Thomas Alva Edison | Failure

We continue this week's theme of FAILURE on Curious Quotes, Points To Ponder, & Inspiring Insights with this quote from Thomas Alva Edison. Most likely, you have heard Edison's famous quote "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." While this would fit well with this week's theme, I like this quote better because it emphasizes the importance of having negative results or failures as part of the creative process. Surely along the way to his 1,083 U.S. Patents, Edison had tens of thousands of failures. I submit to you The Epic Failure of Thomas Edison's Talking Doll. 

This slide was a lot of fun to make, and also pretty time consuming. Let's just say that I went pretty deep down the rabbit hole that is Google Patents for this one. Google Patents allows you to search and read the full text of patents from around the world. I selected images from patents award to Edison to use as a border for the slide. Along the way, I learned that Edison has patents for a wide range of items that I was not aware that he had contributed to including a flying machine, automobile, and a process of constructing concrete buildings. Along the way I became really obsessed with failure and have started outlining a new session and workshop on the subject.