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I read that he has researchers working for him who worked on the bulb. Then there was the DC motor fix which Tesla is said to have done but Edison didn't pay hi

I read that he has researchers working for him who worked on the bulb. Then there was the DC motor fix which Tesla is said to have done but Edison didn't pay him as promised

fsh 7y ago
Tesla probably made up the story about the bet with Edison in his autobiography. It is not mentioned anywhere else, not even in Tesla's diary.
- thewhitetulip 7y ago
  If this is true then how come books are being printed with this falsehoods?
  - InTheArena 7y ago
    Narratives are always more powerful then fact - until someone really takes the tune to construct the truth. The it takes decades to fix. Facts are inconvenient to popular historians and PhD candidates desperate for tenure.
WalterBright 7y ago
Many people challenged Edison's lightbulb patent in court, and lost.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  In a period when the US did not allow non-nationals to take out a US patent. Rather weights the game. Fred Mullens patented the lightbulb 20 years before Edison, and Joseph Swan a UK patent for essentially the same design Edison got a few months or years before Edison. He was already lighting a theatre with his lamps when Edison got his famous patent IIRC. There are probably a dozen other people from other countries who achieved and patented something before Edison. Edit: Note, Swan successfully sued Edison in the UK. After which Edison's continued presence in the UK was via a joint venture with Swan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
  - VvR-Ox 7y ago
    As always: Victor dictates history. Who discovered America? "Columbus of course!" - No, wrong! It was some Asian Indians and some vikings who did it hundreds of years before him. Nevertheless "columbus" ist still the response many people would answer that question with because in the view of the western part of the world the colonization columbus started was the most important event. You can go on with the invention of the paper press (most will say "Gutenberg") which also happened hundreds of years earlier in China. I think it's really strange to emphasize this kind of "knowledge" so much in our schools as it just frames the thoughts of people so they think better about their "very important" ancestors. Actually this kind of "knowledge" doesn't get you anywhere besides bragging to be very educated to get some more attention. And then of course it helps to identify who is "better". Did men invent more than women? Did white people invent more than colored people? This is irrelevant and I think we should care less about why our ancestors were supposed to be geniuses and take more effort into fixing our education to be a more enlightened civilization that probably can exist without so many wars and destruction.
    - thewhitetulip 7y ago
      I'll chip in. Who is the monster of world war 2? We say Hitler, just Hitler. We ignore the killings don't by Stalin and the fact that concentration camps were Churchill's idea in Boar war in Africa and that ethnic superiority was first claimed by American scientists in some European conference, Hitler just implemented what they said and then those scientists denounced Hitler as if they never said anything about ethnic superiority/cleansing.
      - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Well actually... They were innovated by the Spanish in the Ten Years War before Churchill was even born. Nor do we or did we ignore Stalin - he was, at best, thought to be a necessary anti Nazi evil. p.s. Churchill was a war correspondent during the Boer War. No one in the military would have listened even if he had thought them up at that time.
- thewhitetulip 7y ago
  I'm not talking about that, actually. Edison had 100s of scientists working for him. He was a project manager, if we were to speak in these terms

I read that he has researchers working for him who worked on the bulb. Then there was the DC motor fix which Tesla is said to have done but Edison didn't pay him as promised

fsh 7y ago

Tesla probably made up the story about the bet with Edison in his autobiography. It is not mentioned anywhere else, not even in Tesla's diary.

thewhitetulip 7y ago
If this is true then how come books are being printed with this falsehoods?
- InTheArena 7y ago
  Narratives are always more powerful then fact - until someone really takes the tune to construct the truth. The it takes decades to fix. Facts are inconvenient to popular historians and PhD candidates desperate for tenure.

WalterBright 7y ago

Many people challenged Edison's lightbulb patent in court, and lost.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
In a period when the US did not allow non-nationals to take out a US patent. Rather weights the game. Fred Mullens patented the lightbulb 20 years before Edison, and Joseph Swan a UK patent for essentially the same design Edison got a few months or years before Edison. He was already lighting a theatre with his lamps when Edison got his famous patent IIRC. There are probably a dozen other people from other countries who achieved and patented something before Edison. Edit: Note, Swan successfully sued Edison in the UK. After which Edison's continued presence in the UK was via a joint venture with Swan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan
- VvR-Ox 7y ago
  As always: Victor dictates history. Who discovered America? "Columbus of course!" - No, wrong! It was some Asian Indians and some vikings who did it hundreds of years before him. Nevertheless "columbus" ist still the response many people would answer that question with because in the view of the western part of the world the colonization columbus started was the most important event. You can go on with the invention of the paper press (most will say "Gutenberg") which also happened hundreds of years earlier in China. I think it's really strange to emphasize this kind of "knowledge" so much in our schools as it just frames the thoughts of people so they think better about their "very important" ancestors. Actually this kind of "knowledge" doesn't get you anywhere besides bragging to be very educated to get some more attention. And then of course it helps to identify who is "better". Did men invent more than women? Did white people invent more than colored people? This is irrelevant and I think we should care less about why our ancestors were supposed to be geniuses and take more effort into fixing our education to be a more enlightened civilization that probably can exist without so many wars and destruction.
  - thewhitetulip 7y ago
    I'll chip in. Who is the monster of world war 2? We say Hitler, just Hitler. We ignore the killings don't by Stalin and the fact that concentration camps were Churchill's idea in Boar war in Africa and that ethnic superiority was first claimed by American scientists in some European conference, Hitler just implemented what they said and then those scientists denounced Hitler as if they never said anything about ethnic superiority/cleansing.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Well actually... They were innovated by the Spanish in the Ten Years War before Churchill was even born. Nor do we or did we ignore Stalin - he was, at best, thought to be a necessary anti Nazi evil. p.s. Churchill was a war correspondent during the Boer War. No one in the military would have listened even if he had thought them up at that time.
thewhitetulip 7y ago
I'm not talking about that, actually. Edison had 100s of scientists working for him. He was a project manager, if we were to speak in these terms