Most Everything You Know About Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison is Probably Wrong
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For most of history between the point Nikola Tesla and Thomas Alva Edison were respectively doing their things to the present day, if you asked just about anyone which of these men were greater, you’d likely have gotten a response akin to “Nikola who? …I mean, Edison of course? He and God gave us light!” That said, if you asked someone when both were in their prime, you may have gotten a more mixed answer with, contrary to popular belief, Tesla in his day one of the most preeminent celebrity scientists in the world along with Edison. At least until extremely modern times when the internet masses have jumped on the Nikola Tesla hype train and generally vilified Edison as nothing but a charlatan, and someone largely responsible for Tesla’s fall from grace. But what is the truth here? Were either or even potentially both nothing but media hyping narcissists taking credit for others’ work? Were either or potentially both actually great men of history? What is the story between them and why are they so often compared? And overall, which one was actually a greater cog in the human technological advancement machine? And before you go answering this in the comments based on your current knowledge of the pair, let us caution you because in the history of researching and writing on all manner of topics to the tune of over 5,000 articles on our Todayifoundout website and over 2,000 videos here, we have never found any topic we’ve covered more rife with widespread and generally accepted myths when it came to BOTH the individuals we are going to cover today. So, dear viewers, get out your dinner and snacks or, if you’re watching this on the porcelain throne, prepare to have your legs fall thoroughly asleep while others in your household begin to wonder if you’ve died in there, because we are going to leave no stone unturned in order to try to rectify the rampant misinformation on both men
Author: Daven Hiskey
Host: Simon Whistler
Producer: Daven Hiskey
0:00 Intro
3:38 The Myth of the Edison vs Tesla Feud (And the Many Myths Embedded)
14:48 Why Tesla Stopped Working for Edison
17:40 The Love of Tesla’s Life
19:57 War of the Currents Myth
33:20 Did Edison Torpedo Tesla’s Invention of Radar?
36:23 What Tesla and Edison Had to Say About Each Other
42:46 The Real Story of Nikola Tesla
47:25 Tesla’s Visions
55:48 King of the Castle, A Master of His Domain
1:13:53 Tesla Coil
1:15:36 Magnifying Transmitter
1:16:37 X-Rays
1:17:17 Neon Lamp
1:18:04 Earthquake Machine
1:19:27 Making Students Bright
1:20:18 Solving the Enigma of Death
1:23:29 The Thought Camera
1:24:05 The Ozone Device
1:24:25 Tesla’s Rising and Falling Fame
1:34:18 Remote Control Boat
1:36:08 Inventing Radio
1:40:56 Ending the Tour and Rocky Mountain High
1:43:20 Talking to Aliens
1:52:35 The Tesla World System
1:58:45 Tesla’s Tower and Downfall
2:11:48 A Breakdown
2:13:13 The Tesla Turbine
2:17:03 The Bizarro Years
2:23:49 Tesla vs Einstein
2:26:13 Tesla’s Peculiar Habits
2:31:23 Tesla’s Legacy
2:40:20 Thomas Edison
2:42:27 A 12 Year Old on a Mission
2:46:51 You’ll Put Your Eye Out
2:49:17 Relentless Optimism
2:52:10 The Life You Save May Be Your Own
2:55:14 Whoopsadoodle
2:57:35 First Invention and Life Lessons
3:00:35 Making a Million Dollars By Keeping His Mouth Shut
3:05:17 A Kid In a Candy Shop And The Next Great Invention
3:07:09 Edison’s Actual Greatest Invention
3:10:56 Did He Actually Invent Hello?
3:13:10 Inventing The First Device to Play Back Sound
3:18:44 The Real Story of the Lightbulb
3:26:44 His Accidental Inventions That Massively Changed the World That Nobody Talks About
3:29:21 More Power Mister Scott!
3:30:41 A Death and an Adorable Nerdy Marriage Proposal
3:35:38 The Future of Inventing
3:38:14 The Motion Picture
3:41:02 Edison the Miner
3:42:43 Electric Cars
3:46:21 Stepping Back
3:47:56 Do No Harm And More WWI
3:50:07 His Last Work and Death
3:50:59 How Much was Edison and How Much was Other People’s Work?
3:54:07 The Face of the Brand
3:54:44 Working Style and what Did Edison s Workers Think of Him?
3:57:53 Working Environment
4:01:38 Stealing Ideas Part 2
4:03:34 Parents and a Ruthless Businessman
4:08:53 The Truth About Killing Animals
4:09:39 The Elephant Killing Myth
4:12:39 The Real Story of the War of the Currents and the Animal Thing
4:16:51 The Truth About the X-Ray
4:19:17 Back to the Truth About the War of the Currents, Animal Thing, and Electric Chair
4:25:29 Summing Up the Animal Killing Thing
4:26:56 Summing Edison Up
4:29:54 Who was Greater? Edison vs Tesla
source
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Tesla's backstory: The wrong kid died!
Tesla and Edison are definitely fascinating but this is a bit long.
Thanks so much for this video. I watched in several pieces over a couple of days.
It was well worth it due to the thoroughness of the documentation, and the use of both men’s own words.
I think far better of Edison now that I know more about him. I think some people were ready to think poorly about him because he seems the more “big businessman “ type and because earlier generations admired him unquestioningly. He was a much different and more interesting person than most people realized.
Tesla had some interesting ideas but never did the work to make most of them reality.
4.5hrs??? Yesss that’s clean my house long!! Thanks Simon and co!!! Woot
Woot!
My coworker is a Nikola Tesla fanboy. I started playing this video and he got so mad that he went out to his car and got his ear buds so he can listen to something else. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
I just wish this had been in that cold read format! I like hearing your comments.
I've read that What Tesla mistook for radio signals from Mars were actually Marconi's radio transmission tests.
Tesla described three beeps, at various frequencies, clearly of intelligent origin. Marconi was sending the Morse code "S" on a variety of frequencies, trying to find which would give him the longest range. Marconi produced the first radio transmissions,, but Tesla was already listening.
Tesla's description of the "world brain" where messages and images are sent all over the world establishing a regime of peace and global brotherhood is belied by the Internet.
Simon has endless content
Great content as usual. But at 3:36 you bring up a pet peeve of mine – “compare and contrast.” These two words are often used together. Who hasn’t been asked on an essay exam to compare and contrast something. But that’s wrong. These words are redundant. Dictionaries define “compare” as noting similarities AND dissimilarities. So part of comparing includes contrasting. It should be considered poor grammar to use them as if they have different meanings. They don’t.
I wonder if Tesla might have been blessed/cursed with a unique combination of autism, synesthesia, hyperphantasia, and possibly a few other types of neurodiversity. There seems to be a fine line between brilliance and madness sometimes, but he certainly sparked interest and inspiration around the world (pun intended).
Square space should be honored to have Simon as their spokesperson.
Edison was a thief
Tesla > Edison
So he is exactly like Elon.
Anyone else start thinking this was about Edison and Musk?
I have to say that this changed my opinion of Tesla significantly.
Yeah, I knew about this for a while. Having originally fallen for the Tesla myth myself. I looked into it a bit more and was shocked that it's pretty much the opposite of what the common internet myth would have you believe. Edison, well not perfect, was certainly the better scientist and engineer. Tesla… well his story is more sad than anything else.
Edison was a liar,a cheat and a fraud! Nice guys finish last I guess.
Since schools have been teaching 1above the other for decades, and schools have been notorious for pushing certain info as facts, based on popular politics, WITHOUT watching I’d say Tesla was screwed. Let’s see I’ll update after watching.
It sounds like Tesla was a maladaptive dreamer. At least from what i understand of it from Kati Morton
"I have built, demonstrated and used it."
"Err… in your head?"
"Yes."