Friday, February 11, 2011

Thomas Edison was a bastard...

Posted by dkuehn at 10:02 AM
...long live Nikola Tesla.

Argue me out of this disposition - I'm unashamed to say it's a relatively sophomoric one. But it is a disposition I have nonetheless.

7 comments:

  1. Prateek SanjayFebruary 11, 2011 at 10:59 AM

    The History Channel was once showing how Thomas Edison backed down on a promise he made by saying, "Apparently you don't understand the American sense of humour."

    But of course, today, men like Mark Zuckerberg understand the American sense of humour perfectly!

    Now, there is no a guarantee that if I were a businessman in Edison's shoes, I wouldn't have done differently or I would have been a successful enterpriser without a little rough play. That isn't to say that businessmen don't behave honourably or don't put honour and virtue above all else when necessary. But otherwise, from a non-business point of view, it was dishonourable what Edison did.

    The class of businessmen and entrepreneurs do a lot of dishonourable things now and then, but that probably saves thousands of jobs and prevents mass layoffs. Strange, what life must be up there. Indeed, I intend to reach that place some day.

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  2. DanielFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:02 PM

    And "experiment" is a generous word for it.

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  3. DanielFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:03 PM

    Edison also had thoughts on monetary theory... perhaps I'll post on that this weekend.

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  4. Gary GunnelsFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:05 PM

    Yeah, animal torture is more like it.

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  5. Gary GunnelsFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:08 PM

    He did have that novel idea of single-pour concrete homes; but it came to nothing (though it was very innovative).

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  6. Desolation JonesFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:27 PM

    There's an amusing comic book called The Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison that I like.

    "Nikola Tesla, Mark Twain and Bertha von Suttner combine forces to try to bring about world peace through superior firepower. Twain and Tesla use scientific know-how, general trickery and media manipulation techniques to try to scare world leaders into following their noble path. In the company of several allies, the two are soon confronted by dark forces led by the dastardly Thomas Edison, John Pierpont Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, and Guglielmo Marconi. The inventors and financiers are collaborating on a bizarre new skyscraper, the Innsmouth Tower, on whose building site many construction workers have already died in mysterious accidents."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Fists_of_Science

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  7. DanielFebruary 11, 2011 at 12:28 PM

    The Innsmouth Tower, eh?

    I love the allusion! I'll have to check this out.

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