Ah, yes: Thomas Edison vs. Nikola Tesla, in a rap. Best thing since the Strunk and White rap.
Thomas Edison
LATEST
Thomas Edison, who knew a little something about sleep and success, napping as he was frequently captured doing.
You do something all day long, don’t you? Every one does. If you get up at seven o’clock and go to bed at eleven, you have put in sixteen good hours, and it is certain with most men, that they have been doing something all the time. They have been either walking, or reading, or writing, or thinking. The only trouble is that they do it about a great many things and I do it about one. If they took the time in question and applied it in one direction, to one object, they would succeed. Success is sure to follow such application. The trouble lies in the fact that people do not have an object, one thing, to which they stick, letting all else go. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.
Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847, on the secrets of success
For Edison’s birthday today, his original patent of the lightbulb that forever changed modern life.
The Incandescing Electric Lamp, one of Edison’s 1,093 inventions, was patented on October 30, 1883. His first functional incandescent electric lamp was successfully tested at his Menlo Park Lab on October 21, 1879, which marked the beginning of the electrical age.
Awakened at 5:15 a.m. My eyes were embarrassed by the sunbeams. Turned my back to them and tried to take another dip into oblivion. Succeeded. Awakened at 7 a.m. Thought of Mina, Daisy, and Mamma G. Put all 3 in my mental kaleidoscope to obtain a new combination a la Galton. Took Mina as a basis, tried to improve her beauty by discarding and adding certain features borrowed from Daisy and Mamma G. A sort of Raphaelized beauty, got into it too deep, mind flew away and I went to sleep again. Awakened at 8:15 a.m. … Arose at 9 o’clock, came down stairs expecting twas too late for breakfast. Twasn’t.
What a peek inside the diary of Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847, plus a lesson on sleep and success from the great inventor.
Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.
Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847.
Did you know that Thomas Edison, born on this day in 1847, was a formidable power-napper? Lessons in sleep and success from the great inventor.
Striking footage of Japanese acrobats captured by Thomas Edison in 1904. Edison also filmed the first kiss in cinema and is credited with “inventing” the movies as popular entertainment.
(↬ Flavorwire)
The first-ever film adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, produced by Edison Studios over the course of 3 days in the Bronx in 1902 and directed by J. Searle Dawley – 12 minutes of essential film history.
The only known footage of Mark Twain, in his signature white suit and puffing a cigar, recorded by Thomas Edison in 1909, a year before Twain’s death. The two were close friends.
Edison is also responsible for filming the first kiss in cinema.
The first page of Thomas Edison’s 1988 to-do list of “things doing or to be done,” including:
- Cotton picker
- New standard phonograph
- Hand turning phonograph
- Deaf apparatus
- Electrical piano
- New expansion pyromagnetic dynamo
- Artificial silk
- Phonographic clock
- Marine telegraphy
- Chalk battery
- Ink for blind
In the oldest surviving recording of Thomas Edison’s voice, circa 1888, he describes an imagined trip “around the world on the phonograph.”
