Nikola Tesla the greatest genius ever?

xelasnave · #1 11-03-2010, 02:59 PM

Have you ever taken the time to think who you would give the title "greatest genius in human history"?

It seems to me that there is only one person who could be awarded such a sweeping title..Nikola Tesla.

He invented so many things that are part of our daily lives...electric motor, AC current and radio are a few and any one of these inventions out rank things others have done.

It is interesting how some folk saw him as a crackpot pointing to some of his personal oddities as somehow diminishing his great works and brilliant mind and one can only suspect those who would call him such never took the time to consider the genius of his works.

Was he ever considered for (or awarded) the Noble prize I wonder...

There is now a great deal of information available on the Net covering this great man and many movies on utube covering his work and life....so if you have only wondered what this man did please do yourself a favour and take the time to look into the genius of the great man.

I cant think of anyone who comes close to his genius... past of present.

alex

TrevorW · #2 11-03-2010, 04:10 PM

I agree with you on the one Alex if not the greatest one of them

one of the devices provided the means to transmit electrical power through the air without the need for wires

I wonder why that one was not developed further

xelasnave · #3 11-03-2010, 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrevorW

I agree with you on the one Alex if not the greatest one of them

one of the devices provided the means to transmit electrical power through the air without the need for wires

I wonder why that one was not developed further

I dont think that one would work from what I have heard about it

.

I think at about the time he was working on that project (he had something built to impress investors and try it out but at that time he mentioned he had been talking to folk from outside our planet

...now if he were a smart man and he realised the thing was not going to work he may have said such to have folk talking about him being a nutter rather than be talking about his invention not working

...but so far I get the impression there is little hope for the idea..must look into it anyways...

alex

Waxing_Gibbous (Peter) · #4 11-03-2010, 07:47 PM

Being a nutter is no impediment to genius

.
However it does put investors off if you talk to your socks or live in a cave or something.
According to the TV show "Sanctuary", Tesla is actually an immortal who faked his own death, and lives-on behind-the-scenes, as it were.

I find this hard to believe, but not completely out of the question as I've done it four times in the last 700 years.

AlexN · #5 11-03-2010, 08:03 PM

I think a lot of the reason he was not held in such high regard as other great minds throughout history is because of the nature of some of his inventions and ideas... advanced weaponary etc... That said, Einstein was noted as the father of the atom bomb, and yet Einstein is a household name where Tesla is not...

Tesla would have to be up there... Can you imagine getting 10 of the top minds into one room? the arguments would be insane..

Tesla
Einstein
Plank
Dirac
Hubble
Darwin
Kepler
Newton
Galilei
Bohr

(in no particular order)

I think picking the single greatest mind to ever walk the planet would be like deciding which blade of grass in your lawn you like the most...

M_Lewis (Mark) · #6 11-03-2010, 08:10 PM

Tesla even died relatively unknown to the outside world, in his hotel room a sick old man. An injustice, being forgotten by the people to whom he gave so much to in what he achieved throughout his life.

There are some really great docu's on Tesla and some of his buildings he used directly for experiments still exist. The experiments themselves are long gone, but a university over in Americ is trying to recreate his last experiment which he never finished.

bobson (Bob) · #7 11-03-2010, 08:42 PM

Yes, Tesla was great man. He did light up 200 light globes on the distance of 45 km without any wires.

The investors didnt like this idea and said: "Sorry Mr. Tesla, but how are we going to charge people for using electricity?"

The Niagara Falls Electrane has his name on it.

There are some speculations about so called "Philadelphia experiment" where whole ships were made to disappear and reappear mills away. There is movie about it. There is little bit about it in the movie with our own Hue Jackman about magician tricks where person would be cloned with this device.

Tesla was about to get Nobel Price but would had to share it with Tomas Edison. But Edison declined it to share so they didnt get it. The fact of the matter is Edison stole many ideas from Tesla who BTW was never interested in money. Tesla came to USA and worked for Edison, but they didnt go along because Edison was persisting with DC power and Tesla for AC. AC won as we know and Edison wasnt happy about it. In the movie with Hue Jackman, Edisons people set fire on Teslas laboratory.

Tesla invented first wireless device but someone else took credit for it, I forgot the name of the fella.

Definitely great man.

that_guy (Tony) · #8 11-03-2010, 09:39 PM

it wasall thjomas edisonsfault, if we listen to tesla we would be so!! much far ahead in technology... Thomas went for alternate current, while tesla went for direct... tesla was way!! ahead of thomas but thomas was too famous!

Saturnine (Jeff) · #9 11-03-2010, 10:51 PM

I don't know if you can claim Tesla as the greatest genius, but then , does anybody deserve such a title. I first became aware of Nikola Tesla through a doco on tv late last century and became curious, hunted around and found a biography that had just been published called The Man Who Invented The Twentieth Century by Robert Lomas, a very interesting read and an eye opener as to the scope of his theories and inventions, can thoroughly recommend it as an insight to his talent for invention, to the way he was (mis)treated and ripped off by Edison and others and to his lack of entrepreneurial and financial skills. too busy thinking of more inventions and their uses to worry about money, except when he needed to finance more work. Tesla must surely be up near the top of the pile, at least of the industrial age, if not of all the ages.

REgards

Jeff

Waxing_Gibbous (Peter) · #10 11-03-2010, 11:23 PM

I think "stealing' is a bit harsh. Many, many people were experimenting with generating electricity at the time and neither Tesla nor Edison were the first to propose AC or DC. Merely the first to experiment with viable methods of generation.
Edison was a genius in his own right. Anyone can have a bright idea, but he could take an idea and develop it into a functioning, user-friendly, end-product.
Its a shame that Tesla ended his days as he did, but that was hardly Edison's "fault".

Anyway. Neither really one or lost in the philosophical sense. Electricity is generated as DC, turned into AC for transmission, and then 'transformed' back to DC by your home appliances.

TrevorW · #11 11-03-2010, 11:47 PM

Edison was no genius many stories have been written about how he borrowed other peoples ideas but obviously he was a shrewd businessman

Nesti (Mark) · #12 12-03-2010, 12:09 AM

My measuring stick might be a little different than most, because when I think of Genius, I have the images of someone who not so much thought stuff up and conducted experiments, or toyed with mathematics, but someone who went against the ardent mind of the day (or later: Darwin), and came up with something so revolutionary, it changed the way the average person looked at the world. The key for me is that it must have changed the rock solid mindset of the day, or made the impossible tangible.

So applying that as my standard, Galileo, Newton, Darwin and Einstein were four greats which immediately come to mind. I might also need to consider Buddha a Genius (the Guru, which means the 'destroyer of darkness', ie. the darkness within ones own mind). And what about Magellan, didn't he drastically change the way we view the world?

Even though I greatly admire Riemann, I cannot include him...nor Tesla, Planck, Dirac or Bohr for that matter.

Waxing_Gibbous (Peter) · #13 12-03-2010, 10:04 AM

Re Edison.
Everybody at that time and before and since, has been borrowing other peoples Ideas. It was an age of very open inquiry and "gentlemen" and inventors and academics were often in pursuit of the same thing. We have to go a loooooong way back to find an original idea that hasn't been recorded before.
Edison's business acumen was more than just 'shrewd' and genius need not be confined to pure science or theory. Indeed nobody gets a physics Nobel for the best theory.
Even Edison'shis only original contribution is modern R and D. That took a fair bit of genius in its own right.

drhemlock2 (James) · #14 12-03-2010, 10:26 AM

I do not want to start a fight on who was the best if not greatest genius of the times; I think that they all contributed what portions they were destined to contribute. We all know that genius is a small space away from madness or it seems that way. I love Einstein and the books that have been written about him and his work and theories even I have noticed that if you get more than one scientist in a room you end up with someone getting into an argument about a particular specialty that either of them share. But this is part of the scientific process at least it has always been since I have been involved with it. Tesla was a very intelligent man who because of his short comings with business matters found himself locked out of many things and often ripped off by those shrewder I am speaking of Thomas Edison and his son as well as Guglielmo Marconi using some of teslas radio equipment and arranging them in particular ways was able to win the Noble the contraption which I think both tesla and him should have shared but tesla would not due to his hatred for the man and Marconi’s attitude. He also had some dealings I think it was JB Morgan to build some of his things especially the Large Tesla Coil which he started but did not manage the build or money right. He was also known to party too much with he rich folk who loved him and well in NY even then it was expensive to live and as he did not favor money how he did the things he did without I will never know. I hope one day his work will be known and if he was not such a genius why was it that the government took all of his research. Course there is curiosity as to just what he was working on and for whom. I would suggest reading up on these men and see what made them tick you might find you have lots in common. Note: Keep in mind some of this is fact and some is opinion I like both Einstein and Tesla and admire Edison and his generation for what they did for America and business in general. Business is business I think the saying goes.
Thanks
Doc

xelasnave · #15 12-03-2010, 10:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by that_guy

it wasall thjomas edisonsfault, if we listen to tesla we would be so!! much far ahead in technology... Thomas went for alternate current, while tesla went for direct... tesla was way!! ahead of thomas but thomas was too famous!

I think it was the other way about

..Tesla was the alternating current man Edison was for DC. Thomas fried elephants

with AC to demonstrate its evil but I guess folk with no elephants in the family were happy to go AC

.. and so good they did or we would not have the grid.

alex

xelasnave · #16 12-03-2010, 11:04 AM

So where would we be without the grid and electric motors and radio.

The contribution Tesla made to our world takes time to consider more time than to write him off as a nutter.... maybe he did get his ideas from a friend "elsewhere"

.

Nevertheless all the names mentioned in this thread qualify for genius status and a commonality with all one could observe was all these great men were indeed a cut above the average human.
alex

Ric · #17 12-03-2010, 02:18 PM

I read somewhere that some of Tesla's experiments are being held under lock and key by the American military for further investigation.

I suspect that this may be a bit of an urban legend though.

TrevorW · #18 12-03-2010, 02:24 PM

Edison carried out a campaign to discourage the use [12] of alternating current, including spreading disinformation on fatal AC accidents, publicly killing animals, and lobbying against the use of AC in state legislatures. Edison directed his technicians, primarily Arthur Kennelly and Harold P. Brown,[13] to preside over several AC-driven killings of animals, primarily stray cats and dogs but also unwanted cattle and horses. Acting on these directives, they were to demonstrate to the press that alternating current was more dangerous than Edison's system of direct current.[14] He also tried to popularize the term for being electrocuted as being "Westinghoused". Years after DC had lost the "war of the currents," in 1902, his film crew made a movie of the electrocution with high voltage AC, supervised by Edison employees, of Topsy, a Coney Island circus elephant who had recently killed three men.
Edison opposed capital punishment, but his desire to disparage the system of alternating current led to the invention of the electric chair. Harold P. Brown, who was at this time being secretly paid by Edison, constructed the first electric chair for the state of New York in order to promote the idea that alternating current was deadlier than DC.[15]
When the chair was first used, on August 6, 1890, the technicians on hand misjudged the voltage needed to kill the condemned prisoner, William Kemmler. The first jolt of electricity was not enough to kill Kemmler, and only left him badly injured. The procedure had to be repeated and a reporter on hand described it as "an awful spectacle, far worse than hanging." George Westinghouse commented: "They would have done better using an axe."

avandonk · #19 12-03-2010, 02:56 PM

The people who really made a difference in my opinion are the ones who not only shifted the paradigm but threw it out the window!

James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein both said 'if I have seen further it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants'. These are both men who could see the really big picture!

Tesla had brilliant insight into what was then a wide open and limited field.

Edison in my opinion was a plodder that never had an original idea in his life. He is like most modern Americans today not only ignorant but unwilling to listen to well presented arguement and reason. As an example of his brilliance he tested over ten thousand substances to use as a filament in his electric light globe. Does this sound like someone who has even a glimmering of a grasp on the fundamentals of science! Electrocuting large mammals to prove a scientific point is still practiced in many states of the USA. It is called the death penalty!

Bert

Nesti (Mark) · #20 12-03-2010, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avandonk

The people who really made a difference in my opinion are the ones who not only shifted the paradigm but threw it out the window!

James Clerk Maxwell and Albert Einstein both said 'if I have seen further it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants'. These are both men who could see the really big picture!

Tesla had brilliant insight into what was then a wide open and limited field.

Edison in my opinion was a plodder that never had an original idea in his life. He is like most modern Americans today not only ignorant but unwilling to listen to well presented arguement and reason. As an example of his brilliance he tested over ten thousand substances to use as a filament in his electric light globe. Does this sound like someone who has even a glimmering of a grasp on the fundamentals of science! Electrocuting large mammals to prove a scientific point is still practiced in many states of the USA. It is called the death penalty!

Bert

"'if I have seen further it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants", twas originally quoted by Newton wasn't it?