Thomas A. Edison
Thomas A. Edison
Thomas Alva Edisonwas an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park", he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionInventor
Date of Birth11 February 1847
CountryUnited States of America
Thomas A. Edison quotes about
I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization.... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation
I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries - discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .
Books will soon be obsolete in the schools... Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.
Let the public throw bouquets to the inventors and in time we will all be happy.
Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.
There is no subsitute for hard work.
I have not failed 10,000 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work,
Nothing that's good works by itself, you've got to make the damn thing work.
There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.
The inventor can't do it all, you've got to change people. We have an enormous capacity to invent super-machinery. But our desire to install the device is weak. Human inertia is the problem, not invention. Something in man makes him resist change.
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will involve the patient in the proper use of food, fresh air and exercise
The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.