The Wizard of Menlo Park Quotes

“In Edison’s time, the term “bugs” was used exactly as it is today. In”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“But one immediate benefit of the press’s marveling was that the extensive coverage supplied Edison with creative ideas about how the phonograph could be adapted for many more uses than telegraphy or senatorial speeches.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“Bell invented the telephone while tinkering with acoustic telegraphy; Edison invented the phonograph while tinkering with the telephone.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“Young Bell and Edison were the same age, each improving the major invention that the other had come up with first, Edison following Bell, then Bell following Edison. Edison, in fact, had been close to devising a working telephone himself. After Bell’s success, the next best thing for Edison was to come up with an indispensable improvement, the carbon transmitter that captured the human voice far better than Bell’s magnetic design. Edison”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“(The pen would enjoy a second life years later, in the 1890s, when converted into the first electric tattoo needle.)”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“HAVING ONE’S OWN shop, working on projects of one’s own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“Nor did he regard his partial deafness as an impediment. He claimed that the deafness was actually an advantage, freeing him from time-wasting small talk and giving him undisturbed time to “think out my problems.” Late in life he would say that he was fortunate to have been spared “all the foolish conversation and other meaningless sounds that normal people hear.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“invention should not be pursued as an exercise in technical cleverness, but should be shaped by commercial needs.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“many of his pranks involved electric shock—these stunts gain interest in retrospect, knowing as we do of Edison’s future work on the ultimate instrument of shock, the electric chair. In”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“his own willingness to practice Morse code “about 18 hours a day.” (Edison’s capacity for extended bursts of work would be his principal vanity his entire life.) This intensive tutelage soon enabled him to become a professional telegraph operator.”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World

“Edison’s admirers endowed him with fantastical powers that would permit him to invent anything he wished (one”
― Randall E. Stross, The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World