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
We now know a thousand ways not to build a light bulb
I never once made a discovery ... I speak without exaggeration that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light ... Yet in only two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.
It is very different to make a practical system and to introduce it. A few experiments in the laboratory would prove the practicability of system long before it could be brought into general use. You can take a pipe and put a little coal in it, close it up, heat it and light the gas that comes out of the stem, but that is not introducing gas lighting. I'll bet that if it were discovered to-morrow in New York that gas could be made out of coal it would be at least five years before the system would be in general use.
We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.
I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.
I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.
I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.
I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament. . . . Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.
I shall make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford to burn candles
Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.
The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
If we did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.