Honoring the inventor behind alternating current

Credit where it's due is a simple and remarkable thing, although unfortunately history has a way of shortchanging people of it. It's hard to think of a better example of this tendency than one Nikola Tesla — the person who, by rights, ought to be considered the father of the electronic age, but more often is remembered as a mad scientist who died penniless and alone.

In recent years, however, there's been a growing acknowledgement of the many contributions made to modern life by this Serbian-American genius. Two "crowdfunding" projects are attempting to honor Tesla with statues and museums from Shoreham, New York (the site of one of Telsa's old laboratories) to Silicon Valley, California, a place whose very existence would be difficult to imagine without Tesla's inventions.

Crowdfunding, by the way, is a way to combine social media with traditional fundraising. One such campaign, begun on Kickstarter by start-up veteran Dorrian Porter, seeks to commemorate Telsa with a bronze statue, a mock-up of which can be seen here. Should enough money be raised by the Kickstarter campaign, the statue would be erected in Palo Alto, California. As of this writing, 34 backers have pledged about $3,800 to build the statue.

Another, perhaps more ambitious, campaign was started by Internet cartoonist and blogger Matthew Inman, whose comic strips on The Oatmeal are frequently shared all over the internet. Inman wants to use another crowdfunding site called Indiegogo to collect funding to transform Tesla's old laboratory called Wardenclyffe into a museum that will educate the public about his contributions to energy transmission and wireless communications. The campaign succeeded in meeting its original $850,000 goal, and has since expanded into a project not just to build a museum, but a Telsa Science Center at Wardenclyffe.

History doesn't always remember the people who made the present possible. Particularly if the people in question didn't devote themselves to making a fortune or at least spreading their name far and wide before passing on. During his life, Tesla was too busy pursuing his ideas to bother with making money or gaining notoriety. Still, companies like General Electric, Westinghouse and others would not exist without his innovations. Commonplace technologies such as the hydroelectric dam or the electric car or the radio, even if Tesla is not remembered for having contributed to them, are nevertheless the products of his brain.

It's true genius is seldom recognized in its own time, but to break out a different cliche: "Better late than never."