Thomas Edison

In 1878, Edison created his prototype light bulb, which was a thin strip of paper attached to wires. The whole thing was enclosed in a vacuum inside a glass bulb. When the power was turned on, the paper ‘filament’ heated up and glowed. The only problem was that the paper burnt out very quickly.
After thousands of attempts at designing a workable electric light bulb, Edison’s student, Lewis Latimer said, “We’ll never succeed!” Edison, forever optimist, replied, “We have found 999 ways not to make the light bulb, so we are one step closer”. Shortly thereafter Latimer found the right material for the filament – a carbonized cotton thread.

Edison is quoted as saying:
1. Always be interested in what you undertake.
2. Don’t mind the clock but keep at it and let nature indicate the necessity of the rest.
3. Failures, so called, are but finger posts pointing out the right direction to those who are willing to learn.
4. Hard work and a general interest in everything that makes for human progress will make men and women more valuable and acceptable to themselves and to the world.

A Little extra…
One morning, as Edison approached his factory, he saw it was on fire. One of his students came running over and asked, “What shall we do? The factory is burned to the ground, we have no more money and no insurance!” Edison paused for a second and then said to his student, “What a wonderful opportunity to rebuild the factory the way we want it!”

“The optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; the pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity” - Anon