The Who2 Blog

Tesla: Again With The ‘He Was Forgotten’ Stuff?

Poor Nikola Tesla. That’s pretty much how the genius inventor is depicted these days — Poor Nikola Tesla. Take this little video, for example:

The video is well done, it’s charming and it’s a quick lesson about the career of Nikola Tesla. Like everything about Tesla, it could be titled The Life of Nikola Tesla, or That Bastard Edison. Follow the video to YouTube and you’ll see lots more about Tesla. Because now Tesla is absurdly famous as a guy nobody knows about.

“Forgotten by the history books,” they always say about Tesla. But I’ve heard about Tesla since I was a kid in the 1960s. Yes, I heard more about Thomas Edison, but I knew who Tesla was while I was growing up. I never heard word one about George Westinghouse or Philo T. Farnsworth, by the way.

I’m demanding the world stop referring to Nikola Tesla as “forgotten.” You simply can’t keep talking about someone for years and years as being “forgotten.” We all know Tesla was a brilliant guy who got rooked by Edison and died broke and alone in a hotel room. Thousands of people turned out for his funeral in New York City, so he wasn’t exactly forgotten at the time of his death, either.

It’s time we stopped pining away for Nikola Tesla like an ex-lover we let slip through our fingers oh those many years ago. For one thing, it’s not much of an honor for Tesla to be thought of as Poor Nikola Tesla.

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