forgotten genius Nicola Tesla

Leon W Zhang

Nicola Tesla was undoubtedly one of the greatest geniuses of 20 century. His contributions to Electrical Engineering field were amazing for the entire world. But, only a handful people know his name. Although he was a profound genius, he was a forgotten person in history. Why?

Pengwuino

I think he's known on the level of thomas edison... I've heard of plenty of people speak of Tesla so I don't believe he is that forgotten...

russ_watters

Most people with knowledge of the subject know he's on about the same level as Edison. It's pretty much just conspiracy theorists who think he's unknown to everyone else. So what's the point of this thread...?

carlz

Personally, I read quite abit about him and think he is a much better engineer than edison.

Edison is more of a experiment and try an error type of person while Nicola Tesla was a theorist who worked his stuff out first before testing the results.

If you read his biography, he has no business knowledge and was too trusting, that lead to his downfall. Edison on the other hand, knew business, thus was able to outshine Nicola Tesla. Overal, I still admire Nicola Tesla more.

Somehow, i feel I am typing nonsense... :P

Ouabache

I've known about Tesla for awhile, at least since high school when we were introduced to a Tesla Coil in physics. In college, I learned he was honored by naming an SI unit of magnetic flux density, after him.

Since then I've borrowed a video from the library about Tesla. It portrayed his life exactly as carlz mentioned. Tesla was a physicist, an electrical engineer and inventor. He was more of a scientist than Edison whom he admired as a youth. Nicola was such a genius, he was able to formulate complete designs just in his mind without committing them to paper.

carlz

Something that's quite disturbing though. When experimenting with AC, he tried to establish the fact that it takes much less current than DC to be fatal. In order to prove his point, he paid street boys to bring him stray dogs to test his AC experiments. All ended dead of course.

He has the typical 'mad scientist' image with him sitting in that huge room with the gigantic tesla coil in the middle shooting arcs meters long with loud cracking noises.

sid_galt

That was Edison. He was trying to promote his DC system over Tesla's AC system.

Really? I find that to be cool.

russ_watters

Those little differences led to Edison having much more financial and inventing success than Tesla, which would be why not as many people outside of engineering know much about him.

FredGarvin

Everyone knows of the hair band Tesla...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_(band)

Those tend to be the hardest people to work with (in my experience).

Serbian.matematika

Every child in Europe knows about Nikola Tesla.
As long as there are Serbs on this Planet Nikola Tesla will never be forgotten!
Every Serb child is tutored to follow Nikola Tesla's footsteps.
*****My great great grandfather and Nikola Tesla were sitting in the same classroom, Yugoslavia.

Leon W Zhang

Thanks for your reply. Tesla was born in Croatia but he was a Serbian, right? I have been intereseted in his biography and career. Do you know any other famous Serbian scientists and inventors ? If so, can you share it with me?

Leon W Zhang

Again Serbian.matematika,
Since you are a serb, you might know the standard of some Universities Tesla studied. When I read the biography of Tesla, I found that he finished his bachelor degree at Austrian Polytechnic Institute and his doctorate degree at University of Prague. What do you think of the standard of these Universities at that time? Are these Universities still famous in Europe?

sjezdci

As for last question, I don't know answer. As for first, Tesla's poor recognition in US lies in his conflict with Edison. Edison was great businessman and I would not go any further than that. Even his greatest "invention" light bulb was originally patented by Canadian from Toronto and bought by Edison to be further perfected and comercialized. Money is primary source of Edison's recognition, same like someone might refer to Bill Gates as father of modern operating system nowdays.
Conflict between Edison and Tesla started when Edison refused to pay Tesla agreed ammount for extra work he put in on one of the projects when Tesla was working in Edison's labs. When Tesla went on his own and finally succeded to push through superior AC system of power generation and transport that is work horse of todays economy, Edison saw him as threat and used his emense influnce in scientific and business comunnity at the time to crush Tesla. This campaign against Tesla resonates even to this day, for example Smithsonian refused to fully acknowledge Tesla' contribution to science untill year 2000!!! (http://www.rense.com/general6/tesla.htm) On the bottom of this page you will find link to wonderfull site about Tesla made and hosted by PBS! Even that AC system was clearly far superior to DC system used by Edison, there were places in US that were still powered by DC long after WWII! Bitter from batle with Edison and when Nobel prize was awarded to Marcony instead of him for invention of radio, Tesla closed to himself, and never elaborated his inventions in great detail anymore to anyone.

ZapperZ

With a number of people citing that they know about Tesla, and with the PBS documentary already shown several times, this then comes back to the question being asked towards the beginning of this thread that Leon W Zhang seems to have ignored - where is the evidence that Tesla is "forgotten in history"?

Clearly, the discussion presented above, and the fact that every time someone quote a magnetic field strength in SI units, his name is being invoked.

Zz.

sjezdci

but downplayed. Glorifying businessman as scientist and downplaying genius as madman is even worse.

ZapperZ

But downplayed by whom? Clearly he isn't forgotten nor downplayed by physicists and engineers. Downplayed by the general public? Well, is this NEW and unusual? I could cite and rattle off a number of important names that the public are utterly ignorant about. Would they know the only person who has ever won the physics Nobel Prize twice and arguably the person who has made the greatest impact on their lives today?

The general public isn't a good gauge on such a thing.

Zz.

Pravoslavan

Yes, Tesla was proud Serb, his father was Serbian priest
It will be my pleasure to share informations with you....
There is a lot of scientists from Serbia.

Milutin Milankovic - geophysicist, best known for his theory of ice ages
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milutin_Milankovic

Mihajlo Pupin - physicist
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihajlo_Pupin

Mileva Maric - Albert Einsteins wife, great mathematician
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mileva_Maric

Ogneslav Kostovic Stepanovic - invent first plastic in the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ognesla...vic_Stepanovic