I don't agree with what the original commenter is saying. But if you are arguing that Tesla invented AC, you should read the article above. Edited: a typo

>I thought Alexander was just a conqueror basically, the same as any other empire like Rome

Rome, who famously didn't colonise anywhere? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonia_(Roman) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonies_in_antiquity

Although people tend to talk about colonisation as being a modern process, it's arguably much older, and empires have been doing it as long as they have existed. It's what makes them empires.

>and I realized I am not sure of what exactly qualifies as 'colonization'.

You colonise a place when you assert control over it, and physically establish your 'superiority' in matters of law and culture, compelling the indigenous people to either remain subservient and/or convert to your ways. Rome is one of the best examples of this, constantly seeking a controlled influx of people via the foederati, establishing Roman citizenship as something to be sought after, etc.

Not to mention how much attention Nikola Tesla got from pseudo-scientific interpretations of some of the ideas he posed. In the sensationalist world of fringe beliefs, he's said to have invented machines that can cause earthquakes and control the weather, and apparently had ideas about a system from global wireless power transfer. Possibly there's some truth to some of them, but odds are his ideas didn't quite pan out.

He's essentially a poster child for the "independent genius cut down and buried by industrial titans" perspective which is quite a romantic perspective for the conspiracy spaces on the internet. Not to say he wasn't treated poorly, but I also doubt he'd solved all the theoretical problems of wireless power transfer over great distance, for example. And if he had a machine that made earthquakes, wouldn't networks of seismometers detect aberrations?

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Dude's already on r/usdefaultism. 'Both' parties have we? Didn't realise we're all in the US of A.

Fair enough, though I think you might have trouble achieving high quality music reproduction without electricity :)

Edit: so it seems that AC was also Westinghouse, ignore me :)

A book called The Rule of Empires discusses several examples of this dynamic in history. One people conquers another to exploit them, but distinctions blur over time, especially due to intermarriage. Once the typical imperial authority has a few half-other-community nephews, they start losing interest in maintaining social stratification.

Absolutely! My world… Not yours!

WABTEC (which used to be known as Westinghouse Airbrake company, and now stands for Wabtec), which acquired GE Transportation recently is also a 800 lb gorilla in the train industry but most people don't know about it.

YeH I know, I was referring to the author.

I'm not the author of the article

Tesla is famous for being a crackpot scientist. Despite the fact that he was one of the cleverest men who ever lived.

This is deliberate.

The extent to which the old GOP was progressive is greatly exaggerated. Republicans were already the conservative party by the time that Roosevelt came along. Teddy himself was never meant to be the president, it's just that the conservative president William McKinley died.

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But to answer your question. Yes, they did adhere to classical liberalism. American politics before 1900 was just different factions of liberalism competing against each other.

The triode is much more of a Lee de Forrest thing - the Audion.

Whether a tube is Westinghouse, RCA, Telefunken is a matter of manufacturing. Tubes are sought after because they're "cool" , not because they are, strictly speaking, necessary any longer in most domains.

They were the equal to GE in terms of the range of what they produced. They even had CBS to match GE's NBC.

A problem was that at the end Westinghouse's strongest business divisions (ones that bore the brand) were not consumer facing and strong units that were (like CBS) didn't really carry the Westinghouse name. So over time the brand faded.

In the 1990s, GE which actually grew stronger as a brand as it got rid of its consumer facing businesses like consumer electronics (radios and the like). To replace the consumer recognition, remember all those ads in the Jack Welch era promoting GE products that your average joe Blow would never buy (MRI machines and such). Sure they had to create that equipment but if they didn't advertise would you know what brand your doctor used for a medical imager.

That's probably the issue. People retain fame, not companies. Up until recently, there wasn't really a company trying to capitalize on Tesla's name and it was wholly his own.

Westinghouse is still in the nuclear power business. That does not get them much brand recognition in the general public, though.

Yeah. It's was interesting to see the hype wave as someone whom known of Tesla and his work prior to it and knew that he wasn't well known.

I would actually attribute a lot of the sensation to the Company Tesla... As the name obviously makes people search and curious about the company's name's meaning.

It's really weird how idealised be became. The Awkward Autro-Hungarian of Serbian decent whim fell in love with a Pigeon due to severe loneliness, likely depression and desperation. Pretty much forgotten compared to his peers like Edison when though his tech would be what especially appears as "Victorian Schi-fi". He died poor and alone, surrounded by pigeons in his New York apartment.

So i would really not call him recognised... Idealised or Unknown is what first most people's ideas of him. He was Clever, but he was nowhere near Davinci level of Clever ... Relative to each others times respectively.

What an article, do you know what is messing?

A photo of the man you complain he is not famous enough.

You think that vacuum tubes are more valuable than alternating current - i.e. the thing that provides electricity to every home and business in the world?

I had a Westinghouse Walkman back in the 90’s. It was yellow and was basically a ripoff of the Sony sports Walkman, but I loved that battery eater and took it everywhere.

I really enjoyed this well researched, well written article for a subject that was always fuzzy. Thank you

From a purely ignorant, audio file perspective, Westinghouse, vacuum tubes are highly sought after and much more value than anything Tesla ever produced!

Besides lightbulbs, Westinghouse Electric was one of the biggest companies in the US in the postwar period. They made nuclear reactors and invested heavily in media.

We don’t hear the name much anymore because it was diluted so much by being a conglomerate. They pursued a lot of research and high tech ideas that didn’t pan out. There was no kernel to form the core of a new company, so the divisions were all sold off and renamed.

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