Distruptive Technology - The Nikola Tesla vs Thomas Edison Wars Continue

Alex Knapp, the staff writer over at Forbes who concentrates on science and technology wrote an essay this week titled Nikola Tesla Wasn't God And Thomas Edison Wasn't The Devil - .
It was in response to a cartoon done over at the Oatmeal blog site. In it, he starts with negating that "Tesla invent(ed) radar as The Oatmeal claims. Nope. He pitched an idea, but never developed a prototype. That said, a lot of his work did become the backbone for radar research in the 1930s, but there was a lot of work done between Tesla’s work and the eventual development of radar. Tesla pointed the way, but there was a long road that had to be dug out of the jungle.

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Oh, and just one more note on the Naval Consulting Board. Unlike Tesla, who pitched “death rays” and other weapons to countries in his later years, Edison’s condition to working on the board was that it would work to develop defensive technology only. That was true for his entire existence. Edison once remarked that, “I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.”

Alex has written other pieces on Tesla; in No, Tesla Did Not Predict Faster Than Light Neutrinos  http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/09/26/no-tesla-did-not-predict-faster-than-light-neutrinos/ , Alex points out "Tesla completely rejected the theory of relativity. He insisted that mass and energy were not equivalent and told the New York Times in 1935 that “Einstein’s relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king…” At this point, though, there had been several observations and experiments confirming relativity’s predictions, and subsequent decades have only strengthened it."

In another piece, from a year back, Nikola Tesla: Unique Genius Or A Model For Everyone? http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2011/04/28/nikola-tesla-unique-genius-or-a-model-for-everyone/, Alex shares "I’m not trying to gush, but you can’t read about Tesla without being a little bit in awe of him. His achievements were incredible. But were those achievements unique? That is, was there some random combination of genes that gave Tesla the ability to model and create magnificent inventions in his head, making him a singular genius. Or is there, within the life of Nikola Tesla, a model that we can follow in our own creative lives?"

Given that it would appear that Alex has attempted in those previous articles to be even-handed in his observations, there is proof that historic persons continue to induce a passion pro and con; good and evil. Both Tesla and Edison continue to provoke stong opinion.

In this current piece he challenges Oatmeal's cartoon:

"This then leads to one of the most morally reprehensible portions of The Oatmeal’s comic, where he takes the tragic death of Edison’s assistant Clarence Dally and Edison’s disability as an excuse to pummel Edison again. Here’s what the Oatmeal says:

This is some of the most anachronistic, patronizing things I’ve ever read. Please, readers, turn the clocks back to the early 1900s. People didn’t really understand how radiation worked and how dangerous they truly were. When it came to Edison’s X-Ray experiments, the “human trials” were conducted by Edison on himself and his assistant, who readily volunteered. Not yet understanding radiation, they both took excessive doses and suffered for it. This was the fate of a lot of brilliant researchers in the early days of radiation. Like Marie and Pierre Curie, for example.
What’s more, Edison was haunted by Dally’s death to the end of his days. It agonized him. While Dally was alive and suffering, Edison kept him on the payroll and took care of all of his expenses until the day he died. In the early 20th Century, let me assure you that keeping employees on the payroll who couldn’t work was not a common practice. Had he worked for most of the tycoons of the time, Dally would have probably ended his days a beggar in the streets."

Each of Alex's articles garnered their fair share of comments and callouts, but  not to the extent as has this one. You have to stop by the Oatmeal blogsite to view the dissection/response of this most recent article; http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response . It is a hoot.

Since the Oatmeal is a humor blog, broadcast historians might want to make an analogy to the Jack Benny vs Fred Allen feuds of 75 years ago. It's every bit as entertaining and every bit as impassioned.