Edison’s Real Lesson

Upon finishing Matthew Josephson’s Thomas Edison biography I pondered what lesson I could take from the life of this remarkable man.

Edison is most well known for his perseverance, sometimes making thousands of tries at a problem before making consequential progress (other times abandoning projects). He could get frustrated by failure but never let that discourage him from his goals. Perhaps more relevant for our time, he didn’t measure success by other’s standards, hence his fame and notoriety never distracted him from his ambitions. He was getting glowing media coverage long before his success with the incandescent light bulb, and yet spent many years focused on that thankless, and seemingly endless, task.

Edison enjoyed his role of the “Wizard of Menlo Park” but never confused it with real success, at least not how he envision it. He had an inner barometer of value that was almost entirely outside people’s assessment of him; hence his sense of purpose came from within, driving him to achieve new accomplishments decades into being one of the most famous people in the world. 

That clear sense of direction helped take Thomas Edison beyond famous, or even great, into truly exceptional.

Top Image: Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Levin Corbin Handy in Washington DC, April 1878. Courtesy the Library of Congress.

Second Image: On the second floor of his Laboratories Museum in West Orange NJ is a display case with many of the products of the Edison company. Seemingly everything there is now available on a smartphone: music player, typewriter, calculator, film and photographic cameras, telephone, flashlight; one of the only things that isn’t is the sandwich press. 

Bottom Image: My daughter with a replica of The Black Maria, the first indoor movie studio. She was more impressed by the sandwich press.