There is a great biography of Edison which was very eye opening to me - I did not realize how many patents he held or how many other inventions and innovations

There is a great biography of Edison which was very eye opening to me - I did not realize how many patents he held or how many other inventions and innovations on other work he had made beyond the longer burning commercial lightbulb. http://refer.ly/a09m http://refer.ly/a09m Just in case you don't read the book, there is a story where they first got the lightbulb to burn for a long time... I think it was 30-something hours. And they just stayed awake sitting there in amazement watching it burn until it burned out. I feel like that awe is so in the spirit of today's modern startups when we first launch or discover something. When they "launched" the new lightbulb they strung them up all over the yard of Edison's house, and people came driving up at night for the event and it was like magic. I would give anything to have seen that. I think its really cool that he improved on other people's inventions, helping make things like the telegraph and typewriter into practical, affordable, useful tools that lots of people could buy. That might not be as grand as making brand new things, but it has a huge impact on human life. He also created the phonograph, the first idea of "records" (wax scrolls) and did a ton of work on early motion pictures. The list just goes on and on, learn about him, you'll be surprised to find that what they taught you in school was just surface-level and there is really so much more there.