Of currently dead inventors, my favorite is ...

You know, the person who had knowledge of the decimal place value system, deduced the value of pi (and maybe concluded it was irrational), algebra and determined the radius of the Earth among other things.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aryabhata

Isambard Kingdom Brunel
There can be no other choice.

Remember, it was his ship 'The Great Eastern' that laid the first Transatlantic Cable.
The design of the railway bridge of the thames at Maidenhead is also a marvel of engineering. Most of his peers said it would fall down. It is still in use today carrying 125mph trains.
Then his father pioneered the Shield Method of tunnelling when building the first tunnel under the Thames.

My alternative suggestion would have to be Joseph Whitworth [slashdot.org] - creator of standards that became to basis for great engineering feats.

Inventor of
The surface condenser
The hot air engine
The world's first monitor, USS Monitor, was both designed and built by Ericsson for the Union Navy in the American Civil War
Torpedo technology, especially Destroyer, an advanced torpedo boat
The solar machine, using concave mirrors to gather sun radiation strong enough to run an engine.
USS Princeton (1843)
Hoop gun construction
The Propeller

A clear and concise refutation of this very argument! http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/18/nikola-tesla-wasnt-god-and-thomas-edison-wasnt-the-devil/ [forbes.com]

Last seen this morning on Slashdot.

Edison was an patent factory. FTFY

There is a big difference between being the real inventor and filing the patent for the invention. Edison, is more like Steve Jobs....find something techy, convince people they need it, make some minor improvements to crap that was already out there, and then simultaneously smear your competition and make "exclusivity" agreements to make it so people can't change once they've locked into your crap.

About the only difference is Edison publicly electrocuted puppies as a PR stunt, I think Jobs probably just did it in private for his own shits-n-giggles.

Not to mention his skills as a statesman, convincing France to support the 13 colonies in the American Revolution through all-night, wine-soaked, multi-course meals with French royalty/politicians. And the patent system which, far from its current incarnation, was originally intended to protect inventors from having their ideas stolen by rich asshats and without which there would be no Tesla or Edison. Plus, he had to have had balls of steel to experiment with lightening in an era where disease was still treated with leeches and accusations of witchcraft were taken seriously. Franklin was Mark Twain, Tony Stark, and John F. Kennedy rolled into one.