Tesla Sceptics... (It's not too late to give Tesla the recognition he deserves!)

[RichTheDude]

RTD again understanding his psyche is important to understanding his technical creations because they go hand in hand, you can't exclude the mind in science as science well knows through things like the placebo effect for one and various group dynamics, not to even mention politics. A large chunk of the entire reason he ended up in a technical field is because he exhibited savant like abilities with integral calculus, basic understanding far beyond what 'normal' people would be able to achieve even hard at study and it is a DIRECT reflection and how he viewed and approached the world. His personal social beliefs are even more dramatically outside of average. Again this isn't to say those beliefs were wrong or somehow that being 'not normal' is a bad thing, but his basic psychological structure was fundamentally different from what any 'normal' human being can possibly understand because they think like normal people.

Lets discuss this rationally and a little less sensationally from this point on...

I actually submit journal and conference papers in the EE field, and to date non of them have required me to answer questions on my personal psyche/ psychological structure/politics/beliefs or anything else like that.

Oddly enough, peer review assesses my work on it's technical merit, achievements and novelty, nothing else. Academic and engineering institutions do not care about any of these other aspects, and rightfully so.

If I have a paper submission require me to fill in such questionnaires I will gladly let you have this point

 

[Sceadwian]

RTD, right, Tesla's already gone through that process, his history is writ.

A few individuals are trying to re-write history in order to use some of Tesla's notoriety and personality to spark cash flow into their cause.
Junk politics, no one involved gives a flying 'whatever' about what Tesla did, who he was or why he was the way he was as is shown in stark contrast to what is well documented about Tesla, his life this thoughts personality and pscyological makeup.


RTD, if you'd care to add to the discussion by posting a clear declaration of the technical merit of one of Tesla's patents or 'ideas' I would welcome it.

This has NOTHING to do with academic or engineering institutions. What is hidden behind the guise of trying to raise this money is the fact that the money will be matched up to 500,000 by a grant, previous to this comic and Internet campaign had only raised about 50k dollars, they didn't want to botch their matching funds possibilities.

Mind you from what little I know the goals of the people that started this are good. But Tesla is not some god king on earth of technological advancement or scientific understanding. He was just an opportunist with a few very public quirks.

I don't care who will benefit from him being placed on a pedestal of technological merit that he does not deserve unless it can be proven that he deserves that place.

I welcome again any additions not to argument but to simple logical and clear definition of what Tesla did that no one else before him has done and no one since him had advanced.

Deliberate use of radio waves as remote control is very close, but again the fundamental concept behind that is not new, and he didn't fundamentally advance radio tele comunications outside of the Tesla coil which design was evolved functionally very quickly past that stopgap measure.

 

[Hayato]

By the time you have an unit named "Sceadwian", like Gauss, Tesla, Maxwells or Webbers, I think you gonna be in positon to call him an opportunist or not.

I don't care if he invented the polyphase AC or not, or how many patents he has. The thing is, instead of being just in philosophical areas, trying to take way the merit from others, he just entered the practical field and made things work. While Edson was busy electocuting animals in public trying to destroy his name, Tesla just went there and built Niagara Falls.

Words are only valid when they become actions.

 

[Mikebits]

Radio wasn't invented no matter what the history books say, it was discovered, it's a fundamental property of our universe not something that someone invented!

Semantics only you would quibble about. He discovered ways to harness and use EM radiation. Nuf said.

 

[RichTheDude]

I can see I am wasting my time. Stating polyphase is not important to society was bordering on absurd, and there is still no reason at all to try and taint his achievements with his personal life. I was making a point that institutions do not care about "psychological" aspects, and neither should engineers or scientists.

First thing I was taught before going to conferences was question the science, never the person.

 

[nsaspook]

Tesla was great at innovation and improvement. Innovation is the process of taking a existing technology and developing it to full potential as a practical and useful product in ways probability never conceived by the inventor.

Take indoor plumbing, who gets the fame for this wonderful technology? Is it some poor inventor who long ago first understood the principles of suction, solid flow and gravity(John Harrington)? No, it's this guy (In America) whose name is instantly recognized as the wizard of the technology.

https://www.thomas-crapper.com/

So Tesla like Crapper deserves their due.

https://www.uta.edu/english/ees/fulltext/jorgensen3.html

 

[Sceadwian]

Rich, you seriously must be deliberately misreading my posts...

RTD, 3 phase motors are irrelevant to the point Hayato was trying to make when he stated Tesla invented polyphase power generation which is false

Polyphase power is not relevant to Hayato's claim that modern devices would not exist without Tesla's inventions. Polyphase power is better in many ways than single phase but it is not required for any fundamental type of device to function. Induction motors have benefits over DC or single phase AC motors yet massive numbers of DC and single phase AC motors (as well as universal motors) exist in the world today.

Tesla was the first person to notice that the effects of out of phase AC signals on power systems, theoretically however the induction motor goes to Galileo Ferraris because he described an induction motor in a scientific paper 2 months before Tesla filed for his patent.

Another name no one here probably knows anything about because they haven't done much research on this would be Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, who paralleled (independently) Tesla's development of the induction motor in Russia.


I'm sorry but I stand by more core statements here.. Tesla is not some genius epic inventor that without his existence on this earth we'd still be grovelling in mud holes, and that his exaltation to hero status is an affront to all the other nameless developers of scientific advancement. I'm not skipping over him because history didn't skip over him! He got his name as a derived unit for magnetism flux density.

 

[bryan1]

[MODNOTE]Removed. Even if something is classed as on topic, if it's a directed insult to a member it's breaking the rules.[/MODNOTE]

 

[3v0]

Sceadwian in this age we need scientific heroes and Tesla is one of them.

Most people are just cogs in the wheel of life. Generally they only contribute to the over population problem. We owe much to the few who do jobs that can only be done by a small fraction of people. We owe even more to the people like Tesla who are brave enough to do the sort of work he did.

 

[ericgibbs]

hi,
Its obvious that this thread has degenerated into a slanging match between members and is serving no useful purpose, so I am closing it.

Moderation.E