Edison and Tesla Becoming Discredited

The eagerness with which Edison and Tesla rush into print over every supposedly new discovery made in their laboratories is at last bringing something of discredit and ridicule upon them. The scientists of old Europe are very generally discrediting the claims of

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magnetite, converting the former into Bessemer steel, would be of incalculable benefit to the owners of European ore deposits now unprofitable. At the Creusot Iron Works in Paris, which is the most important rail, locomotive and gun factory in France, Edison’s claim is discredited. Were it genuine, America’s steel supremacy would be blasted. The allegation of these practical men is that while neither Edison or Tesla knows anything of metallurgy, they are quick at finding what difficulty puzzles scientists and then announce that their own genius is about to solve it. While we would not depreciate American scientists, it is well to face the fact that European scientists challenge the production of any valuable discovery by Edison, except the phonograph, which was a chance discovery and not the result of scientific perspicuity. Electrical incandescence was a German invention, and the biograph a French device. Tesla has done much talking about destroying fleets at sea, telephoning across the ocean, lighting houses without wires and communicating with the planet Mars, but he has done none of these things. The Parisian verdict is that “Edison and Tesla are a pair of humbugs.”