and interesting figure, but that doesn't somehow give him a free pass on his indiscretions, unethical behavior, and crimes.

 Ahtman wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Edison was a pioneer.

Lewis and Clark were pioneers. Buzz Aldrin was a pioneer. Edison was a businessman. He is an important and interesting figure, but that doesn't somehow give him a free pass on his indiscretions, unethical behavior, and crimes.

I'm not saying he needs a free pass. I'm sure he was seen as a bastard. However, combine the recenr Tesla worship and our modern perspective, and you end up judging him from a skewed angle.

text removed due to language.

reds8n

Edison may have been a big jerk from our perspective, but not really at the time. It was just good business. And business at the time was, often literally, cutthroat. Tesla was a pussy cat in a pool of sharks.

Tesla was, to use a modern phrase, "doing it all wrong" as far as actually trying to invent stuff. He had amazing ideas, but if he wanted them to be successful and not get ripped off he needed to be more aggressive.

Tesla was really a big wuss. Edison was more of a businessman who actually capitalized on his inventions.

Nothing can be free, somebody has to pay for it.

So I'm still unclear as to the OP's point. Is this just another person who recently discovered Tesla? Again, I assume he's never heard of George Westinghouse, Edison's prime rival. Do you know why Edison invented the electric chair? to scare people about the "dangers" of Wesinghouse's AC. Tesla was a genius, but he was a minor player in a time when innovation and assertiveness were key to success.

I love when people grab on to a new fact and run with it without any actual knowledge...

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
I guess you've never heard of being a cutthroat businessman? Especially back then, competition was nasty. It was how people succeeded. Being an "asshat" would mean looking at historical actions without any real context.

Here's Edison's final interview, in which he talks about the cutthroat nature of the business enviorment back then and how it affected him:


http://blog.modernmechanix.com/did-thomas-edison-die-a-poor-man/

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
So I'm still unclear as to the OP's point. Is this just another person who recently discovered Tesla? Again, I assume he's never heard of George Westinghouse, Edison's prime rival. Do you know why Edison invented the electric chair? to scare people about the "dangers" of Wesinghouse's AC. Tesla was a genius, but he was a minor player in a time when innovation and assertiveness were key to success.

I love when people grab on to a new fact and run with it without any actual knowledge...

You really don't know the point.....no comment
The point is in the title dude, its that Edison is an asshat.
Edison wasn't innovative he had a lot of money to throw around.

So again, your entire OP was about Tesla, did you just discover the guy?

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
So again, your entire OP was about Tesla, did you just discover the guy?

The entire OP was about Edison being an ass. Tesla was mentioned primarily in the instances when Edison dicked him over to accentuate how much of an ass he is.
I always knew that Tesla got dicked over but I only recently found out how hard he got dicked over.

And that happens in business. So what? If Tesla had been more aggressive, maybe he'd have affected the electric industry more significantly. Just like if Rockefeller had been less cutthroat he wouldn't have had the monoply on oil for decades.

See, oftentimes people use words like Pioneer all wrong.... Yes, Tesla was a pioneer, ESPECIALLY as he was trying to do things for the good of man, rather than money (such as his free wireless energy), of course Tesla also had a darker side, such as his legendary (though never found) "Death Ray" that he was working on.

Also, Westinghouse generally didn't have gak unless Tesla invented it for him. It was Tesla's AC generator that Westinghouse was trying to use. Ultimately Westinghouse had to cut Tesla out, because his ideas of free power would spell the doom of Westinghouse's company.


Of course the funny thing is is that both Edison and Tesla were right.... AC is Great for moving large amounts of power, quickly over a great distance. DC runs the actual devices... Thats right, your computer, cell phone, RC car, stereo speakers, just about everything actually operates on DC.

wow... some serious scholars of history here...

Some points I'm trying to make that everyone else has already made is that Edison did a whole lot of illegal and immoral things in pursuit of the mighty dollar.
Another being Tesla inventing and fixing everything these idiots made.
Another being the sheer extent Edison went to lie, steal, and cheat. Killing animals in mass? Really?
The final is that people are calling Edison an innovator and a pioneer, he's NOT.Tesla was.
You don't have to be greedy and utterly immoral to be a good businessman. End of discussion on that aspect.
Tesla's AC was primarily going to work like the actual generators and the delivery of the power. It would be converted to DC down the road. On this it was wildly more efficient.
Oh and Tesla was a wimp for not doing something about this. It would be going to far to go to the sheer lows Edison went to.

Caesar was a donkey hole, too, from what I hear. And th e Founding Fathers? Just a bunch of jerks who didn't want to pay taxes...

Seriously, open a book and stop watching H2.

I'm not sure it is a good idea to insult people's thoughts on history while showing an extremely shallow understanding of it yourself.

 ThePrimordial wrote:
Some points I'm trying to make that everyone else has already made is that Edison did a whole lot of illegal and immoral things in pursuit of the mighty dollar.
Another being Tesla inventing and fixing everything these idiots made.
Another being the sheer extent Edison went to lie, steal, and cheat. Killing animals in mass? Really?
The final is that people are calling Edison an innovator and a pioneer, he's NOT.Tesla was.
You don't have to be greedy and utterly immoral to be a good businessman. End of discussion on that aspect.
Tesla's AC was primarily going to work like the actual generators and the delivery of the power. It would be converted to DC down the road. On this it was wildly more efficient.
Oh and Tesla was a wimp for not doing something about this. It would be going to far to go to the sheer lows Edison went to.

What sort of illegal things did Edison do, and were they illegal at the time?

No, Tesla was not fixing everything they did. And nobody involved as an "idiot", they were all great inventors who happened to be intense rivals.


Edison did nothing that was out of the ordinary for anybody else in business at that time.

Get off that high horse. It doesn't matter that Edison was a jerk, lots of historical people were jerks. Still doesn't make their achievements any less great, and Edison did do great things. Maybe he stole some of it, but certainly not all of it.


Tesla was, IMO, the better inventor. But he was unable to make anything out of it. That is something that he did, and suffered the inevitable consequences for. He was a fool in this regard. He could have accomplished his humanitarian goals in a less direct way by playing the system, but he didn't.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 ThePrimordial wrote:
Some points I'm trying to make that everyone else has already made is that Edison did a whole lot of illegal and immoral things in pursuit of the mighty dollar.
Another being Tesla inventing and fixing everything these idiots made.
Another being the sheer extent Edison went to lie, steal, and cheat. Killing animals in mass? Really?
The final is that people are calling Edison an innovator and a pioneer, he's NOT.Tesla was.
You don't have to be greedy and utterly immoral to be a good businessman. End of discussion on that aspect.
Tesla's AC was primarily going to work like the actual generators and the delivery of the power. It would be converted to DC down the road. On this it was wildly more efficient.
Oh and Tesla was a wimp for not doing something about this. It would be going to far to go to the sheer lows Edison went to.

What sort of illegal things did Edison do, and were they illegal at the time?

No, Tesla was not fixing everything they did. And nobody involved as an "idiot", they were all great inventors who happened to be intense rivals.


Edison did nothing that was out of the ordinary for anybody else in business at that time.

Get off that high horse. It doesn't matter that Edison was a jerk, lots of historical people were jerks. Still doesn't make their achievements any less great, and Edison did do great things. Maybe he stole some of it, but certainly not all of it.


Tesla was, IMO, the better inventor. But he was unable to make anything out of it. That is something that he did, and suffered the inevitable consequences for. He was a fool in this regard. He could have accomplished his humanitarian goals in a less direct way by playing the system, but he didn't.

Edison invented the phonograph and commercialised the electric light.
Compare this to Tesla's AC, Hydroelectric power generation and the proof of principle of radio.
Its pretty clear he made something out of it.

And?

The Electric light is a very significant thing. Comparable to what Rifling was for firearms.

Tesla did great things too, but it doesn't diminish Edison in any way.

Edison was dreamy.

 Grey Templar wrote:
And?

The Electric light is a very significant thing. Comparable to what Rifling was for firearms.

Tesla did great things too, but it doesn't diminish Edison in any way.

Edison stole and bought "almost" everything.
He wasn't an inventor, mathematician, or scientist. He was a businessman. Tesla actually was these things.

Edison stole and bought "almost" everything.

Which ones did he "steal" and which ones did he invent. Do you actually know, or are you just parroting something that you read/heard elsewhere that it was "almost" everything.

I'm not doubting that he did steal some ideas, they probably all did back then, but if you want to come out swinging out something, come out with references and back up information, rather than just "he stole nearly all of it, he totally did"

 motyak wrote:

Edison stole and bought "almost" everything.

Which ones did he "steal" and which ones did he invent. Do you actually know, or are you just parroting something that you read/heard elsewhere that it was "almost" everything.

I'm not doubting that he did steal some ideas, they probably all did back then, but if you want to come out swinging out something, come out with references and back up information, rather than just "he stole nearly all of it, he totally did"

H2 channel strikes again...