Andrew Carnegie sold his steel company in 1901 and then spent eighteen years trying to get rid of the proceeds on purpose. He funded 2,509 libraries. He was not being sentimental.
While Caesar was in Gaul, he was not in Rome. That was the problem. His reputation was being decided in a city he was nowhere near, by men who had every reason to shape the account in their favour.
In 1893 his alternating current lit the Chicago World’s Fair. Two years later his polyphase system went into Niagara Falls. The grid that charged your phone last night is, in its bones, Nikola Tesla’s design.
