Topsy was also electrocuted at the request of the ASPCA because otherwise she was going to be hanged and it was seen as more humane, which always seems to get left out.
To clarify, Edison wasn’t trying to ‘disprove’ Tesla, the War of the Currents was Edison vs Westinghouse. Tesla didn’t invent AC, he would’ve learned about that in engineering school, he invented the 3 phase motor, which made AC significantly more practical. Tesla had an argument with one of Edison’s managers over pay, not with Edison. Tesla and Edison wrote each other letters later on and generally spoke positively of each other in public.
Tesla’s an interesting guy but unfortunately went off the deep end pretty steeply. His ‘death ray’ was a ‘blueprint’ he sold to his landlord instead of paying rent and is basically gibberish. Wardenclyffe tower was doomed by not understanding wireless transmission and is basically a Bond villain device. Turning the Ionosphere and Mantel in to halves of a capacitor would both take more energy than humans have ever generated and be really really really bad for anything tall and conductive, which would be basically everything with the energies involved.
Agreed, Tesla is way overvalued. It doesn’t help that he gets picked up by free energy cranks. When one shows up at my makerspace, they almost always cite Tesla somewhere.
Not that Tesla did nothing, but people can’t leave it at his actual accomplishments. The fact that so much of his work can’t be reproduced is seen as deep magic rather than a failure of science.
Topsy was also electrocuted at the request of the ASPCA because otherwise she was going to be hanged and it was seen as more humane, which always seems to get left out.
To clarify, Edison wasn’t trying to ‘disprove’ Tesla, the War of the Currents was Edison vs Westinghouse. Tesla didn’t invent AC, he would’ve learned about that in engineering school, he invented the 3 phase motor, which made AC significantly more practical. Tesla had an argument with one of Edison’s managers over pay, not with Edison. Tesla and Edison wrote each other letters later on and generally spoke positively of each other in public.
Tesla’s an interesting guy but unfortunately went off the deep end pretty steeply. His ‘death ray’ was a ‘blueprint’ he sold to his landlord instead of paying rent and is basically gibberish. Wardenclyffe tower was doomed by not understanding wireless transmission and is basically a Bond villain device. Turning the Ionosphere and Mantel in to halves of a capacitor would both take more energy than humans have ever generated and be really really really bad for anything tall and conductive, which would be basically everything with the energies involved.
Yikes! The .45-70 Government existed and they considered electrocution and hanging?!
Agreed, Tesla is way overvalued. It doesn’t help that he gets picked up by free energy cranks. When one shows up at my makerspace, they almost always cite Tesla somewhere.
Not that Tesla did nothing, but people can’t leave it at his actual accomplishments. The fact that so much of his work can’t be reproduced is seen as deep magic rather than a failure of science.