I’d really like to see where you got that quote, because it’s complete bullshit. This story originally comes from Tesla’s autobiography:
The Manager had promised me fifty thousand dollars on the completion of this task but it turned out to be a practical joke.
But you see that? He never said it was Edison, just ‘The Manager’.
Btw in that same book Tesla calls Edison “a wonderful man”.
Edit: nvm, I found what you quoted. It’s this fucking pile of garbage
Source?
Unpopular opinion: Edison wasn’t nearly as bad as people are painting him to be.
Extra unpopular opinion: Musk is, very much, quite similar to Nikola Tesla, as he was an extravagant lunatic, that really liked talking about shit he had no idea about, a bitter loser that prefered playing the victim over accepting responsibility for his failures, and he also had fanboys that mindlessly gobbled up everything he said.
Edit: Hey, cowards, instead of just downvoting me, how about some of you try to help the one brave man that actually tried to prove me wrong, he seems to be bruised from falling flat on his face so many times
I told you. In Tesla’s literal autobiography called “My Inventions”, full text of which you can find here.
None of them are Tesla though. It’s all just a giant echo chamber all quoting each other, sometimes changing it slightly, but noone ever can be bothered to actually check the primary sources.
Wha?
It doesn’t seem to contain any sources whatsoever. They also say that “Tesla claimed” those things, yet they never say where or when he supposedly claimed that.
The link you sent doesn’t seem to contain anything, but it looks like it’s supposed to link to the magazine “Electrical Experimenter”, so I went ahead and checked its every 1919 issue. Couldn’t find what you’re claiming. In fact I couldn’t find anything negative about Edison at all. Curious.
The earliest source I could find of that claim is a book called “Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla”, released in 1944, so a year after Tesla’s death, and it also doesn’t say where that quote is actually taken from. Interestingly, the author of this book claims that upon hearing the request for payment Edison said: “Tesla, you don’t understand our American humor”. So quite different to what the PBS article claims. In fact, it seems like the newer the source, the more villainous and bigoted that alleged quote becomes.
You’re welcome to prove me wrong though. If you show an actual, trustworthy, primary source, I will change my mind.