An important key to personal
success is perseverance. You will inevitably face obstacles along the road to
success. Achieving your goals will require overcoming each obstacle, learning
from it, and continuing to move forward along your path.
“Our greatest weakness lies in
giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more
time,” Thomas A. Edison famously said. Edison understood well the meaning of
perseverance. Although receiving over 1000 United States patents, some of his most
notable inventions took considerable dedication to achieve.
One of his most groundbreaking
inventions, the incandescent lightbulb, required thousands of tests between
1878 and 1880. Edison tried multiple combinations of materials unsuccessfully. About his many tests, Edison said, “I have not
failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Edison was ultimately successful
in producing a bulb with a carbon filament that was the first commercially
practical electric-powered light source. He then patented a system for electric
power distribution to illuminate his newly developed bulbs and founded an
electric utility in New York City that generated and delivered DC-current electricity
to customers in lower Manhattan. However, the AC-current power distribution system
championed by competitor Westinghouse ultimately proved more commercially
viable because the power could travel greater distances from where it was
generated.
Nonetheless, Edison’s inventions
in electrical lighting, generation, and distribution ushered in the industrialization
of the Twentieth Century. Add to that, Edison and his team developed motion
pictures, the fluoroscope, the stock ticker, and other inventions. He also had other
business interests, such as mining, and rubber. Thomas Edison’s perseverance resulted
in innovations that, quite literally, changed the world.
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