Legend!
Elon Musk to fund Tesla museum with 'ONE MEEELLION DOLLARS'
Electric-car mogul Elon Musk has agreed to help fund a museum dedicated to the late scientist Nikola Tesla, to the tune of $1m. Musk, who named his car company after Tesla, reportedly agreed to help support the museum after a phone conversation with web cartoonist Matthew Inman, creator of The Oatmeal. Popular geek Inman has …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 10th July 2014 22:31 GMT John Brown (no body)
How old?
"July 10, which would have been Tesla's 158th birthday."
Erm...no. The guy was a genius and invented many things, but immortality wasn't one of them.
Unless this documentary was accurate...
Thumbs up to Musk for the spondoolics though.
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Friday 11th July 2014 09:08 GMT ukgnome
I used to think that Musk was a massive cock....
And then he gave his patents away, and built a rocket, and actually turned out to be a decent chap.
AND NOW THIS! Any donation to open a Tesla museum gets my vote and yet another reason to give the guy a hug.
If they ran a web campaign to help the funding I would actually give a few quid, I have a massive soft spot for the father of the modern world. This has made Friday a bit better.
Hey Musk, I'm buying you a cold one -------->
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Friday 11th July 2014 10:14 GMT Don Dumb
The Geek of Hearts
@ukgnome -
I used to think that Musk was a massive cock....And then he gave his patents away, and built a rocket, and actually turned out to be a decent chap.
I'm the same, more beer for Musk. I'm guessing many here might have warmed to him. I wasn't keen on him and to be honest I have asked myself lately what it was that turned me off as I can't even remember.In any case, seeing how good the cars are, how he is clearly running Tesla very well and then the patent release has really won me over to Elon. He seems to be the reason society needs billionaires - because some of them can do something genuinely useful with their money. This just adds to the feeling that he may have been a bit immature early on but is actually a decent bloke trying to do ambitious things the right way. Let's face it, good or bad, the world would really benefit from most of his projects succeeding, good luck to him.
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Friday 11th July 2014 17:49 GMT Michael Wojcik
the late scientist Nikola Tesla
"scientist"? Tesla was an engineer, inventor, and tinkerer, but at best he dabbled in actual science. I've read a couple of Tesla biographies and I can't recall any actual methodologically-sound scientific research he did, nor any contributions to scientific theory.
I realize Tesla is one of the patron saints of the Internet, thanks in part to hagiographies by the likes of Inman1 and even more to the usual online groupthink. And no doubt I'll garner some downvotes for daring to challenge his legend. But that legend is hugely inflated.
That said, sure, let Inman and Musk build a museum for him. It never hurts to get folks excited about engineering and the like. If we can't have Scrapheap Challenge, at least we could have a fun Tesla museum to encourage engineering-inclined kids.
(In my opinion, Tesla did make one major contribution: demonstrating AC power transmission and getting Westinghouse on board. While HVDC looks better than AC today for long-distance transmission, at the time AC was likely the best way to go. Edison's plan of DC short-distance distribution and small neighborhood generating plants would have worked in cities, but rural electrification would have lagged far behind.)
1Whose work I often enjoy too. That doesn't make him an expert in the history of science, though.