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Tesla vs. Edison Debate Ignites at SxSW

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by Matthew Van Dusen

Paleofuture blogger Matt Novak’s South by Southwest March 11 talk on the Edison versus Tesla debate and myth of the lone inventor went electric when web comic artist Matthew Inman of The Oatmeal, whose Tesla comic spurred the debate, showed up to defend his work.

“The goal with my comic wasn’t to write nonfiction, it was more to paint a portrait of Tesla’s character and why I admire that and why I admire geeks in general,”* Inman said when he emerged from the audience to ask a question at the end of the session. 

Novak had taken issue with Inman’s viral comic “Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived” comic, saying that it fed the “Great Man Theory of History” and the myth of the lone inventor.

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“You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.”

Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847, on the secrets of success
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