10.6. Lesson 95: Make the Problem the Solution
Since the appearance of Edison's most famous invention, the incandescent electric lamp, in 1879, generations have waxed poetic about how the Wizard of Menlo Park vanquished the darkness and mastered a hitherto ineluctable fact of creation, the separation of day from night.
Edison himself did nothing to discourage those who painted him as a wizard. Such a picture was good for business and attracted much-needed investment capital. But he never made the mistake of believing his own press. He knew the incandescent electric lamp was neither a poem written against darkness nor a miracle of biblical proportion. For him, the invention was not a quantum leap of inspirational genius, but merely a step—albeit ...
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