Not my post, but if it helps:
You’ll find it repeated here:
http://www.magnetricity.com/Tesla/Tesla_Biography.php
Jim
I find no proof that Edison really did have anything to do with this, but the story is widespread.
Edison did not to my knowledge fund the 1931 Frankenstein.
He did make Electrocuting an Elephant (1903) to discredit Tesla, Westinghouse and AC power.
Edison was kind of a jerk. The Bill Gates of his day. Only worse but with much better press.
Jim
I’m probably being whooshed here, but no, it’s not. It’s Eeee-gor.
That was a line/joke from “Young Frankenstein”
Jim
:smack:
I knew it. Sorry 'bout that, folks.
Dr Caligari is not in the mould of the classic Mad Scientist, though - no giant Van De Graaff generators, no killer robots, just one pathetic hypnotized minion. Props for the cool setting, though, but clearly not in Rotwang’s league.
Ever year at Tampa’s local SF con, Necronomicon (), there’s an “Igor-Ygor” party, where everybody wears a badge spelled one way or the other, and at random intervals half the room shouts “Eegor!” and the other half shouts “Aigor!”
Then, somebody sometimes starts in with “Tastes great!” “Less filling!”
In fairness to anybody who’s made such a claim in the past, they’ve presumably had the 1910 version in mind - a film whose survival has been the subject of much gossip amongst silent film buffs over the years and is so relatively well known for a film of that period.
However, it’s far from obvious that even it was intended as any sort of anti-Tesla propaganda. Granted the secondary literature on AC versus DC is astonishingly vast and it wouldn’t surprise me if someone had tried to develop this argument at some time. But, for instance, Mark Essig argues in his recent Edison and the Electric Chair (Walker, 2003) that Edison conceded defeat in the debate by the end of 1890. It then rumbled on at a local level - and DC systems persisted in places - but Westinghouse was essentially sweeping all before themselves through the 1890s.
I’ve never seen the point made explicitly, but I suspect that even Electrocuting an Elephant was a stunt designed more to promote Edison’s investments in cinema than to discredit AC. That it was in the tradition of his earlier electrocution stunts may have been, by this stage, just because that was the sort of spectacle they expected from him, albeit now via a flashy new medium. (There’s also the angle that the circumstances seem to have been largely opportunistic: someone wanted rid of an unfortunate elderly elephant.)
By 1910 the original debate was decisively over and Tesla was mired in stuff that Westinghouse was coming to have reservations about. There was no longer any great need by then for Edison to go out of his way to continue to actively attack his reputation.
As for the specific question in the OP, while I haven’t read it, Christopher Frayling’s recent book on the subject Mad, Bad and Dangerous apparently argues that although Frankenstein in the novel and on stage is an obvious precursor, it’s Rotwang that crystallises the stereotype. That’s then an influence on the 1931 Frankenstein.
The eponymous villain in Jules Verne’s The Master Of The World, perhaps. He’s a brilliant engineer who uses his creations to blackmail the governments of the world in a quest for personal power. He even has a secret base concealed inside a volcano.
You mean Robur-le-Conquerant. First appeared in 1886’s The Clipper of the Clouds.
I always thought the Albatross was much cooler than the Terror.
Let’s not forget Dr Moreau.-
‘They mocked me!’
‘The cause of science must be advanced!’
Has his own island.
Others-
Paracelsus-
Loved to ruin anybody who disagreed with his theories.
Claimed to have the secret of the philosophers stone.
Lavoisier-
All kinds of fun experiments.
Last experiment was a plan to see if severed heads were conscious. Lavoisier saw no reason why his death by guillotine couldn’t help science.
Let’s not forget the great Doctor Richard Sledwort! http://www.secretgovernment.org/article.php?index=12
What Exit, as soon as Tesla and conspiracy come up in conversation I tiptoe slowly toward the door, trying not to make any conspicuous moves that might spook those with brains balanced like a freshly sharpened pencil on its point.
Thanks (and to bonzer) for the background: I was sure this couldn’t be true but the history is far more interesting than the conspiracies.
Doesn’t seem from the limited comments I can find on the Dr. Frankenstein part that he played it especially mad either.
Someone who posts at IMDb should add the 1910 Frankenstein to Edison’s page, which oddly omits it from his producing credits.
Semi-hijack.
Try the online Girl Genius comic. By Phil Foglio.
Much Mad Science fun.
IMO The reality of Tesla is a match for the legend. No, he wasn’t a superbeing from Venus*. No, he didn’t invent wireless power transmission, free energy, death rays, earthquake machines, or psychotronics.** But, he was a mad genius (phobic aversion to earings, compulsion to calculate cubic volume of food before eating, compulsion to polish silverware with over a dozen napkins before eating), and Edison did run a smear campaign against him. Then, Nikola Tesla became obsessed with pigeons and died poor. What more can you ask of a mad scientist?
- As claimed in a biography printed in green ink.
**As claimed by conspiracy websites, catalogs, books, and magazines everywhere.
Did Edison himself “produce” the film, or just his company?
The IMDb does have an entry for the 1910 Frankenstein – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0001223/. It lists no producer, not even on the “Full Cast and Crew” page; but the “Company Credits” page lists Edison Manufacturing Company as the “Production Company.”
Fraü Brücher! <evil grin>
I bet you pronounce it FRANK-n-stine, rather than the more accepted frahnk-n-STEEN, too.
I think Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus may predate Prospero by a couple of years.
Neeiigghh!