Nikola Tesla would have been 156 today. You should celebrate by reading The Oatmeal’s comic on why Tesla was the greatest geek ever and his response to Forbes’ criticisms of that comic.
(Yes, I’m using the term “comic” very loosely here, it’s mostly text)
July 10, 2012 at 12:29 pm
I’m not sure comparing Tesla and Edison is all that useful. IMO, Edison’s most important invention wasn’t any piece of hardware, it was the industrial research laboratory more or less as we know it today as a method for amplifying the genius of the top researchers. It’s a lot easier to build something if one can set the basic design for something and hand it off for techs to do the actual building.
July 11, 2012 at 2:10 am
One of the things that amazed me the most about Nikola Tesla (apart from all his inventions) was the extent with which he was able to run simulations in his mind. He could design a machine in his imagination and then imagine it running for so and so many hundred ours, and he would see in his mind the wear and tear with microscopic precision.