Who is Greater, Edison or Tesla？

Edison and Tesla were both American inventors in the 19th century. Edison’s story is well-known. Compared with Edison, Tesla's reputation is much smaller. If Musk hadn't named his electric car after Tesla, nobody will remember him now.

Edison and Tesla had been partners, but they quickly became rivals in business. The movie, "Power Wars", talked about a war between Edison and Tesla for the North American power market. Finally, Tesla’s AC system defeated Edison's DC system, which makes Tesla, who had been previously unknown, become the new star of the American Science and Technology Festival. At that time, Edison suffered the biggest failure in his life, but he quickly cheered up and contributed many inventions to mankind. And relying on these inventions to become a millionaire.

However, Tesla began to decline and eventually died alone in a small hotel in New York.

After several centuries, Tesla has returned to the public thanks to the constant publicity of Silicon Valley tech titans such as Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Some people even ask: Who is better, Edison or Tesla?

Fixed Target for patents---Edison

Edison has 1093 patents under his personal name. Among them are incandescent bulbs, gramophone, motion picture projector and so on.

Thomas Alva Edison

The incandescent bulb by Edison in 1810

The gramophone invented by Edison in 1910

A motion picture projector invented by Edison in 1910

Fixed Target for patents---Tesla

Tesla has less than 300 patents under his own name. In addition to alternating current, he holds patents for electric motors, hydroelectric generators, wireless communications and other fields. These inventions laid the groundwork for the subsequent wireless transmission systems of radio, television, telephones, and mobile phones.

Nikola Tesla

Turbine-dynamo invented by Tesla in 1913

Tesla's turbine-dynamo design

A generator built by Westinghouse under the Tesla patent

Some people say that Edison changed the way of life in the first half of the 20th century, while Tesla changed the way of life in the second half of the 20th century.

Education Level and the Way of Thinking:

Edison: He has not received any professional scientific training and is a self-taught inventor. He is best at finding new solutions through a lot of practice based on the research results of others. The invention of the incandescent lamp is a classic case. In other words, most of his inventions are application-level inventions made on the basis of other people's theories. Even if he didn't invent them, other people should be able to invent them in a few years.

Tesla: A child prodigy in the traditional sense. He received a complete higher education, especially the foundation of physics, which is quite solid. He has excellent memory, especially good at image memory. It is said that he can write down all books as long as he reads it once, and he can even recall which page the paragraph appeared on. This special skill allows Tesla to conduct scientific experiments in his mind without having to be as real as Edison, so he can make much more advanced inventions, as evidenced by alternating current. Before Tesla, no one realized that alternating current can be used in various power systems like direct current. Tesla was the first person to realize this point.

Research Model:

Edison: He is an organizer. He employs many scientists in different fields and encourages them to cooperate with each other for making inventions together. Although Edison himself was a shrewd businessman, he never put more pressure on his scientists. Instead, he provided sufficient research funding and allowed them to play freely.

Tesla: He is a lone wolf. He seldom hires helpers and he prefers to experiment in his mind, which makes it easier to use his imagination.

Tesla is more like a classical scientist. He inherited the scientific research tradition of those great scientists before the 20th century and relied more on individuals to make new discoveries. Edison opened the prelude to the modernization of scientific research and his method of encouraging cooperation is more in line with the needs of modern science, and he is considered to be the initiator of the technological invention process in the new era.

For example, the most recognized scientific achievements of the 20th century are the birth of the atomic bomb, the Apollo Moon Landing Project, and the Human Gene Recombination Project. All of them are products of collective wisdom. After entering the 20th century, this trend has continued unabated. For example, the three new technologies that affect contemporary human activities are the mobile Internet of Things, smart phones and electric vehicles. They are not invented by any specific inventor, but are also the product of collective wisdom.

Conclusion:

Therefore, the innovation of modern technology is almost the product of multi-person cooperation. No one can conquer the world, but this definitely does not mean that personal creativity is useless, because the value of creativity is still huge in each sub-field. Therefore, in this sense, Edison and Tesla represent two human thinking modes and scientific research processes respectively. Both are indispensable and both are as great.