Written by Banchi

Over 150 years ago, his teachers said he was “too stupid to learn anything”.

 He was fired from his first two jobs for being “non-productive”.

As an inventor, he made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb.

When a reporter asked him, “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?” he replied “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”

He had a bunch of problems in his life, lots of them —–

He received little formal education.

An attack of scarlet fever started deterioration in his hearing that will eventually leave him deaf as an adult.

He was thrown out of a school.

And yet he was able to invent from batteries to electric lights and power to phonographs and sound recording to motion pictures to telegraphs.

His name is Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison is probably the most brilliant inventor America ever had.

He was born to an exiled Canadian political activist and a school teacher.

He was educated at home by his mother, not because it was a choice. But because he was dimmed unfit to be educated in a formal education.

Here is what his mother did when her son was thrown out of a school:

One day Thomas came home and gave a paper to his mother. He told her, “My teacher gave this paper to me and told me to only give it to my mother.”

His mother’s eyes were tearful as she read the letter out loud to her child:

“Your son is a genius. This school is too small for him and doesn’t have enough good teachers for training him. Please teach him yourself.”

After, many, many years, after Edison’s mother died and he was one of the greatest inventors of the century, one day he was looking through old family things.

Suddenly he saw a folder paper in the corner of a drawer in a desk.

He took it and opened it up.

On the paper was written:

“Your son is addled (mentally ill). We won’t let him come to school anymore”

Edison cried for hours and then he wrote in his diary:

“Thomas Alva Edison was an addled child that, by a hero mother, became the genius of the century.”

Edison will go on to secure over 1,000 patents.

In a burst of prolific creativity, in just over eight years, between 1879 and 1886, he secured 400.

One of them, in 1877, is the phonograph, the first machine to be able to record and replay sound and the forerunner of the record player.

In 1879, he produced the first commercially reliable, long lasting light bulb using direct current.

LESSON:

Do not give up! Ever!

Keep your dreams!

—————————–

To Your Inspirations,

Banchi