A true story of a liar's arrogance versus an honest person's conviction with a moral...

Most people know the name Thomas Edison.  Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.  Well, no, not really.  Thomas Edison invented the filament.  The bulb itself was an accident.  Edison had worked on various designs for the shape to go around the filament that would not break from the heat the element produced.   None of the shapes Edison sent for the glass blower to make worked.  The glass blower had brought over a mistake.  Edison, as the story goes, was actually furious, but the glass blower left everything that he brought.  After breaking all of the latest design attempts, Edison in a last ditch effort tried the "mistake".  Voila!  The light bulb.  Not his design, not even one of several, a mistake made by a glass blower.  (Incidently, Henrich Goebel is according to the scientific community the one that is actually credited with the light bulb invention a year prior to Edison's "claim" to it.)  Thomas Edison claimed to create the movie camera, the telephone, the phonograph (record player, for those of you young enough to remember that one), cameras, DC and AC motors...his false claims ruminate like a stripper claiming to be a college student.  In fact, Edison's only 100% his own invention was a worthless suction device.  He couldn't even turn it into something useful like a vaccum.  The only thing that Edison created that anyone, well any major corporation bigwigs anyway, would appreciate was the "Intellectual Property Contract".  Edison created this flimsy little piece of paper when he found Nikola Tesla.  What it did was ceded all patents under any engineer's name while under employment contract to the company he/she works for.  That's the only thing that Edison ever created that was actually his own brain child. 

Why was this so important?  Tesla's patents built the Edison Electric Company.  Most of the inventions that made Edison rich were in fact Tesla's.  The DC motor, AC motor, AC and DC generators, you name the patent in the late 1800s, many of them were Nikola Tesla's brainchildren.  He was a genius, pure and simple.  Edison harnessed and caged Tesla's intellect to make himself rich.  Edison was a sweet talker, smooth at portraying himself as a "nice" person and playing coy.  Many would describe him a non-intrusive, humble, coy.  Of course he was.  He never actually invented anything worth a damn.  Hard not to not seem humble when he would look down at the floor, not really knowing what he was talking about, and seemingly brushing aside the conversation.  Yes, an on-looker might called that humble.  He was an asshole, a wolf in sheep's clothing, a liar and what most took as coy and humble was in fact sheerly him covering up that he really didn't understand most of the electrical things beyond the concept of a filament.  Nikola Tesla was a stark contrast.  A bit of a drunkard (I suspect anyone would be if they were making peanuts while their asinine boss got rich off their patents and claimed the credit for himself), described as overly honest, a bit abrupt, short with people that didn't know what they were talking about, and a whore monger, at least that was the rumors about him.  Irony is that most of those rumors were not necessarily true, but circulated by Edison in order to keep Tesla from being able to leave Edison's employ.  But Edison didn't just circulate lies about Tesla.  Edison was called out by George Westinghouse.  Westinghouse had lost contracts to Edison based on lies about Westinghouse and his company and employees.  Westinghouse traced them back to Edison and the rivalry was legendary. 

Edison was vying for the contract to power New York City.  He was going to prove that it could be done--with DC power.  Tesla still under his employ had come up with a spectacular idea.  Edison argued with Tesla over using DC versus AC power.  Now, keep in mind, Tesla is the father, the genius that created both AC and DC motors and generators.  No one on the planet knew more than Tesla about creating electricity at this time.  Tesla argued that his plans and design showed that only AC power would allow electricity to be brought efficiently to the masses.  Edison had begun to believe his own lies about Tesla.  Tesla was arrogant, rude, ineffective.  Edison had begun to believe he was actually his own genius and Tesla was a nobody.  Sure the patents were in Tesla's name, but who funded him?  In fact, he had oversaw and made suggestions.  The ideas were just as much his as Tesla's.  In fact, Edison had reached a point where he argued to Tesla that he in fact had been the thinker and Tesla had just brought Edison's ideas to fruition.  Tesla was infuriated; Edison terminated Tesla releasing him from his contract.  The plans at that point, technically, belonged to Edison and his company.  However, in that moment, Tesla had a moment of clarity and asked for Edison to release the spectacular, monumentous idea and its designs.  Edison in his arrogance, scrawled on paper to release the concepts.  The other employees described Tesla as extremely angry while Edison as usual seemed to be "calm".  Again, to the on-lookers, Tesla looked difficult.  Yet, Tesla left quietly with his hand written release and the plans and conceptual work that he had already worked on.  Many described it as the most "humble" they had ever seen Tesla. 

Tesla went to George Westinghouse.  Westinghouse was dying to get one over on Thomas Edison.  He knew Edison had lied about him, his company, his employees.  Westinghouse also knew that most of the Edison Electric Company's patents were in Nikola Tesla's name.  Tesla at this point was a pauper.  Hundreds of money making patents in his name and yet Tesla had nothing to show for it.  Westinghouse in contrast had a similar contract to Edison's.  It had become industry standard, and unfortunately to this day, is a corporation standard.  Westinghouse offered him $2.50 per kilowatt upon fruition and all the backing he needed for the monumentous undertaking.  Westinghouse wanted Edison's goat; Tesla wanted everyone to have electricity.  His ultimate goal was free power, free electricity, to all of us--similar to free radio waves.  The concept is very sound.  But I digress.  Edison proceded with his demonstration in NYC and powered 9 blocks with DC power.  It wasn't stable, and the number of generators, amount of coal required, and manpower, meant electrical power would be only for the very rich.  This didn't bother Edison one bit.  He had plenty of money.  That was 1879.   It took another 4 years for Tesla to finalize his plans, and with funding from Westinghouse, the Niagara Falls Power Company broke ground for the first power plant designed to convert water energy into electricity.  In 1895, while Edison was still keeping electricity for the rich in their homes and pretty light displays for the poor to go see, Niagara Falls Power Station had its opening ceremony.  Within 5 short years, the concept of DC power for mass electrical distribution was over.   Westinghouse became a powerhouse as it created household equipment for our homes, circuit breakers and convertors to use DC or AC power.  To this day, the Niagara Falls Power Station powers the majority of the eastern seaboard from the northern rim of Quebec to Washington DC. 

Edison had drawn a picture of Tesla as an arrogant, outrageous, horrible person, a womanizer and drunkard so full of himself that he couldn't see beyond the drawings of inanimate objects and creations that floated in his mind.  The truth was that Edison was greedy beyond measure and his humbleness was only because of his layers upon layers of lies.  Tesla was handsome and Edison was, well, everyone knows what he looks like.  He wasn't winning any bachelor bidding wars ever.  Tesla wanted free electricity for all.  Edison wanted electricity to remain an "exclusive" club.  Tesla's concepts included things that we are only seeing coming to fruition now.  His genius was immeasurable and he wanted to help all.  While he was direct and honest, he was actually the humble man--even letting Westinghouse out of his $2.50 per kilowatt contract when Westinghouse almost went broke.  Edison was the arrogant, lying prick and yet for over an hundred years we taught kids in school that he created all these great things.  He tooted himself off as the great inventor and to ensure his own legacy of lies tarnished the truly greatest engineer and scientist of the age.  The scientific community knows this:  There's a power unit called a Tesla.  There's nothing named after Edison.

Next time someone tells you that someone is arrogant, full of him/herself, not humble, needs to modify their delivery of the truth.  Think about why.  Why would the truth ever need to be "modified"?  Either its the truth or its not.  If it is, well, for some people there's no right way to tell the truth, because they are the biggest liars of all. 

Nikola Tesla, age 38, the year before Niagara Falls Power Station opened

1.  Tesla invented the radio.  While most of us believe Marconi invented it, in 1943, the Supreme Court rendered Marconi's patents invalid because of Tesla's designs that were years earlier. 

2.  Tesla hypothesized in mass wireless communications--realized in the 1980s with the first cellular phone and now almost half the population no longer maintains a "landline". 

3.  JP Morgan pulled his financing of a power tower designed by Tesla when Morgan realized that the power tower would ultimately mean free electricity for all.

4.  Tesla is actually the father of x-rays.  The concepts all detailed in his writings and various patents.  If Tesla had lived long enough, eventually the Supreme Court would have had to render several patents of other "inventors" invalid as they did with Marconi.

5.  At one point Edison promised Tesla a bonus worth over $100K in today's money if Tesla could figure out problems with the DC system that Edison was working.  Edison refused to pay.  Maybe the real reason Tesla was so pissed that day he was "terminated".  Maybe he told Edison to shove it up his *ss.  (Refer to story above.)

6.  The Tesla Coil was part of Tesla's efforts to try and produce and distribute electrical power through the airwaves to the masses for free. 

7.  While Edison is credited with over 1000 patents, more than half were invalidated or were in contest at the death of the true inventors because he had stolen them.  It is suspected that almost all were probably stolen since in the late 1800s there wasn't a mass media distribution of all discoveries. 

8.  Tesla created the electrical logic gate.  The birth patent for what eventually would develop into electric calculators, computers, and every piece of electric smart equipment that you use, not to mention manufacturing PLCs and control systems. 

9.  Tesla worked on radio controlled guidance systems for torpedos.  His concepts evolved into everything we control remotely from remote controlled toy cars to weapons guidance systems to drone aircraft. 

10.  Tesla's concepts and principles eventually created radar and the electric submarine.

11.  Tesla created the AC/DC converter.  (well, duh)

12.  Tesla created the incandescent lamp.  (Invalidating one of Edison's patents later--again, liar.)

13.  Tesla's the father of the electric generator.  Several of his patents for generating power are technically still in use today because his designs were smart and cost effective. 

14.  Remember that whole "hole" in the ozone thing?  Tesla patented an apparatus to create ozone in 1896.

15.  Tesla created the electical transformer.  Really.  You weren't expecting any less at this point, were you?

16.  Patented improvements to Faraday's electrical insulators and methods of making electrical insulations.  Come on the father of mass electricity distribution had to want everyone to be safe around it. 

17.  In 1914, he patented the water fountain.  All those fountains with the lights and the water squirting sequences.  Of course, eventually even evolving to the ones you can catch a quick drink from.  Thanks Nikola.

18.  The speedometer, the flow meter and frequency meter...yes, Tesla. 

19.  Tesla hypothesized the concept of a "death ray".  We now know these things as lasers...

20.  Science fiction has used Tesla's concepts in many movies and televisions shows:  The Tesla Flying Machine became flying saucers and force fields (and of course lasers before scientists actually made them for real).