Those who actually created the inventions and spent the time to study and re-write their plans are the ones who contributed to humanity. Edison is simply a thief.

Edison was Steve Jobs to Tesla's Steve Wozniak. Job's was the idea man and Woz was the inventor. But it seems that both have to exist to get the ideas into solid form.

I admit I'm conflicted. I don't like Edison for hiring bright young men to do the inventing and keeping the patents and the profits for himself, but I'm glad he did it if it means bringing inventions forward that otherwise would never have seen light of day.

Tesla of course was on a much higher plane than Edison, no question.

This is a bit off the subject but Tesla often said that his older brother who died young was much more intelligent than he was and in fact Tesla is said to have driven himself and trained his mind in order to try and fill the void left in the world resulting from his brothers death, because for some reason Tesla felt responsible for his brothers death. It's speculated that the older brother might have died as a result of horseplay that involved an actual horse. The rumor is that Nikola spooked the horse causing his brother to fall to his death.

I can't help but wonder what kind of world we'd be living in if they had both lived.

As to your question of who contributed more, I can't answer that, but I like Tesla more.