It’s no secret that Thomas Edison was a monumental asshole. He’s hailed as the father of the electric age, and credited with a number of different inventions, many of which he stole from or commissioned other scientists to create for him. He lacked the scientific rigor and passion of an engineer that came so naturally to his rival, Nikola Tesla, his interest in innovation fueled only by his interest in money. Threatened in the late 1880s by the advent of Tesla and his business partner George Westinghouse’s alternating current technology, a competitor to his own direct current system, Edison launched a campaign of propaganda that would later be dubbed the War of the Currents. Part of Edison’s crusade against Tesla involved him electrocuting animals using high voltage AC and inventing the electric chair… And he did NOT invent the lightbulb nor the motion picture camera.
Would be monopolist:
http://hermitjim.blogspot.com/2012/06/evil-thomas-edison.html
Executing kittens:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2007/07/evil-thomas-edison
Stealing credit for inventions:
http://www.cracked.com/article_16072_5-famous-inventors-who-stole-their-big-idea.html
All sorts of other atrocious crap:
http://www.lateralscience.co.uk/edison/index.html
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
And finally, wasting electricity in gargantuan amounts all the way to the present day.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/115056313943520401920/posts/H4NSNV6K6ah?cfem=1
Edison electrocuted an elephant 110 years ago today
When the day came, Topsy was restrained using a ship’s hawser fastened on one end to a donkey engine and on the other to a post. Wooden sandals with copper electrodes were attached to her feet and a copper wire run to Edison’s electric light plant, where his technicians awaited the go-ahead.In order to make sure that Topsy emerged from this spectacle more than just singed and angry, she was fed cyanide-laced carrots moments before a 6,600-volt AC charge slammed through her body. Officials needn’t have worried. Topsy was killed instantly and Edison, in his mind anyway, had proved his point.
A crowd put at 1,500 witnessed Topsy’s execution, which was filmed by Edison and released later that year as Electrocuting an Elephant.