Nikola Tesla: The Greatest Geek

The Oatmeal's Drawing of The Greatest Geek

The internet loves Nikola Tesla. The Oatmeal recently promoted a successful bid to raise money to purchase a New York State building called Wardenclyffe from which Tesla was once going to wirelessly power our homes. With The Oatmeal's promotion, the fundraising project raised over $850,000 USD in around a week.

It's safe to say that the power of the internet has voted in favour of the reclusive electric genius Nikola Tesla. What is interesting about this is why; after all, when I was growing up it was Thomas Edison, Tesla's direct rival, who was the inventor of electrical things.

Well, The Oatmeal gives the biggest hint, saying,

Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived

and backs up this enormously grandiose claim with an impassioned comic explaining very clearly why.

But the important thing here is not that Tesla was a geek it's that geeks, along with bowties, are cool. Is there a suggestion that geeks make better scientists implicit in this statement? 

To me, Tesla seems to fulfill one type of scientist-hero stereotype: the lonely/introverted, maverick, somewhat or very eccentric scientist, screwed over by aspects of society, nevertheless goes on to work horrendous hours and develop ideas that ultimately prove to win everyone over-- but not at great personal cost. Tesla, dying alone and quite definitely crazy, fits this description perfectly.

The BBC four series Shock and Awe: The Story of Electricity (presented by Jim Al-Khalili) uses Tesla's story to frame their second episode, the Age of Invention, noting that the drama of Tesla's life makes him interesting. His inventions have a wacky side which makes him a darling of fantasy: an electrical zap gun in the show Warehouse 13 is called a Tesla, and in Sanctuary Tesla was a part-vampire.

QMx's 'Tesla' Zap Gun from Warehouse 13

Edison, on the other hand, has no supernatural alter-egos and no zap guns. He's known popularly for electrocuting dogs to prove that Tesla's Alternating Current was dangerous, and for stealing his employees  inventions. He's popularly derided for being the chieftian of an incremental research group-type science.

But hang on, Edison may not have had the same electrifying (heh) sparks (heh) of genius that Tesla did, but the vast majority of scientists work the way that Edison did-- as part of a group where everyone has a clearly defined role and a clearly defined pay, and everyone contributes to developing a certain product, often a better version of something that already exists (ahem, Samsung vs. Apple). While alternating current won the day, much of what we run on alternating current got its start in Edison's company.

What I don't want to do is contest that Tesla's popularity, especially after a long period of being rather unsung, is not absolutely deserved. I certainly approve of giving him in a museum in the country which he loved and did the vast majority of his spectacular living and inventing.

That said, this conflict* interests me: we, in our geek-championing society, want to value the scientist as an individual creator and we applaud his or her individual contributions. However, the overwhelming amount of actual science, engineering and design that goes on is done by people who work in company models very much like the one Edison created where the individual inventor's contribution is--at best--indistinct.

*Or perhaps it's not a conflict at all, just an expression of the human like of a good story.