Bah, the kids are going to be alright.

I always got the impression that Tesla was on the spectrum and this was a story that got kind of warped over the years. According to Tesla's autobiography (quoted in the wikipedia article about the guy), it was a manager at Edison Machine Works who offered $50k (~$1.4 million in today's money) for 24 different versions of the motor, and that he didn't realize at the time it was a joke. It got attributed to Edison himself (and made a lot meaner) in the various retellings of the story.

The vibe I always got from Edison is that he was probably a businessman in the vein of Elon Musk. He was probably hands on, and did contribute, to some of the early inventions that he gets credited for, but as his career went on, his job was more to recognize and fund people who developed things under him, but by being the face of the company, he got the credit for a lot of the inventions, something he probably encouraged. He probably doesn't deserve a lot of the deification he got over the years, but he probably doesn't deserve a lot of the hate he's gotten in recent years, either.

He did back the wrong horse with AC vs DC, but that isn't all that uncommon with new technologies and hindsight is 20/20.

I just spent the last ten minutes explaining the impact of the All Your Base meme to my gen z brother in law.

Compared to some other stuff here, some of such I lived, it’s not that old but there is something about having generations of Internet culture, when I still remember when it was ALL new uncharted territory, that slaps me in the face with nostalgia.