Interesting article. Thanks. One other person should perhaps have been included in that list, one time employee and business adversary of Edison, Nikola Tesla, the father of AC power generation and radio(no, it wasn't Marconi).
[ QUOTE ] Flying Turtle said:
Nikola Tesla, the father of AC power generation and radio(no, it wasn't Marconi).
[/ QUOTE ]
Well, not exactly.
Radio can't be invented, since radio waves exist in nature; it can only be harnessed. So, who gets the credit? Maxwell, who mathematically showed the possibility of the existence of radio waves? Or maybe Hertz, who actually found them? Marconi, who popularized their use? Or Mahlon Loomis, who was probably the first to demonstrate their harnessing?
Yes, Tesla was in there, but the "inventor" of radio? Nope - too many other people were there too.
Tesla worked for Edison for a while, they didn't get along [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] Tesla understood the workings of radio and demonstrated the necessary principals before marconi, but marconi saw other uses for it and made them commercial where Tesla wasn't interested. Tesla is more than the "father of AC power generation" but invented every motor and generator and transformer and distribution stuff necessary to make it work. DC would have been a miserable failure for a global power network.
The museum of science and industry in Chicago used to have a lot of edison generators and models and such. They had a working Edison bi-polar generator that they would run up to power an arc light once in a while. This was one of the high points for me visiting there as a child. Unfortunately it's all gone now replaced with what I would consider much less interesting science and industry.
I recently made a pilgrimage to Edisons summer place in Ft Myers florida. Really fun to see if you're ever down that direction. I took a bunch of pictures:
Thomas Edison: Wizard of Menlo Park
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