Biggest impact
Most forward thinking
Edison’s enduring legacy isn’t a specific patent or
technology, but his invention factories, which divided the
innovation process into small tasks that were carried out
by legions of workers, DeGraaf said. For instance, Edison
got the idea for a moving picture camera, or kinetoscope
from a talk by photographer Edward Muybridge, but
then left most of the experimentation and prototyping
to his assistant William Dickson and others. By having
multiple patents and inventions developing in parallel,
Edison, in turn, ensured that his assistants had a stable
financial situation to continue running experiments and
fleshing out more designs.
“He invents modern innovation as we know it,” DeGraaf
said.
Tesla’s inventions are the backbone of modern power
and communication systems, but he faded into obscurity
later in the 20th century, when most of his inventions
were lost to history. And despite his many patents and
innovations, Tesla was destitute when he died in 1943.
PHYSICS
DEPARTMENT
Though the light bulb, the phonograph and moving
pictures are touted as Edison’s most important
inventions, other people were already working on
similar technologies, said Leonard DeGraaf, an archivist
at Thomas Edison National Historical Park in New Jersey,
and the author of “Edison and the Rise of Innovation”
(Signature Press, 2013).
“If Edison hadn’t invented those things, other people
would have,” DeGraaf told Live Science.
In a shortsighted move, Edison dismissed Tesla’s
“impractical” idea of an alternating-current (AC) system
of electric power transmission, instead promoting his
simpler, but less efficient, direct-current (DC) system.
By contrast, Tesla’s ideas were often more disruptive
technologies that didn’t have a built-in market demand.
And his alternating-current motor and hydroelectric
plant at Niagara Falls— a first-of-its-kind power plant —
truly electrified the world.
Tesla also spent years working on a system designed to
wirelessly transmit voices, images and moving pictures
— making him a futurist, and the true father of radio,
telephone, cell phones and television. [Creative Genius:
The World’s Greatest Minds]
“Our entire mass communication system is based on
Tesla’s system,” said Marc Seifer, author of “Wizard: The
Life and Times of Nikola Tesla,” (Citadel Press, 2001).
Unfortunately, Tesla’s grand scheme failed when his
financial backer, J.P. Morgan, became fed up with years
of failure.
Best dinner party guest
At the height of his career, Tesla was charismatic, urbane
and witty. He spoke several languages and counted
writers Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling, and naturalist
John Muir as friends, according to Seifer.
“He moved in very high circles,” Seifer said.
But Tesla could also be haughty and was known to be a
hygiene freak. In his later years, his obsessive tics (such
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