NIKOLA TESLA vs. THOMAS EDISON:
WHO WAS THE BETTER INVENTOR?
Nikola Tesla , the Serbian-American scientist was a
brilliant and eccentric genius whose inventions enabled
modern-day power and mass communication systems.
His nemesis and former boss, Thomas Edison, was
the iconic American inventor of the light bulb, the
phonograph and the moving picture. The two feuding
geniuses waged a “War of Currents” in the 1880s over
whose electrical system would power the world —
Tesla’s alternating-current (AC) system or Edison’s rival
direct-current (DC) electric power.
Amongst science nerds, few debates get more heated
than the ones that compare Nikola Tesla and Thomas
Edison. So, who was the better inventor?
“They’re different inventors, but you can’t really say
one is greater, because American society needs some
Edisons and it needs some Teslas” said W. Bernard
Carlson, the author of “Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical
Age” (Princeton Press, 2013).
From their starkly different personalities to their lasting
legacies, here’s how the two dueling inventors stack up.
[Vote: Tesla vs. Edison - Who Was the Greatest Inventor
of All Time?]
Most brilliant
Tesla had an eidetic memory, which meant he could very
precisely recall images and objects. This enabled him to
accurately visualize intricate 3D objects, and as a result,
he could build working prototypes using few preliminary
drawings.
“He really worked out his inventions in his imagination,”
Carlson told Live Science.
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In contrast, Edison was more of a sketcher and a tinkerer.
“If you were going to [the] laboratory and watch him at
work, you’d find he’d have stuff all over the bench: wires
and coils and various parts of inventions,” Carlson said.
In the end, however, Edison held 1,093 patents,
according to the Thomas Edison National Historic Park.
Tesla garnered less than 300 worldwide, according to
a study published in 2006 at the Sixth International
Symposium of Nikola Tesla. (Of course, Edison had scores
more assistants helping him devise inventions, and also
bought some of his patents.)