In 1885 Nikola Tesla is paid 50,000 dollars bouns by Thomas Edison for improvements to the motor and generators? Was the Edison-Tesla slpit something that was bound to happen and this just brought it to a head much sooner, or could the two work together at Menlo Park and fast track some tech?? What other effect would there be?
Tesla gets his bouns
- Thread starter Jim Smitty
- Start date
I don't think Edison ever had any honest intention of collloborating with Tesla. In fact I'm pretty certain he was quite jealous and resentful of Tesla, and essentially was trolling him with the promise of money and wasn't going to pay him anyway. Thats what I remember anyway the details are vague but someone else ought to plug the holes 
Edison has been gradually revealed as the head of his industrial research labs, taking personal credit and sole patents on the fruits of his entire team (like many faculty and corporate research facilities do now) which seems like it was only a matter of time that Tesla would have quit in disgust. Continuing the partnership with George Westinghouse would be more likely for Tesla. A POD might be partnering with Werner Siemens instead, Siemens also worked with Edison but spawned his own diverse European technology company with better access to both investment capital and Tesla's formal education would have gotten considerably more respect from European investors...Edison and Siemens had a common investor in Henry Villard of the Northern Pacific Railroad, coal mines, steamships, timber, etc. so that could be the bridge for Tesla (Villard was German-born and educated too so would also be more likely to be sympathetic to Tesla.)
The U.S. Navy doing more with Tesla's demonstration of a remote-controlled submarine that he demonstrated to them in 1892 (?) would be an interesting POD and could have propelled many shifts in naval technology just as the Dreadnaught race and "Great White Fleet" of the U.S. was being designed (radio, sonar, higher efficiency steam turbines, effective torpedoes for destroyers, an effective submarine ahead of other nations'-electric? fuel-cells?... It'd leave the outcome of the Spanish American War intact given the Spanish had wooden ships at Manila and Santiago Bay, but could have deterred unrestricted submarine warfare and kept the U.S. from "casus belli" to enter World War I at all, and just provide materials and financing perhaps to all sides assuming German U-Boats turned to the British blockading ships then instead of cargo ships in the Atlantic. Hmmm.
Or you use a 1930's POD with Tesla meeting Henry Loomis and becoming part of the Tuxedo Park, NY private research lab Loomis was running then. That'd put Tesla in broad-based research with Nobel-winning physicists (Fermi, Szilard, Einstein), England's Rutherford, biologists, chemists, and Loomis's extensive industry contacts after a career as a Wall Street lawyer putting together major electrical conglomerates (so he'd know who Tesla was) and first cousin to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Tesla could impact the beginnings of the Manhattan Project, help extend British radar research, develop sonar, and greatly advance communications, electronics, circuitry, and computers (Vannevar Bush from MIT's Electrical Engineering Dept./Carnegie Foundation was a frequent visitor and built the Navy's code-cracking computers in his basement workshop in the late 1930's that cracked the Japanese codes.) In that environment and resources Tesla would have thrived rather than been an isolated, marginalized and unfunded researcher by then OTL.
The U.S. Navy doing more with Tesla's demonstration of a remote-controlled submarine that he demonstrated to them in 1892 (?) would be an interesting POD and could have propelled many shifts in naval technology just as the Dreadnaught race and "Great White Fleet" of the U.S. was being designed (radio, sonar, higher efficiency steam turbines, effective torpedoes for destroyers, an effective submarine ahead of other nations'-electric? fuel-cells?... It'd leave the outcome of the Spanish American War intact given the Spanish had wooden ships at Manila and Santiago Bay, but could have deterred unrestricted submarine warfare and kept the U.S. from "casus belli" to enter World War I at all, and just provide materials and financing perhaps to all sides assuming German U-Boats turned to the British blockading ships then instead of cargo ships in the Atlantic. Hmmm.
Or you use a 1930's POD with Tesla meeting Henry Loomis and becoming part of the Tuxedo Park, NY private research lab Loomis was running then. That'd put Tesla in broad-based research with Nobel-winning physicists (Fermi, Szilard, Einstein), England's Rutherford, biologists, chemists, and Loomis's extensive industry contacts after a career as a Wall Street lawyer putting together major electrical conglomerates (so he'd know who Tesla was) and first cousin to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Tesla could impact the beginnings of the Manhattan Project, help extend British radar research, develop sonar, and greatly advance communications, electronics, circuitry, and computers (Vannevar Bush from MIT's Electrical Engineering Dept./Carnegie Foundation was a frequent visitor and built the Navy's code-cracking computers in his basement workshop in the late 1930's that cracked the Japanese codes.) In that environment and resources Tesla would have thrived rather than been an isolated, marginalized and unfunded researcher by then OTL.
At times, if this is not some conspirationism, and I wonder if Tesla at times was not frankly an overrated hack.
Did he really have had lost great ideas, plans, etc? Or it was speculative hot air?
Did he really have had lost great ideas, plans, etc? Or it was speculative hot air?
The are dozens of inventions he swore blind he'd built that on the face of it seem impossible and have never been replicated despite some having his blueprints to work off of. He just liked to talk big as a way to promote/generate interest in his field I think. He was still a bona fide genius and a lot of modern day tech can trace its roots back to his ideas.
His invention of radio waves, tesla coil, oscillator, and of course AC electricity are all credible and verified by Scientists. Tell me the guy who created AC electricity wasn't as great of a genius as edison who invented the failure DC electricity. By the way fun fact people still believe Edison invented AC electricity when it was actual Tesla and people give Marconi credit for what Tesla accomplished. Although I do agree some of his experiments like Death ray implausible and just big talk.