Tesla was certainly a brilliant engineer, but he was a crackpot when it came to physics and he often made outrageous claims with no evidence to back it up. He was a big self promoter and while theres nothing inherently wrong with that, theres something of a Tesla cult that exists today who accept many of Teslas self aggrandizing as fact despite the lack of confirmation. Case in point, the site linked in the OP mentions how Tesla
once lit 200 lightbulbs from a power source 26 miles away, and he did it in 1899 with a machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the god-forsaken desert. To this day, nobody can really figure out how the hell he pulled that **** off, because two-thirds of the schematics only existed in the darkest recesses of Tesla's all-powerful brain.
Its a story that has been repeated over and over again with subtle variations (Ive seen 25, 26, 27, 30 and 31 miles away mentioned; some reports say the media was there others do not, but the 200 bulbs remains consistent) and has a new life online but I cant find any independent report that it actually happened. It sounds apocryphal and/or more Tesla chest thumping. Its interesting that
if the media were present (or even if they werent I suppose) youd expect a photograph or two to commemorate such a remarkable feat considering how massive and impressive the transmitter machine he built from spare parts in the middle of the god-forsaken desert would be.
We love a good mad scientist narrative almost as much as we love the underdog rebel, the wacky genius who perseveres against the mainstream. But Tesla was extremely famous in his lifetime and he had access to a vast amount of wealth- he was funded by Westinghouse. Theres little of the little guy fighting the system when it comes to Tesla; he
was the system and talked the good talk but made many an anecdotal exaggeration with little evidential support.
But back to physics- he was a notorious crank in this aspect. He was simply wrong about relativity, calling it a:
...magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.
Brilliant guy, a genius engineer and his contributions to wireless technology is amazing, but hes not the ignored genius his fans have portrayed him. He wouldnt have come up with so much stuff without standing on the shoulders of Joseph Swann and Faraday and the dozens of crank websites devoted to him do him little favor by ignoring his many legitimate contributions and focusing on conspiracies about his secret stolen mad scientist dooms day weapons an death rays and such.
). Why is this? In my opinion he was one of the greatest Scientists of all time. What do you guys think?
Tesla is absolutely more impressive 
