There's an article on Nikola Tesla in the latest issue of GOOD magazine, where he's described as a dreamer, mad scientist, a person who clashed with his environment and one who didn't do things for money. Just the opposite from Edison, who - while of often inferior inventions to Tesla (see the paragraph below) - in a systemic way created a whole support network (infrastracture, laws, regulations, behaviors) for his inventions that helped them to prevail.
"Tesla hoped to wow Edison with his prototype for alternating current, but Edison merely put him to work around the clock refining the existing DC motors. The Wizard of Menlo Park did promise to pay Tesla $50,000 should the immigrant manage to build a practical AC motor. However, when Tesla accomplished just that, Edison not only refused to pay, but embarked on a smear campaign against Tesla’s system—thus begetting the infamous War of the Currents, in which Edison depicted Tesla as an unreliable dreamer and alternating current as dangerous. Ultimately, after Tesla’s Westinghouse Corporation–backed AC-powered “City of Light” wowed onlookers at the 1893 World’s Fair, his model became the dominant electrical paradigm. Since then, 80 percent of U.S. electrical devices have used variants of his alternating-current model."
And
"When Guglielmo Marconi earned the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909 for the invention of radio—giving the Italian scientist the name the Father of Radio—Tesla was livid. He had been poised to send radio signals using his eponymous coils as early as 1895, though a fire at his studio set him back a few years, and he only filed a basic radio patent in 1897. For the next few years, he and Marconi worked independently of each other, but it was Marconi who sent and received the first successful transatlantic radio signals, using 17 of Tesla’s patented inventions, most notably the “Tesla oscillator.” The U.S. Patent Office, however, refused to enforce Tesla’s claim."
The dude was obviously not good with patents.
"It wasn’t until 1943, after Tesla’s death, that the Patent Office reversed its decision, and recognized him as radio’s true father. That outcome is perhaps fitting, as the story of his life unfolded more like something out of Nathanael West than Horatio Alger—his financial troubles at times rising in direct proportion to his ambitions."
Uh-oh.
"Tesla’s other innovations include the first version of modern hydroelectric power (a dramatic and successful harnessing of Niagara Falls), an early version of radar (too ahead of its time to be immediately implemented), the first examples of neon and fluorescent lighting, and the first instance of wireless remote control. Rarely is Tesla credited as the father of robotics, but it was his invention, a battery-powered “tele-automated” boat that responded to wireless radio signals, that gave birth to the discipline. He envisioned an era in which man could harness energy from the sun and a “‘world system’ of wireless communications to relay telephone messages across the ocean; to broadcast news, music, stock market reports, private messages, secure military communications, and even pictures to any part of the world.”
Top that, Edison.
What strikes me as interesting is that Edison with his famous definition of genious as "one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration" may represent an old-fashioned and today quite obsolete approach to innovation. It is true that, back at his time, it was more important to persistently focus on doing the legwork and making sure that his innovations become part of the everyday life. But, is that still true in the 21st century? Tesla embodied a dichotomy of simultaneously being a creator of game-changing technology and a visionary sensitive to "the spectacular poetry of human life." As such, he perhaps would have fit better in the messy and unpredictable world of today's innovatons. Because, what's considered innovative today goes well beyond just refining - and making better - what already exists. It revolves around coming up with a radically new frameworks and concepts for interpreting the world, and dealing with solutions that simply don't fit in anything we know.
There, the dreamers count. More so than the prespireres.
