What I learned from reading Edison: A Biography by Matthew Josephson.
There were other notable american inventors in his time, but they were more usually lonely, troubled souls, and his personality outshone theirs.
By 1929, two whole generations of Americans had grown accustomed to watching the progress of this self educated man who worked in a laboratory that had its windows virtually open to all of the world.
He had known how to dramatize his inventions.
He had known how to gather interest, faith, and hope in the success of his projects.
He typified the independent, lone handed inventor of the 19th century's heroic age of invention.
He had begun his work in the age of gas and kerosene lamps and was leaving it with the cities throughout the world lit up with his lights and music and voices sounding everywhere.
That is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is a 60 year old biography of Thomas Edison originally published in 1959.
It is Edison, a biography written by Matthew Josephson.
Okay, so I want to tell you why I started with that paragraph in particular.
When I read that paragraph towards the end of the book, it made me think of Steve Jobs quote, that we're here to put a dent in the universe.
That paragraph describes the dent that Thomas Edison put into the universe.
And so the way I think about the conversation that you and I are about to have, it's really a continuation of the conversation that I think started back on episode 263.
To me, these last, I guess this is the fifth episode in a series that I think are heavily related to each other.
So it starts back on 263 and 264 with Edwin Land, the founder of Polaroid, then 265 Steve Jobs and 266 Henry Ford.
And the reason to me, it's just one conversation that is appearing over five different episodes is because they all admired and studied each other.
So Edwin Land studied Thomas Edison.
Alexander Bell, who's also in this book, but I'm not going to talk about today.
And Henry Ford.
Steve Jobs is the one that turned me on to all of them.
So Steve Jobs talked about how Edwin Land was his hero.