Pete Best, the original drummer for the Beatles (who was replaced by Ringo in 1962), is forever known as a guy who missed out on fame. In fact, he's become famous for that. In a similar, strange way, the great Nikola Tesla is frequently being remembered as the forgotten man of invention. The Serbo-American genius' greatest work was credited to Edison, stolen by Marconi, or in that "obscure stuff that most of us can't understand so we don't know who did it" category. He made major inroads into X-rays, remote control, radar, robotics, nuclear physics and computers –- and this was back in the 19th and early 20th century. Along the way, he was employed by Edison, but quit because he was being ripped off.
Edison's feud with Tesla has become folklore. For the record, Edison's electrical system was based on direct current (DC), a steady flow of electricity in one direction; Tesla discovered the far stronger alternating current (AC), which is regularly reversed in direction. It was considerably more economical for long-distance transmission, which was where the future of electricity lay. Nonetheless, Edison scoffed at Tesla's discovery. George Westinghouse, one of Edison's business rivals, was more open-minded, putting Tesla on his considerably more generous payroll.
Ignoring his experts, Edison refused to switch to AC, instead launching a propaganda campaign to reveal the dangers of this "competing" current. This involved publicly killing several stray animals, and -– just to prove the terrible power of AC –- a mad circus elephant, which suffered an agonizing death on film. Edison's lab also promoted AC for the first electric chair execution, to ensure that Westinghouse and Tesla would be known as merchants of hideous death. Edison would ultimately fail in this scheme to discredit his rivals. Years later, he would admit that he had been wrong. Tesla died poor, but is now the patron saint of the underrated.
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