Hello! So for the longest time, I’ve been in agreement with the idea that Tesla was an under-appreciated, screwed-over genius whom Edison took advantage of (this belief, by the way, did not originate from the Oatmeal comic (which I was just made aware of today) but rather from a documentary from PBS). However, after doing a bit more research - reading this Forbes’ article, as well as these two earlier threads - I have come to the conclusion (mainly due to the quoted sections of the threads referencing interactions between Edison and Tesla - that the two were at least amicable.

Those things said, I am also interested in the Louis le Prince case. I have a hard time believing that he just happened to go missing a little while before Edison came out with his patent for “moving cameras”. Is there any truth to the theory that Edison did steal this idea and claim it as his own?

On another note, why does everyone solely credit Edison for “his” inventions? That’s like saying that Steve Jobs was the sole innovator when it came to Apple, which, duh, no. I don’t know how involved in R&D he was, but there’s no way he came up with all of what Apple did on his own. Don’t get me wrong, he was a brilliant man - albeit an asshole as well - but I always thought of him as being a great businessman, not an inventor. (I call him an innovator because he did, after all, found Apple).

Sorry, this post was a bit all over the place. Tl;dr: did Thomas Edison really steal all his patents?