Tesla was a cheat, a liar and a charlatan. There is no real evidence that he invented anything. The one thing that poor old Westinghouse paid him for he took years to get to work after he sold Westinghouse the patents. Oddly someone else came up with an electric motor at the same time.... hm. Everything else was a scam.
Any wonderous thing you find on the internet with Tesla's name on it is also being pedaled by a cheat, a liar or a charlatan, just like the man himself.
How is this an acceptable take about Nikola Tesla, one of the greatest inventors of our time?
He’s entitled to his opinion, and Simon certainly has the tendency to take very extreme positions on things. I guess that’s his personality. I don’t fully agree with him, but I don’t really agree with you, either.
On the video he posted, I made this YouTube comment 2 years ago, which I think is a more balanced take on the matter:
This video mirrors what I have told people for years. What’s weird about Tesla is that it’s just this century that the history about him went all wacky. As someone who was aware of Tesla and his accomplishments long before that, it was really weird to see him go from “guy who invented a practical AC motor” known by nerds only, to “techno wizard visionary” revered by quacks and laypersons.
So they can have opinions and shut down and lock a thread based on their opinions?
Well, it does
look bad to post such a strong opinion as the closing post, insofar as it makes it look like it’s just a way to sneak in the last word. But I agree with IanB that the intent was likely just to not continue discussing Tesla quackery.
As I said 2 years ago: quacks and non-technical laypersons have come to deify Tesla to a degree (and in a direction) that is not actually supported by his work. I don’t think he was a charlatan, but I think he had a lot of ideas that were more or less fantasy. For some reason, some non-technical people latched onto that aspect of his work and glorify him based on it, which ultimately leads to some of them basically flogging quackery.
If Tesla died broke, doesn't that point to him not having the influence to be able to claim an invention over all others?
Huh?
He has a SI Unit named after him but he's a fraud. So then EVERYONE is a fraud.
Oh please, can we not descend into that level of “discourse”?