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pier4r OP t1_j8rwi10 wrote

Why I find it interesting:

The internet in the last decade hyped Tesla a lot. I didn't dig into his history, but I assumed he was someone unmatched, a polymath able to do everything.

The author is amazing, she went to a lot of primary sources and I was appalled to discover that practically Tesla got Nobelitis after some very successful patents.

Further Tesla was far from being mathematical. Apparently he had a great intuition, but couldn't follow his ideas with the proper mathematics. Last but not least his ideas weren't, like, decades ahead of everyone else. The 3 phase transmission was already implemented and perfected (not only patented) in Germany by a Polish-Russian Engineer, while wifi communications were done by G.Marconi pratically identical like Tesla's patent.

Further: there is also a video on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSyGFEjoYOM

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bigperm8645 t1_j8uxlvf wrote

If you're ever in Barcelona, visit Cosmo Caixa, they have an excellent exhibit on Tesla, he was a pretty remarkable guy, with a lot of self doubt, and eventually did kinda lose it later in life. A lot of other fun stuff at that musuem as well

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TeaBoy24 t1_j8wemsd wrote

Yeah. It's was interesting to see the hype wave as someone whom known of Tesla and his work prior to it and knew that he wasn't well known.

I would actually attribute a lot of the sensation to the Company Tesla... As the name obviously makes people search and curious about the company's name's meaning.

It's really weird how idealised be became. The Awkward Autro-Hungarian of Serbian decent whim fell in love with a Pigeon due to severe loneliness, likely depression and desperation. Pretty much forgotten compared to his peers like Edison when though his tech would be what especially appears as "Victorian Schi-fi". He died poor and alone, surrounded by pigeons in his New York apartment.

So i would really not call him recognised... Idealised or Unknown is what first most people's ideas of him. He was Clever, but he was nowhere near Davinci level of Clever ... Relative to each others times respectively.

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jrhooo t1_j927yqh wrote

> Yeah. It's was interesting to see the hype wave as someone whom known of Tesla and his work prior to it and knew that he wasn't well known.

Mentioned this above, but short version, I think Tesla got a huge notoriety bump in pop culture for a while, not because he's Tesla, but just because he was written as the "face" in one streak of the ever popular "things your teachers told you wrong, the hero was a heel" type stories (Edison)

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