this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2025

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Magnets (mander.xyz)

submitted 23 hours ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] -14 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (14 children)

This is false. Here's an exhaustively researched 4.5 hour video on the topic if you're interested in what Edison was really like (an incredibly hard worker who was much kinder to his employees than was usual for the time, and who changed inventing from an art into a science), and the by-all-accounts positive nature of his very brief working relationship with Tesla.

Edit: I am absolutely gobsmacked that this comment is getting hammered so hard in a science community of all places.

I guess the misinformation-fueled hate boner for Edison is just too strong for the truth.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Got one not from a channel that wholesale publishes sponsored work?

Edison was a monster by every contemporary and modern account. I don't know who paid him to narrate nonsense, but let's not rehabilitate one of the worst humans on the planet.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 16 hours ago

I love it when you get millionaire (who would likely be billionaire) bootlickers in comments like this because you can almost always go back and check their replies. Low and behold, within the first few posts you immediatey get MRA shite.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

No opinion on Edison at all but what's your problem with the whistler verse? They've been very good in my experience.

[+] [email protected] -9 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Should be really easy for you to produce some of this evidence that he was a monster then.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Here's an introduction to Thomas Edison, https://theconversation.com/thomas-edison-visionary-genius-or-fraud-99229

It has actual sources, and isn't a 4.5 hour sponsored video from whatever estate is trying to do PR for the name Edison.

[+] [email protected] -12 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

That pop "article" is like 300 words long, contains almost no information whatsoever, and every bit of info it does contain is also fully spelled out in the video I linked - that Edison wasn't a single-minded visionary, but rather a ridiculously hard worker who worked collectively with his employees to create inventions scientifically.

The video also goes into detail about how he crafted a public persona to make sure his shop continued to have access to funding to keep up his inventing, and in any case, I'm not quite sure how that's supposed to be the nail in the coffin for his reputation, since it was practically required for him to stay in business, and the inventions they came up with (or, better put, the ingenious, practical solutions to the problems they were trying to solve) were revolutionary.

Nothing in that article impugns Edison's name whatsoever - if anything, it fully supports the picture of Edison put forward by the video I linked.

Also, Today I Found Out has a rating of "High - Least Biased" on Media Bias Fact Check https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/today-i-found-out/, so I think I'm just going to ignore your conspiracy-mongering about them.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Doesn't that the site get a lot of flak though?

[–] finitebanjo 7 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

It's not exactly proof of character but it's pretty easy to verify that Edison's patent of DC Electricity was NOT novel or new as a concept but did allow him to create a monopoly and massively enrich himself while also increasing costs on the average person of his time.

~~This is lended to by the fact that in children's books and schools in the USA Edison was portrayed as some magical fictional character who tied a key to a kite to invent electricity. Clearly there is a campaign made to make him look like the hero he isn't.~~ Nah that was Franklin.

But it doesn't stop there, Edison had many patents that almost all built on the works of others going back decades, although I do think that he did more work than he stole on audio recording and transmitting, but he also patented the Telegraph like a hundred times even though the Cook and Wheatstone Electric Telegraph existed over 50 years earlier: a time before Edison was even born.

He was an OK inventor but he was a cutthroat businessman.

[–] Machinist 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Pedant moment. Benjamin Franklin was the key and kite guy. Edison was the lightbulb guy.

[–] finitebanjo 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Sorry yeh I had those confused.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

This is lended to by the fact that in children's books and schools in the USA Edison was portrayed as some magical fictional character who tied a key to a kite to invent electricity.

That story is associated with Benjamin Franklin.

[–] finitebanjo 1 points 56 minutes ago

You made this comment after the edit, which is kind of weird

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