Edison profited from the work of others in his Menlo Park lab and at the Edison Electric Light Compan[ies]/other companies.
Nikola Tesla had one of the greatest minds the world has ever seen. He developed the alternating current system as well as the Tesla coil and made some absolutely incredible advances in early wireless communication.
That mind, though, was also plagued with madness. Tesla has been called eccentric, but that hardly scratches the surface of his problems. He was, by all modern definitions, cripplingly mentally ill. Behind his genius was a man who struggled through intense delusions and compulsive behavior, a man tormented by his own mind.
Edison was an American, Tesla was from a former Soviet Block country. I don't think they want us to know that some of the greatest ideas have come from other countries.
Another factor is that Tesla went overboard and thought hr could beam power so cheaply that he could compete with electricity wires on poles. Beaming power is possible, but the power losses were (and still are) so great that that wires are cheaper, also such a power beam accidentally pointing at people would be deadly, that is why we still dont do it even though we could collect the power with sattelites (pretty much for free) and beam it down as microwaves.
CallMeIshmael 