What do great inventors all have in common? they are intensely driven individuals that will not stop until they have achieved the goal set forth. They are not deterred by failure, no matter how many times they have failed, nor how many experts and people tell them their ideas are foolish and can’t be achieved. Failure to them, is accepted much the same as regular people accept being stopped at a red light while driving, they just deal with it along the way, accepting failure, no matter how many times it presents itself, as part of the game, never allowing it to leave a negative impact.

Thomas Alva Edison, born in Ohio on 2-11-1847. In school Edison was classified as “confused & not teachable” by his teachers. He was totally deaf in his left ear and impaired in his other ear. Edison experimented many thousands of times before he invented an acceptable incandescent lamp in 1879, and perfected it in 1880. Edison once said, “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.” And, “discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
His key to beating all others out in the perfect light bulb was the vacuum glass bulb to keep the filament from burning out and a specialized carbon filament that outlasted all other bulbs of that time.