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PraiseBeToScience on scored.co
19 days ago-1 points(+0/-0/-1Score on mirror)1 child
>Without a question he could’ve been super wealthy if that’s all he cared about.
Short of starting his own company, which would go on to create tangible things, there was no other way to monetize that type of talent at the time. Now there is. I fear it is its own "brain drain" in a way.
Nikola could’ve been rich AF if he wanted to be without ever starting his own business, in fact there were periods where he was rich by late 1800’s to early 1900’s standards. He waived the royalties on several of his inventions so people could use his tech for free so long as the people who wanted to use his tech paid for the materials and built it themselves….but even for the inventions that earned him repeated royalties, and the inventions he sold outright without a repeated royalty, he immediately put all of his profits right back into R&D for new ideas and projects, most of which didn’t get sold to anybody, so his profits were drained in the process.
Like I said, his goal was never about getting rich. Shit man, he had the patent for AC power generation and for the electric motor, those two patents alone would’ve earned him millions of dollars had he not sold his rights to the patents to George Westinghouse for $60,000. Tesla still could’ve been a millionaire from the royalty clause that Westinghouse agreed to for Tesla’s motor patent, which was supposed to cost Westinghouse $2.50 per horsepower produced by tesla’s motors, that royalty clause was so costly to Westinghouse that he would’ve went bankrupt had Tesla used the courts to force Westinghouse to pay for all of the horsepower Tesla’s motors produced. Nikola tore up the royalty clause part of the deal because Westinghouse was his friend, so all he really got was the $60,000 worth of cash and stock in Westinghouse, which in the early 1900’s would’ve been the equivalent of like 2.3 million dollars by today’s standards.
Short of starting his own company, which would go on to create tangible things, there was no other way to monetize that type of talent at the time. Now there is. I fear it is its own "brain drain" in a way.
Like I said, his goal was never about getting rich. Shit man, he had the patent for AC power generation and for the electric motor, those two patents alone would’ve earned him millions of dollars had he not sold his rights to the patents to George Westinghouse for $60,000. Tesla still could’ve been a millionaire from the royalty clause that Westinghouse agreed to for Tesla’s motor patent, which was supposed to cost Westinghouse $2.50 per horsepower produced by tesla’s motors, that royalty clause was so costly to Westinghouse that he would’ve went bankrupt had Tesla used the courts to force Westinghouse to pay for all of the horsepower Tesla’s motors produced. Nikola tore up the royalty clause part of the deal because Westinghouse was his friend, so all he really got was the $60,000 worth of cash and stock in Westinghouse, which in the early 1900’s would’ve been the equivalent of like 2.3 million dollars by today’s standards.