January 25, 2008
Tesla’s biggest innovation was introducing alternating current as the standard for modern electric power, breaking Thomas Edison’s monopoly on DC power. Mike Daisey is an author and monologuist who performs a one-man show about Tesla, and he tells us how AC/DC isn’t just a band.
Mr.Daisey's overwrought monologue is inaccurate, ignorant, and essentially fictional. Direct Current did NOT 'burn down houses", nor did it cause trolley cars to shoot lightning bolts across Brooklyn. In fact, streetcars and subways STILL run on DC, not AC.
Edison and Tesla did NOT have a rivalry, nor did they resent each other. In fact, when Tesla's laboratory was destroyed by fire, Edison invited him to work at his own lab, and Tesla accepted.
The true story of Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse can be read in EMPIRES OF LIGHT, by Jill Jonnes.
Daisey's monologues about Tesla are infantile and self-indulgent. It's really disappointing for a supposedly serious radio show rediscovering a brilliant, if neurotic, scientist to present a narrative so dominated by such bad clichés. As science, documentary or history, it's distorted and inaccurate. As art it ain't so hot either.
The S360 Tesla show is a perfect example of how media propagates the mad-scientist stereotype.
Mr. Daisey is totally irritating. Totally. Don't use him again, Kurt. Please.
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