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"Mr. Marconi is a donkey" - Nikola Tesla

plainOldText 10y ago
"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." - Tesla I think this one is more illustrative of Tesla's character and the fact that he was not driven by financial motivations.
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Edison wasn't either until he inadvertently found himself to be rich.
- stan_rogers 10y ago
  Well, except that Tesla didn't invent anything like the radio (the patent grant was considerably later, only in the US, and specifically to freeze out Marconi... who also didn't invent the thing). Marconi's apparatus was essentially an improvement to Oliver Lodge's demonstration machine for the BAAS memorial tribute to Hertz, largely done by the British Post Office telegraphy engineers, with eventual help from the inventions of Lodge (a tuning apparatus) and J. C. Bose. One could say that radio was accidentally invented by several people several times over the preceding century, notably by David Hughes, who at least tried to have the phenomenon investigated. It was dismissed at the time as mere magnetic induction, something Tesla assumed was the case as well, and so believed his cockamamie scheme for wireless remote power was radio. Being able to convince interested nationalist laymen that a foreigner didn't do it is not the same thing as actually inventing something yourself. (Several of Tesla's other "inventions" were created by other people before he was even born. The neon light, f'rinstance, is just a Geissler tube.) Look: many, many props to the guy for the induction motor and polyphase AC, right, but he was rather in love with himself. He was an ingenious tinkerer with a subtle mind, but there are some very good reasons to believe that he didn't really understand half of what he was trying to do, especially at high frequencies. There's a reason why radio doesn't look like Wardenclyffe now, and never did. Oh, and no financial motivations? That's a wee myth grown out of his sale of patents to Westinghouse, without which arrangement AC would have failed (because the onerous royalties due Tesla would have made it too expensive compared to Edison's DC). He had no trouble begging for money while looking for further fame and fortune.
sunstone 10y ago
And the printing press was invented in China.

"Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents." - Tesla I think this one is more illustrative of Tesla's character and the fact that he was not driven by financial motivations.

WalterBright 10y ago
Edison wasn't either until he inadvertently found himself to be rich.
stan_rogers 10y ago
Well, except that Tesla didn't invent anything like the radio (the patent grant was considerably later, only in the US, and specifically to freeze out Marconi... who also didn't invent the thing). Marconi's apparatus was essentially an improvement to Oliver Lodge's demonstration machine for the BAAS memorial tribute to Hertz, largely done by the British Post Office telegraphy engineers, with eventual help from the inventions of Lodge (a tuning apparatus) and J. C. Bose. One could say that radio was accidentally invented by several people several times over the preceding century, notably by David Hughes, who at least tried to have the phenomenon investigated. It was dismissed at the time as mere magnetic induction, something Tesla assumed was the case as well, and so believed his cockamamie scheme for wireless remote power was radio. Being able to convince interested nationalist laymen that a foreigner didn't do it is not the same thing as actually inventing something yourself. (Several of Tesla's other "inventions" were created by other people before he was even born. The neon light, f'rinstance, is just a Geissler tube.) Look: many, many props to the guy for the induction motor and polyphase AC, right, but he was rather in love with himself. He was an ingenious tinkerer with a subtle mind, but there are some very good reasons to believe that he didn't really understand half of what he was trying to do, especially at high frequencies. There's a reason why radio doesn't look like Wardenclyffe now, and never did. Oh, and no financial motivations? That's a wee myth grown out of his sale of patents to Westinghouse, without which arrangement AC would have failed (because the onerous royalties due Tesla would have made it too expensive compared to Edison's DC). He had no trouble begging for money while looking for further fame and fortune.

sunstone 10y ago

And the printing press was invented in China.