In fact, if the author went around their house and looked at all the electronic devices coffee maker, microwave oven, clock, television, laptop, stereo, etc. This is because while alternating current is indeed great for long distance transmission of power Edison's signature invention is the light bulb. Of course, Edison didn't actually invent the incandescent bulb, something that the Oatmeal comic is quick to point out when it says "Edison didn't invent the light bulb, he improved upon the ideas of 22 other men who pioneered the light bulb before him.
Edison simply figured out how to sell the light bulb. But what the Oatmeal says is fallacious. First of all, I'd contend that nearly every invention in the engineering or sciences is an improvement on what has come before - such as Tesla's improvements to alternating current. That's what innovation is.
It's a social process that occurs in a social context. As Robert Heinlein once said, "When railroading time comes you can railroadbut not before. Individuals move things forward - some faster than others - but in the end, the most intelligent person in the world can't invent the light bulb if the foundation for it isn't there. Secondly, the comic doesn't appreciate why Edison was able to sell light bulbs.
He was able to sell them because through a lot of work by both himself and the scientists and engineers who worked for him, he was able to develop a light bulb that was practical.
Before Edison, incandescent bulbs were expensive and tended to burn out quickly. Edison fixed both of those problems. And many of those men who pioneered the light bulb before Edison, such as Joseph Swan, openly admired Edison's solution to a very tough engineering problem.
Probably one of the most bizarre claims in the Oatmeal comic is that Tesla developed the idea for radar in World War I, but was thwarted by the evil Thomas Edison. And it's true that Tesla pitched the idea of using radio waves to track targets in a way that anticipates radar. It's also true that the Naval Consulting Board turned down Tesla's pitch.
And you know what? Do you know why? Because Tesla pitched radar as a means of tracking submarines. Members of the Naval Consulting Board I can't find documentation as to whether Edison was directly involved noted, correctly, that water would attenuate radio waves to the point that they'd be useless for tracking submarines.
That was true during World War I, and it's also true today. That's why the Naval Consulting Board pursued sonar instead. Which is still the way submarines are tracked. The Consulting Board didn't get far, though. The British were way ahead, having developed a sonar prototype in So did Tesla invent radar, like The Oatmeal claims? He pitched an idea, but never developed a prototype. That said, a lot of his work did become the backbone for radar research in the s, but there was a lot of work done between Tesla's work and the eventual development of radar.
Tesla pointed the way, but there was a long road that had to be dug out of the jungle. Oh, and just one more note on the Naval Consulting Board. Unlike Tesla, who pitched "death rays" and other weapons to countries in his later years, Edison's condition to working on the board was that it would work to develop defensive technology only. That was true for his entire existence. Edison once remarked that, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.
That's something Tesla can't say. In the course of researching this article, I surprised myself by learning that Tesla did not, in fact, discover X-Rays. I'd been under the impression that he had. He played with them before Wilhelm Rontgen, that's true.
But other researchers were also experimenting with them. It wasn't until Rontgen, though, that some of them knew what they were dealing with For example, Ivan Pulyui's work pre-dated Tesla's, but he didn't realize he was working with X-Rays until Rontgen published his work. The Oatmeal also correctly notes that Tesla did identify the dangers of X-Rays and didn't experiment with them much.
This then leads to one of the most morally reprehensible portions of The Oatmeal's comic, where he takes the tragic death of Edison's assistant Clarence Dally and Edison's disability as an excuse to pummel Edison again. Here's what the Oatmeal says:. This is some of the most anachronistic, patronizing things I've ever read.
Please, readers, turn the clocks back to the early s. People didn't really understand how radiation worked and how dangerous they truly were. Edison knew that inventions in isolation were of little use: they had to be sold as elements in a practical system.
Inventing the light bulb and coming up with systems for electric power generation and transmission had to go together.
P Morgan. Edison and others like him Nikola Tesla, for example worked hard to foster, and perhaps even invent the image of the inventor as an individual, iconoclastic and disruptive maker of the future. It remains a romantic and alluring vision, but the more historians study Edison, the clearer it becomes that the myth does not match the reality. This mismatch between history and fantasy has led some to turn the conventional view of Edison on its head.
If he cannot be cast as the hero of invention, he must be recast as its villain. So if not Edison, then who? As we face up to existential challenges like climate change, the way we think about innovation and those with the skills to drive it, has rarely mattered more. By contrast, Tesla's ideas were often more disruptive technologies that didn't have a built-in market demand. And his alternating-current motor and hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls — a first-of-its-kind power plant — truly electrified the world.
Tesla also spent years working on a system designed to wirelessly transmit voices, images and moving pictures — making him a futurist, and the true father of radio, telephone, cell phones and television. Unfortunately, Tesla's grand scheme failed when his financial backer, J. Morgan, became fed up with years of failure. Edison's enduring legacy isn't a specific patent or technology, but his invention factories, which divided the innovation process into small tasks that were carried out by legions of workers, DeGraaf said.
For instance, Edison got the idea for a moving picture camera, or kinetoscope from a talk by photographer Edward Muybridge, but then left most of the experimentation and prototyping to his assistant William Dickson and others.
By having multiple patents and inventions developing in parallel, Edison, in turn, ensured that his assistants had a stable financial situation to continue running experiments and fleshing out more designs.
Tesla's inventions are the backbone of modern power and communication systems, but he faded into obscurity later in the 20th century, when most of his inventions were lost to history.
And despite his many patents and innovations, Tesla. Related: Beyond Tesla: History's most overlooked scientists. At the height of his career, Tesla was charismatic, urbane and witty. He spoke several languages and counted writers Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, and naturalist John Muir as friends, according to Seifer.
But Tesla could also be haughty and was known to be a hygiene freak. In his later years, his obsessive tics such as his fear of women's earrings grew stronger, and he died penniless and alone in a hotel in New York City, Seifer said. Edison also had a mean streak, which he amply displayed in his vicious attacks against Tesla during the War of Currents.
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