The nearly men : a chronicle of scientific failure / Mike Green.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 331-337) and index.

Some of the most important innovations in history have a long gestation period, with the person most famous for their development often drawing greatly from the work of other unsung heroes and sometimes stealing it outright. Sadly, the poor souls who did the hard work aren't remembered and The Nearly Men is an attempt to address that imbalance. From Antonio Meucci, the real inventor of the telephone, through Alan Turing, responsible for making major developments in computing; Robert Hooke, who postulated the concept of planetary motion before Newton; Nikola Tesla, who died almost penniless while Marconi used his theories to develop wireless radio communication and Joseph Swan, who came up with the design of the light bulb, only to have it snatched by Thomas Edison, these and many others have their stories told here in The Nearly Men.