Thomas Edison

One of my earliest heros was the inventor, Thomas Edison.  I'm not sure where I first learned about him and his exploits.  I do remember that Mom and Dad took me to Menlo Park, NJ when we lived in NJ.  I was about 12 and we visited on a gloomy fall Saturday afternoon.  I remember the beauty of the campus where he did many experiments.  The big windows.  The work benches and the picture of Edison standing beside one of the workbenches.  He was often said to sleep in his labs while working on an experiment. 

I do know where he was solidified as one of my favorite persons.  That was in my sophomore year in high school.  My English teacher assigned all of the guys in the class to enter the Optimist Club Speech Contest.  We were to write a speech with assistance from the girls in the class, memorize it and deliver it several places.

I read books about Edison and discovered that he suffered from a hearing impairment that resulted from his father pulling him up on a train where he was a conductor...by his ears!  This didn't stop Edison.

He became a prolific inventor having his hands in electricity, the phonograph, the telephone, moving pictures and more.  The invention that rested with me the longest was the incandescent light bulb.  He worked on finding an element or alloy that could be the filament of the light bulb.  The trait that was displayed in this and other inventions of his was persistence.  He was said to have tried over 10,000 different options for the filament.  He was quoted as saying that he didn't fail 10,000 times.  He found 10,000 ways that didn't work.

Part of why I identify with Edison is I am persistent.  My mom used to call me hard-headed.  That perjorative statement caused me to lose heart and back off of my persistence.  I saw it as a flaw and not a gift.  I often ask questions and keep asking them until I get an answer I believe covers all the bases.  I look for the answer that answers all the questions and doesn't just arrive at a quick solution.  I want a long term solution to a problem so I can go on to the next and not have to return to something I've considered solved before.  I want to find solutions to problems that others have given up on as unsolveable.

Persistence.  Hard-headedness.  Bull-headedness (another perjorative term I heard often!).  I want to exercise those gifts to bless my world with something that has lasted as long as the incandescent light bulb.