Thomas Edison tried two thousand different materials in search of a filament for the electric light bulb. When none worked satisfactorily, his assistant complained, “All our work is in vain. We have learned nothing.”
Edison replied confidently, “Oh, we have come a long way and we have learned a lot. We know that there are two thousand elements that we cannot use to make a good light bulb.”
Edison was once asked to sign a guestbook that had the usual columns for name and address, as well as one for “Interested in.” In this last column Edison entered the word: “Everything.”
Source: http://pawprints.kashalinka.com/
Postage stamp of Edison courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Thomas Alva Edison was a U.S. inventor responsible for about thirteen hundred inventions, the most famous of which is the electric light bulb (1879). He also invented the gramophone and motion pictures, and his carbon transmitter enabled Bell’s telephone to be brought into practical use.