After yesterday's release of The Shooter, Esquire's 15,000 word piece by Phil Bronstein on the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden and his difficult transition back to civilian life, much attention is being correctly focused on the surprising straits that even the most highly-trained and elite soldiers face after often harrowing service to the United States.
Tesla Motors was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who financed the company until the Series A round of funding. Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to Elon Musk's involvement. Musk led the Series A round of investment in February 2004, joining Tesla's board of directors as its chairman.
CEO Elon Musk, who was not involved in the founding of the company, has told PBS he counts Thomas Edison, a Tesla rival, as a personal hero, along with Winston Churchill. Musk does have love for Tesla, though, pledging last year to donate to a project to turn the inventor's old lab into a museum, according to Jalopnik. An inveterate inventor, Tesla filed more than 700 patents for everything from wireless communication to fluorescent lighting.