Tesla

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Always torqued me off that those who seem to be in charge of history for America, have never given the man the recognition he deserves. One of our greatest immigrants to ever arrive, and a proud U.S. Citizen, delivering the greatest strides in our industry ever, he gets a one-line recognition, vs the heaps of praise for Edison. Edison was a businessmen, not an electrical genius like Tesla was. Tesla was an eccentric genius, and America was lucky to call him ours.
 
Rockyd said:
Always torqued me off that those who seem to be in charge of history for America, have never given the man the recognition he deserves. One of our greatest immigrants to ever arrive, and a proud U.S. Citizen, delivering the greatest strides in our industry ever, he gets a one-line recognition, vs the heaps of praise for Edison. Edison was a businessmen, not an electrical genius like Tesla was. Tesla was an eccentric genius, and America was lucky to call him ours.
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I totally agree. There is a "Tesla Society" that has been trying to change that, but the inertia is formidable. My personal theory is that GE pumped money into the school textbook companies years and years ago to promote the Edison story, which indirectly leads curious people to GE and gives them a warm fuzzy feeling. I know it worked that way for me. At the same time, Tesla's image was fostered as a "mad scientist" and was the inspiration for such in cartoons. Did you ever stop to think why a lot of mad scientist characters have eastern European accents? I don't think it's a coincidence. There is an old (1940's vintage) Superman cartoon available on the web which makes this obvious. The villain is a white haired eastern European who uses radio signals to control monster robots with disintegration rays. Sound familiar?

The other thing Tesla had working against him was a level of xenophobia that existed in his time against Serbs and Croats etc., maybe because of Serbia being the birthplace of WWI. I read some interesting stories about Serbs and Croatian miners being persecuted and even killed in some communities right during and after WWI. There is a cemetery in the town of Roslyn, WA (where the TV show Northern Exposure was filmed) and it has a section devoted to Serb and Croat miners. A lot of them died around that time, some headstones say they were killed by mobs. My own bigoted grandfather was absolutely convinced that the 1918 "Spanish Flu" epidemic that killed so many people came from Serbia, not Spain. So although I agree that Tesla was as good an American as anyone else, xenophobia has no basis in reality; it's just fear mongering.
 
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