How accurate is the Oatmeal comic "Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived?"

It was criticized by a writer at Forbes.com: http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/ And here is The Oatmeal's response: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response

The Oatmeal's Michael Inman and Alex Knapp of Forbes had a tit-for-tat debate about the relative merits and Tesla and Edison with Knapp championing Edison and Inman touting Tesla: http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response Me, I find Knapp more far more persuasive than Inman. He acknowledges Tesla's contributions and points out the pro-Tesla hyperbole in Inman's arguments.[1] Ultimately, Inman's argument boils down to a highly personalized glorification of Tesla's work and denigration of Edison that is unconcerned with historical accuracy. It's amusing but unconvincing. [1] I'm being generous in calling what Inman has put forward as an argument. It's a polemic, it's hyperbole but it's not a fair historical assessment. As Inman himself points out, "Lastly, I'm a comedian and I speak in hyperbole. If you sharpshoot my work you will find that I exaggerate for the sake of comedy." Yeah, you and legions of idiots on the Internets. The Internets are awash with this style of argumentation and there are better (and more principled) practitioners of it than Inman.

In the excellently researched and brilliantly written book about Tesla, "Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla : Biography of a Genius" by Marc Seifer, many of the points that are presented here are addressed in full.  Though the writer of this comic has a strong point of view, especially about Edison, which biases the facts and even stretches them, each of the points that he brings up are discussed in detail in the book.  The comic, in my opinion, is a decent outline of the facts about Tesla, though they should not be used as a source due to the bias of the comic. For example, it was not Edison who electrocuted animals, but his associate Harold P. Brown.  Also, there is some question as to whether or not the tower Tesla was building at Wardenclyffe would have ever produced the results Tesla predicted.  As another example, the radio waves the Tesla picked up from "outer space", as described in the book, were probably coming from tests that Marconi was doing for the Royal Navy at the time, and not from outer space, as Tesla assumed at the time.  Though Tesla most certainly developed and patented the fundamental components of the radio, and he deserved the credit for it, he never demonstrated the radio to a large audience and never developed the practical applications of it.  Tesla won a lawsuit in France over the patents for the radio, but his legal action in the US was halted due to WWI.  Tesla was an amazing genius, wizard, and ultra-geek- but for the truth behind many of the myths about it, please do yourself a favor and read the book by Marc Seifer.

It's actually pretty sad how many times the Oatmeal comic has been linked to and used as a reference to questions about Nikola Tesla on Quora.  It's also pretty sad that many people joining the cult of Tesla and worshiping him are doing so based on a comic strip.As soon as I see someone use the Oatmeal comic as a reference to Tesla, anything else in that thread loses credibility. That's not to say that all the comments in the Oatmeal comic are entirely false, just that the story is told as an exaggerated cartoon.  Like any parody or satire, it draws attention to a topic, and makes you think about an issue. You don't use it as a reference or a statement of fact. The problem with satire that uses over the top exaggerations trying to be funny, the element of truth in the story becomes overshadowed by the story. We live in a world where opinions are greatly influenced by comic book memes and YouTube videos. Such is the case of the legacy of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Both men were probably geniuses, both men were more than a little bit crazy. It makes for a good story to tell when one is the hero and the other is the villain.Finding accurate information on Tesla takes some digging. Many of the biographies of Tesla are written by people who admired him.  Most of the websites about Tesla are by people promoting his legacy.  I have found the PBS documentary and website to be one of the most thorough and least biased sources for a basic biography of Tesla.The PBS Tesla Master of Lightning series, has a fact filled website and a movie. Also a copy of the movie you can download at http://archive.orghttp://www.pbs.org/tesla/ https://archive.org/details/TeslaMasterOfLightning Also my own thoughts here: http://geekhistory.com/content/nikola-tesla-versus-thomas-edison-and-search-truth