Inventors that could have done more

[o1pickleboy]

Recently I was watching the "Men who built America" and it got me interest in Tesla and Edison. From school I have heard a lot about Edison so I researched Tesla. While looking into Tesla I discovered his career ending with him in debt and in poor mental health. That got me wondering how much Tesla would have discovered and invented if he had the resources there.

So what inventors do you think could have done more had they had the resources? What would they have produced? Same question can go for scientists too.

[Vibranium]

I would put Tesla at the top of that list

but there are also quite a few people who believe that Thomas Edison (with the backing of JP Morgan) saw Tesla as a threat to their ideas of setting electricity up as a business whereas Tesla believed it should be free and sought to sabotage him at every turn

[Paradox]

They were very different kinds of inventors. Tesla was a scientist who used practical application to make inventions. Edison was an inventor who wanted to make money. That's all he cared about, and had almost no ethics about it at all.

Capitalism has a tendency to fuck with innovation at times. See also Preston Tucker.

[JCAll]

It didn't help that Tesla was completely insane. It's that special kind of insane that can make science your bitch, but you still freak out if people touch you and spend half you life talking to pigeons.

[o1pickleboy]

They were very different kinds of inventors. Tesla was a scientist who used practical application to make inventions. Edison was an inventor who wanted to make money. That's all he cared about, and had almost no ethics about it at all.

Capitalism has a tendency to fuck with innovation at times. See also Preston Tucker.

So Edison would have been better if he wasn't greedy?

[Vibranium]

They were very different kinds of inventors. Tesla was a scientist who used practical application to make inventions. Edison was an inventor who wanted to make money. That's all he cared about, and had almost no ethics about it at all.

Capitalism has a tendency to fuck with innovation at times. See also Preston Tucker.

what is this "ethics" you speak of?

[Kees_L]

I would say girls, black people or any "minor classes" back in the day, including any blue collar types needing to do actual work instead of dreaming about sillyness like inventing?

I believe that in or up to the times of Tesla or Edison, only a happy few were allowed to educate themselves, like only a handful worldwide, who needed to be white men of proper upbringing mostly. As otherwise it'd look bad or something.

Tesla probably didn't limit himself to move within proper circles enough , or he just didn't have the right friends. Wasn't he pretty much bullied or slandered out of his patented radio invention, until after his death it was proven he did actually invent radio years before anybody else could have done?

[Michael P]

I'm kind of sick of the "Tesla as hero, Edison as villain" dichotomy. It's childish and simplistic. They were both human men, with their good qualities and their bad qualities, and they were both great scientists and inventors. ("Great" here ascribes no moral quality.)

I also doubt, a hundred years on, Tesla would appreciate being reduced to the status of victim, no matter how romantically.

[Vibranium]

I'm kind of sick of the "Tesla as hero, Edison as villain" dichotomy. It's childish and simplistic. They were both human men, with their good qualities and their bad qualities, and they were both great scientists and inventors. ("Great" here ascribes no moral quality.)

I also doubt, a hundred years on, Tesla would appreciate being reduced to the status of victim, no matter how romantically.

for the record, it was not my intent to make Tesla "the victim", I think what happened is that the country was at a tipping point in the Industrial Revolution and it tipped to favor the guy with the most money/motivation to get it done

[Michael P]

I'm talking in general. It's a meme that's swept the counterculture (or those who like to think of themselves as counterculture), and like most of those, it's rather dumb.

[Kees_L]

I'm kind of sick of the "Tesla as hero, Edison as villain" dichotomy. It's childish and simplistic. They were both human men, with their good qualities and their bad qualities, and they were both great scientists and inventors. ("Great" here ascribes no moral quality.)

I also doubt, a hundred years on, Tesla would appreciate being reduced to the status of victim, no matter how romantically.

Maybe there'd be a different point 'though, namely that only in our most recent times it might for some people be becoming more and more a happy reality that anybody could become to being anything, but that in less than recent times even a thing like genius or exquisite personal potential would NOT be necessarily leading to great things?

A lot of prestigeous privileged persons like Erasmus or leading scholars have complained in their time that education should be more accessible, for a reason, I'd say.

Plus idealizing reality would never be a good idea, not even in case of praising acclaim towards "great men" in their times? Since reality would be important as being real even if such would hurt or seem to tarnish some stuff?

[o1pickleboy]

It didn't help that Tesla was completely insane. It's that special kind of insane that can make science your bitch, but you still freak out if people touch you and spend half you life talking to pigeons.

If Tesla was given the resources would he still ended up crazy? Or was that brought on my the stress of his circumstances?

[JCAll]

If Tesla was given the resources would he still ended up crazy? Or was that brought on my the stress of his circumstances?

He was always kinda crazy is the point. Even if you gave him unlimited resources and his work completely changed the world (more than his work actually changed the world), he probably still would have died penniless and alone. Because things like money never mattered to him.

[mikekerrIII]

So Edison would have been better if he wasn't greedy?

He probably would not have been an inventor at all, he wasn't in it for fun.

[StoneGold]

I dunno, let's say the guy who invented edible underwear?