I bet that rich dumb ass would love this comparison.

  • db2@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    It’s amazing that it’s been 12 years since Elon had this image deleted from the internet:

    Image of Elon being a douche

      • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Yeah people are desperate to believe ‘Edison evil, Tesla jesus’ it’s so weird. I get that it was like a cool fact online twenty years ago but there have been so many actual historical documentaries showing how complex and interesting the real story was.

        Truth is neither of them invented anything from scratch, - AC generators, motors (useless), transformers, and lights were in use before Tesla even began his big invention. He was a name in a long list of people who worked together understanding the newly emerging field of electronics - if Westinghouse or Barrington had made outrageous claims to allure conspiracy theories then they might have got the Tesla treatment by thy internet instead and we’d only hear of Tesla in the science museum while they’d be regarded at saintly heros of science.

        I like Tesla but there are so many interesting stories

        • AppleTea@lemmy.zip
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          8 months ago

          electrocuting an elephant to death, and for no better reason than tabloid advertising, kind of stands out in the historical record

          that’s not to say Edison was PURE EVIL, just that I always remember the elephant alongside the more humanizing factoids. [Once, he asked a math student to find the volume of a lightbulb. The student started doing all kinds of caliper measurements and geometry calculations. Edison just filled the bulb with sand and tipped it out into a measuring cup]

          • VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works
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            8 months ago

            Except in realityit seems he was against the elephant being killed but said electrocution would be more humane than the hanging which had happened to ‘murderous mary’, his opinion being something the aspca also supported.

            The assholes in this story are the themepark owners that upon being unable to sell Topsy decided to kill her as a spectacle to gain publicity, A previous attempt elsewhere to electrocute an elephant had failed so they also used other measures. They poisoned her. Electrocuted her and strangled her with a steam powered winch.

            They did use locally supplied power from the Edson Co but this was because it was a decade after war of the currents and Edison was the main supplier of AC to NYC, they certainly weren’t trying to promote its danger. Plus he no longer owned that company, he’d sold to GE and it still used his name.

            The Edison film company did film it but again no evidence the man himself was involved, they filmed short clips of specticals and news events which could be viewed in a slot machine. It’s upsetting but people were a lot less caring about animals back then, it wasn’t especially shocking that this happened or was recorded.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          8 months ago

          if Westinghouse or Barrington had made outrageous claims to allure conspiracy theories then they might have got the Tesla treatment by thy internet instead and we’d only hear of Tesla in the science museum

          Hey now, you get to hear about Westinghouse plenty in the railroad museums. A variation of the Westinghouse brake design is still in use on modern trains to this day

  • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    This meme hurts me physically every time it gets reposted. It is not a complete picture of anything, it’s just easy to make people thoughtlessly accept stories if they shit on Elon, who to be clear deserves it. Those two guys were the first guys who started Tesla to bring the work of AC Propulsions to market. They are first and foremost tech millionaires (now quite likely billionaires) and do not deserve idolization either. The engineers of AC Propulsion ie Wally Rippel who also helped design the EV1 are the ones who actually made the technology happen.

    The Tesla guys had the idea to put the tzero concept and tech into production shoved into a Lotus Elise and to market it to silicon valley investors as essentially a tech company. Elon was the main investor who went for it, also after speaking to AC Propulsion about putting the tzero into production. The rest is pretty well documented history of Elon being a huge asshole who accomplished very little if anything off his own merit while pushing out everyone around him.

    But as far as “These are the real founders of Tesla” goes, the only things they did on their own was suggest AC Propulsions to put the tzero into production a bit sooner than Elon and deciding to create a tech startup to license the tzero technology and put it into a Lotus and style it as a tech company. If you want to inform people of the real heroes behind the electric car and Tesla, teach people about the tzero, AC Propulsion, Wally Rippel, and the other engineers who made the battery electric vehicle a feasible reality.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Perhaps, but the point stands that the specific thing called “Tesla” was founded by these guys, and Musk went through quite some headaches to be retconned as a founder of that thing, so it’s on point to drive it home that he wasn’t even that.

      Fair point that “Tesla” isn’t really the great brains behind the original core tech, but that’s not the feather in the cap that Musk was going for, so it’s a bit moot toward the end of undermining his status of “founder” of Tesla.

      • pressanykeynow@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        So the meme isn’t “give the brilliant guy what he deserves” but just “let’s shit on Musk”.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          More, “let’s shit on rich assholes that pretend to invent shit that they had nothing to do with.” Edison at least may have had one original thought with the incandescent light bulb filament, but even that one is debatable. Musk is just another rich fuck, like Edison, that has come along to buy and claim credit for tons of shit he never even tangentially thought of.

    • AVincentInSpace@pawb.social
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      8 months ago

      This meme isn’t about who invented the technology though. Everyone with 0.25 of a brain knows business majors break out in hives when they get that close to actual work. This meme is about who founded the Tesla Motor Corporation, and who demanded credit for having done so despite having done nothing except show up with gobs of money once their business strategy was already proven.

      • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        The business strategy wasn’t remotely proven though, it was still just an idea, no part of the car was designed yet. It was two people who had no idea how to design a car doing the groundwork to start a company working with Lotus and AC Propulsion and then a few months later it was three with Ian Wright lending some business work with the relationship between Lotus and AC Propulsion, then a few months later it was four with Elon who lent money and knew about as much about designing a car as the previous three, then a few months later it was five and they finally had a CTO at least.

  • Rubanski@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    It’s incredible. Musk held all the aces, Tesla, SpaceX, Crypto (debatable). He was viewed as a pioneer, as a philanthropist. But it seems social media fucks up every one of us. Image Nixon, it would have been immensely insightful if we had social media back then EDIT: Nixon would have been a smart Trump, fuck that timeline

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      It really is incredible, the potential place in history he pissed away. But I guess you can’t end up a multi billionaire if you’re the type of person that knows when it’s OK to stop.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, there were a few people who knew better that were telling everyone, but no one listened and everyone in the world was lining up to kiss his ass. Putting him in various popular movies and shows as the greatest luminary of our time. While people who knew him were writing credible reports that he is just a very lucky douche who is also a giant megalomanic.

      Can’t imagine being his first wife and having her experiences and sharing those experiences and the world seeming to gaslight her that he’s actually a brilliant flawless man.

    • aidan@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Nixon Foundation has been posting edits of him on their Youtube channel, tons of pro-Nixon comments

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    8 months ago

    Ironic that the company is named Tesla.

    Nikola is probably rolling in his grave. May that glorious man rest in peace.

    • Shou@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He was amazing at math and physics, but he was a grade A douchebag.

        • Shou@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          He was, but not due to his OCD. He just straight up hated women. A bit more so than every other man at the time. His autobiography gives his opinion. He hated women, especially if they wore pearls. Which may have been his mental illness flavoring the hate. He also fell in love with a pidgeon. Can’t really blame the fella. Pidgeons are very social animals. Best bird to have as a pet.

    • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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      8 months ago

      Nicola is spinning so hard in his grave, you can hook it up to a dynamo and supply electricity to a whole town.

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I wonder if the original founders named it in honour of Tesla and then elon had to come in and ruin it all

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        And just like Edison, Elon swooped in and bought up all their IP and took all the credit for their inventions/work.

        Edison did it with Nikolas ideas when he was working for him, and now Elon did it with something that was named to honor the man.

        Tesla gets shafted yet again.

        I can’t help but wonder what he could have accomplished if someone, literally anyone had continued to fund him, and help him continue his efforts for the remainder of his natural life. Maybe we would be flying around in wirelessly powered personal vehicles. Who knows? But the ideas he had led to some of the most significant advances in technology for years. Pretty much our entire modern life is thanks to Tesla’s inventions, either directly or indirectly.

        Even something as simple as AC electricity delivery… What a genius. Easily on the top of my list of best inventors.

        His personal life and some of his opinions there may have been a bit problematic, but it would be difficult to deny that he was a brilliant inventor.

  • kindenough@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    Would Elon have fried an elephant with a Tesla car battery nowadays just to make a point how bad the competition is?

    Well I bet he would.*

    • Edison had technically nothing to do with the killing of Topsy, it was a decade after the ‘war of the currents’. It was distributed through Edison films though.
  • joneskind@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    They found Tesla but did they found TwitterCars though? And SpaceTwitter huh? DiggerTwitter? See? Not everyone can do 4D Chess like TwitterBoy.

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    They still sold out so that Nikola’s name could be dragged down to hell while they sip drinks on the beach. The cost to the rest of us is incalculable.

  • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    So instead of one dumb guy founding Tesla and running it into the ground, TWO dumb guys gave everything over to another dumb guy to run it into the ground. Masterful gambit !

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Note that the lawsuit didn’t “determine”, it was settled out of court, so there was no determination of fact.

      Instead the parties agreed to let Musk call himself a founder for undisclosed terms. Musk basically paid for people to let him use that title as part of the settlement.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Don’t forget Marconi, he was also a deeply screwed-up individual who betrayed many along the way and thus was undeserving of the Nobel Prize he did receive.

    Marconi basically used the patent system to raid British research institutes, violating each and every gentleman’s agreement along the way. And he did it with money from the British postal or telegram offices, who he unceremoniously dumped on the eve of unveiling his wireless contraption.

  • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    8 months ago

    My brain somehow read the title as “Tesla was the Elon Musk of his era,” and I got so mad for a split second that I think I may have an aneurysm to deal with in 5 years.

    • turmacar@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      He wasn’t.

      The War of the Currents was Edison and Westinghouse. The elephant was executed by the ASPCA and filmed by the Edison Studios years after, that company had been sold by Edison years before. The payment argument was Tesla and a manager.

      Tesla and Edison wrote each other personal letters and spoke well of each other in public years later.

      Edison was an asshole. Tesla’s ‘legend’ is weird.

      • samus12345@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        Interesting, I even did quick search before posting that to see if I was right. Upon more searching, their rivalry does indeed seem to be more of an urban legend.

        • turmacar@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          It’s definitely at least “Internet Lore” at this point? I mean the car company isn’t a namesake for no reason. I don’t want to give The Oatmeal too much credit but it seems to have been the meme generator for a lot of ‘the legend’ on the web, though it’s been kind of a counter-culture staple basically since he died.

          IDK, just one of those things that I got interested enough to read actual books about awhile ago and it’s kind of scary how much “common knowledge” is more “common mythology”.

      • hakase@lemm.ee
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        8 months ago

        Here’s a great in-depth video on Edison and his relationship with Tesla. It seems that Edison was actually remarkably progressive for the time in a lot of ways, and, while not perfect, he seems to have been a much better employer than many of his rivals.

        Edit: Lol and then like ten hours after this comment they dropped a four and a half hour video going into much more detail about both.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        8 months ago

        Agreed on Tesla’s legend. Telsa was terrified of fat women and talked to pigeons. He also didn’t even understand the concept of transistors, let alone microchips. And yet we’re supposed to believe he invented all these amazing things that approach magic in their abilities and utility?

        • Jarix@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          What are you on about?!

          Tesla died a poor man 4 years before bell labs created the first transistor.

          The microchip was invented about 15 years after he died.

          Perhaps he would have understood or even created these concepts if he had the funding he probably should have given his remarkable successes and contributions to the entire field of electrical engineering when he was still able to contribute. But unlikely sure. Not why you sre saying these weird things

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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            8 months ago

            Why would he have understood those concepts before they were invented just because people gave him money?

            • Jarix@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              He was not able to effectively continue to experiment and research. Because he may have worked with some of the people who worked on those projects, or at least had a connection to them, and also he may have lived a hell of a lot longer if he wasnt poor. Its not good for your health

              So if he didnt get screwed over the way he did he would have lived differently.

              Also a concept can exist decades before it is proven.

              Dude had a brilliant mind and was a genius. Money allows you to persue the things you want in a way that being poor simply does not allow.

              Is this really something you needed explained?

              • Tnaeriv@sopuli.xyz
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                8 months ago

                And how was Tesla ‘screwed over’ exactly?

                He WAS rich for a long time. He died poor because he lost all the money on his ‘wireless electricity’ idea that noone wanted to fund, because they knew it’s not going to work. Tesla didn’t know that. You know why? Because he sucked ass at physics. That’s also why he would have never understood the concept of a transistor.

                Please stop spreading misinformation about Tesla being some misunderstood genius screwed over by greedy corporations. He was not. He screwed himself over.

                • Jarix@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I dont believe i am spreading misinformation

                  Marconi became rich and famous, the “inventor of the radio.” It didn’t matter that he had been using Tesla’s technology. After Tesla’s death, the Supreme Court would even rule that Tesla had a better claim to the patents — but it was too late.

                  His loss in the race for the radio would send Nikola Tesla on a long downward spiral from which he would never recover. Combined with his other failures and his struggles with what we would probably identify today as obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tesla descended into a tailspin at the end of his life.

                  My opinion about him getting screwed is this. You will have to show me this is misinformation if you want me to change my mind as believing this is my kyptonite if im wrong. But I havent seen anyone prove this wrong yet.

                  You honestly have a chance to change my mind here if you are willing to help me out, but ive put what i consider a reasonable effort into forming my opinion so its now on you to show me the error of my ways and im giving you the spot I think is easiest.

                  Ball is in your court friend

                  Edit: adding source i quoted from. Fyi its just the first article i found after the above reply to quote with, it is not the only reading that forms my opinion

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                8 months ago

                “He was a genius” does not equal “he would have invented something that hadn’t been invented yet if he had the money to do so.”

                Do you even have any evidence that he was working along those lines?

                • Jarix@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I said perhaps understand the concept, not invent it. So no i dont have any evidence for something i never claimed.

                  Wtf is wrong with you.

        • turmacar@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          “Lets turn the Ionosphere and the Mantel into the halves of a capacitor! Free energy!” is Bond villain territory.