My bro and I have been arguing over who is better nikola tesla or thomas edison?

• I believe tesla is better cause he created over 800 inventions, and edison took most of tesla's inventions because tesla worked for him.

• Answer:

  WHAT? This answer, if informed, answers itself. Edison was a great man amongst great men (he certainly wasn't you're average businessman). However his solution to supply energy to NYC in the mid-late nineteenth century lead to the SKY being OBSCURED by the TONS of wires and cables and poles which his system was facilitated by. His DC system also required for power stations to be built every 1-2 miles which is sheer lunacy. In addition the current was unstable and it lead to horses being constantly shocked in the streets because of their metal shoes. Tesla's visionary AC polyphase system is why we have widespread electricity today. Edison conspired purely (understandably) for self-survival, against the AC system which was superior, and because of this it won out in the end. I don't perceive that Edison hated Tesla (he might have done) and I'm sure that Tesla didn't hate Edison, even though he scammed him out of one years pay saying to Tesla, after Tesla requested the 50,000 dollars promised to him for re-inventing Edison's lab and updating the equipment - he is reported to have said "Yeah right as if I'm going to pay you - you can't take a joke" and Tesla understandably left immediately. (this is paraphrased although you can easily find the original quote). Furthermore, Edison used to execute animals (dogs, cats, an ELEPHANT) using massive amounts of unstable AC current to try and prove to the press and the people that this perfected form of AC current was a hazard to human health. Consequently Edison (and I think some of his staff of course) were responsible for the "electric chair" which has barbarically executed so many felons since. The chair uses DC incidentally since it is of greater use in electrocution to death. So, frankly, though Edison is by no means a villan, in retrospect if you look at ACTUAL history, he did by his own making seem a bit of a dick. Tesla is more obscured however perhaps because the American institution has tried to erase him from history and certainly education, probably because of his later career exploits in weather control, scalar wave technology and various other amazing things which we may never learn about, he has attained inevitable cult status and is a hero to artists, scientists and visionaries everywhere, not least his home lands of eastern Europe. As a final point, I can't believe that some of these people answering this question have said Edison - the irony is amazing. Everyone remembers Edison's name in history even though he was brilliant he did plagarise some ideas and furthermore most of his 'discoveries' and inventions were replaced by others - notably of Tesla. Nobody was given a chance to learn about Tesla in school and without him, none of us would be writing on these computers today, they'd be Flinstonian (an exaggeration but important to remember). We'd also possibly not have torpedoes or sinister projects like H.A.R.R.P. if it weren't for Tesla either. The guy was brilliant, his visionary genius was over the top though, much of his assumptions (communication with E.T., his theories on advanced harmonic frequencies, the assumption that free wireless energy was physically possible &c) were incorrect. However he did invent insane numbers of patents which were used by everyone else often claimed for their own (Marconi for example the pompous Italian git) he also invented the first ever documented remote control device which in a literal sense makes him the father of robotics and cybernetics which is pretty big if you think about it. Two extraordinary examples (from reading a biography of his) are (1) his experiments with x-ray PRIOR to Rontgen although he did not publish not patent his findings and (2) his invention of LASER prior to it's 'discovery' for Christ's sake, which he similarly did not publish. Basically yes, it's true that Edison and many others like good old Marconi actually brought us the practical and usable application of many early types of technology. However the longevity of Tesla's legacy far outstrips almost any other inventor in the last two hundred years of history. If the AC polyphase motor was his ONLY contribution it would be enough to give him a a memorable position in history. That he contributed so much more, conceptually and practically is the stuff of legend come to life.