SPECIAL: Thomas Edison (Part 2)

alright so last month sam went down to nashville for the podcast movie conference and he did a fireside chat with john lee du you might know him as the host of the entrepreneurs on fire podcast and if you like my first million you might like the entrepreneurs fire podcast it's the same it's like inspiration and strategy around your entrepreneurial journey and helps you create the life you've dreamed dev wow sound too bad does it alright well guess what it's also part of the hubspot podcast network that's who brings you our show and other great business shows so if you wanna listen learn and grow go listen to entrepreneurs on fire it's on the hubspot podcast network if you can find it at hubspot dot com slash podcast network alright we have a special episode by ben wilson this is a three part series on thomas edison we discovered this podcast about two or three months ago and freaking loved it it it had very small listeners leadership both sean and i binge listened to all of them his name's ben wilson the podcast is called how to take over the world ben has allowed us to air this episode and the next two so this is a three part series on thomas edison he's allowed us to air on our feed just because we like it so his podcast it only had a few hundred listeners at the time but we thought this was so cool sean and i and it's about a similar topic that we talk about so we have this topic called or the segment called billy of the week billionaire of the week this one is on thomas edison we loved ben's podcast podcasts so much we just said hey man let us just air this on our feed because it's so good so it's called how to take over the world this episode is on thomas edison he's got a few other episodes or a few other folks on his feed he's got thomas edison i believe he as alexander the great the roth charles family it's really really cool i'm a history buff and so i'm happy that he was cool and loves air this we're doing it none other than just we think it's good and we want you guys to check it out so here it is enjoy the episode there's part two and part three on our feed check it out and we'll show you how beta then but have high power just one second let me hunt i'd like to take this chance to apologize absolutely nobody hello and welcome to how to take over the world this is ben wilson and this episode is the second episode about thomas edison covering his life from the invention of electric light until his death and i'm gonna do something a little bit different this go around i'm gonna do this episode two and then next week i'm gonna do something called end notes where i'm just gonna record sort of my thoughts that didn't fit neatly into the narrative that i laid out in in part one and part too so it'll just be kinda some rambling and some extra notes and yes guys can let me know what you can of that so for this episode where we're starting is if you remember edison invented the pho photograph and then he went out west he took this big vacation and he came back with ideas about electric light and this was in eighteen seventy eight when edison was thirty one years old and when edison invented the pho photograph and with it the entire idea of recorded sound it was basically by accident if you remember he was working on a different and it just kinda came to him all at once and his invention of the light bulb could not have been more different electric light was something that dozens of people were working on everyone kind of knew it was the future it was just that no one could really figure out how to make it work and so when edison starts working perfect the light bulb in eighteen seventy eight it's the ultimate heat check dozens of other men with more impressive academic credentials than him have been working on it for years and he thinks he can just come in and figure it out no problem right now it's a to keep in mind that a form of electric light had actually already been invented by the time edison came along but it wasn't electric light like we know it they had what were called arc lights the first arc light was developed way back twenty years previous in eighteen fifty five five and what it was is essentially a giant open current so you got two big metal poles and there's a continuous electric current passing from one to the other if you've ever seen a welder with one of those big heavy masks and their tools throwing off this huge right white light that is actually called arc welding and arc welding is essentially just using many arc lights to fuse together metal so so that's really what an arc light is right but there's is a problem with it one is that they are incredibly dangerous so you gotta keep them far removed from pedestrians the other problem is that they're incredibly bright so with an arc light the strategy is to put it way up high and let a single arc light light a block or even a few blocks this creates problems because it casts horrible shadows and also because you can't really use it for indoor lighting it's it's just too bright and so these lights were sort of a novelty but people were still looking for a better solution something that they could actually replace candles and ass lamps with which brings us to incandescent lighting of course as you probably know within incandescent lights instead of using an open current as the light source like in arc light instead you send a charge through a filament heating it up until it starts to glow and again in incandescent lighting had already been discovered far before edison at least in principle but the problem in eighteen seventy eight was finding a material for the filament of an incandescent bulb that would last for long enough to make it practical because if you imagine most things that you heat up so hot that they glow usually either melts or burst into flame and even if you had a good substance that would not melt or burst into flame most of them would burnout out after only a few minutes and a light bulb that needs to be replaced every five minutes is like that's not practical right a science fair project so everyone was trying to figure out how to make a practical incandescent light bulb that would last in edison was not lacking in self confidence he was certain that he could succeed or others had failed it seemed easy to him in fact so easy that he starts telling newspaper reporters that he has this thing figured out he's got an incandescent light bulb invented after only a few weeks of working on it he comes up with this bulb and it's lasting longer than anyone else's and he figures hey that was easy i just ended the light bulb and so he's telling people i did it electric white bulb invented and because he's a a celebrity inventor already you know he invented the pho photograph which everyone socks off people are paying attention to as it becomes huge news they're reporting it in the new york times are reporting in the papers all over the world edison has invented the electric light bulb and not only that but edison has a pretty fleshed out idea of how these new bulbs could be used to make electric light practical for millions of people listen to what you wrote and remember this is before any of this is invented this is just edison speculating off the top of his dome in fact they were still years away from from anyone getting electric light but here's what i doesn't wrote quote with the process i have just discovered i can produce a thousand bulbs from one machine indeed the number may be said to be infinite when the brilliant and cheap of the lights are made known to the public which will be in a few weeks or just as soon as i can thoroughly protect the process illumination by gas will be discarded with fifteen or twenty of these dynamic electric machines i can light the entire lower part of new york city using a five hundred horsepower engine i propose to establish one of these light centers in nassau street once wires can be run uptown these wires must be insulated and laid in the ground in the same manner as gas pipes i also propose to utilize the gas burners and chan now in use in each house i can place a light meter once these wires will pass through the house tapping small metallic con that may be placed over each burner whenever it is desired to light a jet it will only be necessary to touch a little spring near it no matches are required again the same wire that brings the light to you will also bring power and heat with the power you can run an elevator a sewing machine or any other mechanical drive that requires a motor and by means of the heat you may cook your food so this seems like pretty simple stuff to us today because he's just describing a power grid yes you flip a switch and you get light or you get appliances you can run the sewing machine you can get heat through your electricity but that was totally revolutionary at the time right because there were no power grids so in order to say this edison sort of had to imagine this future out of the void and in order to make it reality he was going to have to invent not only the light bulbs but the generators the wiring the meters the appliances even the light switches first the key to this entire system of electric light the first step that would unlock everything else and make it possible was finding a light bulb that could last and edison had a problem in this regard because the bulb that he had invented the one he told all these reporters about and sent off a firestorm and publicity it's a total and complete failure he had gone down the wrong path he was using a zinc and platinum construction which is cleverly designed but it doesn't last much longer than anyone else's bulb it showed promising results at first so he thought that if he kept tinkering with it you know he could he could figure it he get it to last longer but no that that particular road he was going down was a total dead end and edison is starting to realize he's absolutely nothing in terms of a light bulb right as the media attention is reaching a fever pitch people are saying the edison has struck gold twice in row he's invented the pho photograph and now the light bulb and are shouting his praises and everyone is so intrigued to see this new light bulb in action and again he's just realizing he's completely wrong he's got nothing not a great situation to be in in fact it's it's so stressful that he has a complete nervous breakdown he's bedridden ridden for a week and a half with a horribly painful condition called facial neurology a luckily there is one thing that he's got and that's boat loads of money because the richest and most powerful men in the world were tripping over themselves to fund edison new venture in discovering electric light the financier that edison actually goes with our men representing western union and jpmorgan they capitalize his new electric light company to the tune of three hundred ninety five thousand dollars which is the equivalent of about ten point five five million dollars in twenty twenty money he's well funded but he's on the hook he has to invent the light bulb now he's got the eyes of the world on him if he doesn't he's humiliated and ruined and so edison goes to the strategy that had always worked best for him is to forget the clever theo and just experiment and tinker like crazy until he figured something out so he stacks up and he and his team try out thousands of different substances to see what will work he continues these experiments over months and months with everyone pressuring him and waiting to see what he will come up with edison reportedly said during this time quote i think there's no doubt i am the busiest man in america which is true he's got a group of workers that are referred to as the insomnia squad and people refer to this bizarre situation that you'll visit the lab in men park and it looks like like a homeless shelter there are just people fully cloth sleeping all over the place under benches undertake bulls in random corners and closets and that's because edison was completely obsessed with figuring this out he had all the pressure of the world on his shoulders and he expected his employees to feel the same way about it that he did so there was no regular sleep schedules you came into lab you worked on finding a working light bulb until your body just couldn't take it anymore at which point you curled up and grabbed an hour or two of shut under some bench somewhere and then you got back to work there were no other priorities and there were no distractions well actually there was one minor distraction for edison when a minor scientist by the name of clarence blake gives a lecture in which he pays tribute to alexander graham bell for inventing the telephone without mentioning edison edison goes be he considered himself essential to the creation of the telephone because of the transmitter that he had invented and it was a really big deal it made the telephone much more usable over much longer distances and so edison kinda had a point when he said that he was one of the the fathers of of the telephone so for someone to give a big public speech where they only mentioned bell as a sole inventor of the telephone that insulted edison and he felt slight when one of edison european agents a guy by the name of george ga sends edison a letter saying you know what we need is a better receiver for the telephone edison jumps at the chance he takes a couple months away from the bulb and invent a new chalk receiver that makes a telephone much more functional and capable of receiving messages from far greater distances it's a monumental achievement a stunning success in a very short period of time and he does it just as a sides and then he's right back to the light bulb and to me this is kinda like this is peak edison this is him at his powers where he's inventing stuff just to stunt on people just to show them that he can you know he's he's inventing world changing inventions just to solve petty slight but despite this the light bulb is still actually not going that great and the news is starting to get out that things are not going well fourteen of the sixteen patents that he submitted to the us patent office are rejected as un unusable and the newspapers who just months ago were reporting that he had solved the problem of the light bulb are now reporting the edison actually has no idea what he's doing and it's not just a press who are coming after edison the scientific community always had a particular hatred for him because he was a highly successful inventor and scientist despite having virtually no formal education and so they're launching a bunch of infect against him in one case edison had invented a new d which is an early form of like generator to generate power for his light bulbs and it was weird looking it was kinda clunky and awkward and unlike anything else that had been invented in terms of of d it didn't look like a a good functioning d in the scientific community just savage this new machine they're brutal in criticizing it the irish physicist assistant in academic john tin said about it quote of it is difficult adequately to express the ludicrous inefficiency of the arrangement but one thing is abundantly certain and that is that the person who seriously proposed it was wholly des of a scientific knowledge of either electricity or the science of energy so it's not what you want people to be saying but meanwhile i mean edison actually tries the thing and it generates so much energy that it breaks the coils that get hooked up to it it's a very raw invention it needed a bunch of modern vacations to become practical but it was a breakthrough in generator design and academics and theoretical scientists just don't give it the time of day they're totally dismissive and condescending and this would be one of the inc incidents in a long feud with the academic scientific aesthetic they generally refused to give edison much respect and he always had some nasty words for what he considered do nothing academics who never actually did or invented anything and only ever criticized those who actually did get out there and invent things establishment edison has quotes says things like take a whole pile of theoretical scientists that i can name and you will find uncertainty if not in position in half of what they state as scientific truth and with this or you can definitely see his perspective why he would feel this way well in the midst of all this pressure and skepticism from the press and infected from the scientific establishment edison finally does have his breakthrough with the light bulb on tuesday october twenty first edison had his lab assistance test a bulb with a carbon filament using went black and either thread or a fishing line the light lasted for thirteen and a half hours edison wrote eureka in his laboratory long book now you probably wouldn't buy a light bulb that was going to last for just thirteen and a half hours but it was enough to demonstrate that hey we're on to something here we can build on this and sure enough two months later by new year's eve they have fifty nine reliable lamps to show off at men park with bulbs that can last for over six hundred hours they throw a great big party and it's really the arrival of the electric light bulb but hey i mentioned his party because it's at this party that edison has one of my favorite quotes at the party someone asks edison if he is a genius and he responds quote you know well enough i am nothing of the sort unless we accept the theory the genius is prolonged patients i'm patient enough to be sure and i would just like to point out that that that kind of actually is exactly what genius is prolonged patients a good amount of intelligence married to an un unveiling energy and level effort you may have heard the other saying genius is one percent inspiration ninety nine percent per expiration and sounds kinda corny but that is actually a thomas edison quote and if you can kinda remove the cliche or around it i i think it's it tells you a lot about what it takes to do something great about genius and about who edison was now i'd just like to take a second to talk about the nature of this discovery because on its surface isn't this earth shattering thing isn't this breakthrough it didn't blow people's minds in quite the same way that recorded sounded and that's because edison didn't strictly invent electric light or even the incandescent light bulb so you'll see some people out there who say oh you know edison was a fraud and agree businessman who really just stole his inventions from other people and claim them as his own which is a nice story right it fits a a certain narrative of the greedy capitalist but it's just not remotely true edison absolutely deserves credit for inventing the libel yes other people made other important contributions in the field but who deserves credit i mean on october twenty first eighteen eighty two no one had electric light basically libel and after that date they were on the road to that becoming a reality and to giving electric light to millions of people so when people try to claim that edison doesn't deserve credit for the light bulb and for electric light i think of the line from the move be the social network when mark zuckerberg says if you guys were the inventors of facebook you'd have invented facebook and i just i feel that way about the light bulb if someone else had invented the light bulb they would have invented the light bulb be and these claims are not new people at the time tried to downplay his achievements or even downright deny them especially members of the academic and scientific community as i was mentioning earlier when edison applied for patents in london his lamp was dismissed as quote a hopeless failure wrong and design wrong in principle useful only in showing how singular devoid of sound scientific knowledge a clever practical man might be i mean that's above and beyond what is necessary to shoot down what they thought was a failed bible right and add to that that they were wrong it was working the frenchman du mans they're a great scientist on the subject of electric light said that all should regard a suspicion the pom announcements that come our way from the new world and even in america professor henry morton president of the stevens institute of technology called edison bowl a cons failure all these experts claimed that the inconvenience of edison light bulb was clearly fake and sure to burn after a few hours if only given closer inspection and an honest test and you can't blame them too much i mean edison is the same guy who was claiming that he had invented the light bulb years ago so his claim probably did deserve some skepticism closer but the con was over the top and of course they were wrong he had figured it out the average podcast listener has six shows and their rotation so you're most likely not just listening to my first million if so i wanna make another suggestion i wanna share podcast podcasts that i've been listening to the show is called the jordan harbinger show so jordan is my homie he's a great friend of mine jordan is one of the guys who helped encourages us sol launch his podcast he's giving us a ton of feedback on how to grow how to make the content amazing and his show is awesome i became friends with them because i started listening to show and it reached out and it's very fascinating he dives into the minds of some very very interesting people so authors scientist ceos mobs he's got a gift kinda like sean does to be honest of i'm getting guests to share never heard before stories very cool very fascinating a few of my favorite episodes are episode one seventeen with robert greene i've talked about robert greene books all the time in this podcast is one of my favorites and then episode four ninety eight with rob die who's coming on our podcast actually a month so you can't go wrong with adding jordan harbinger showed your rotation check it out search for the jordan harbinger show that's h a r b i n g e r on apple podcast podcasts spotify wherever you get it check it out he's awesome i love him edison referred to electric light as the greatest adventure of my life akin to venturing on an uncharted sea and even after the invention of the light bulb that adventure was just starting out a light bulb is just a bulb and if you have nothing to plug it into it's not gonna do you much good so edison and in his company had already started working on things like generators and a delivery system but now they really kicked into high gear working on these things the number of patents that edison and this team submit during this time period is staggering they're coming up with and patent d and engines to create energy wires to transport the electricity systems were laying up out and distributing it lamps bulbs and appliances that can be used with it safety fuses and cent governors to control the running of motors as demand rose and fell meters to measure the usage of electricity and more at this point in his career was receiving a new patent roughly once every four days which is just mind boggling again inventing the light bulb was a monumental task something no one else had been able to achieve but developing everything else around it to deliver power to people's homes was no less of an achievement in fact it's probably an even bigger achievement and it required an enormous amount of intelligence and ingenuity not just from edison but from his team as well he definitely didn't do it all himself k who you'll remember as since brilliant mach from last episode was really crucial in developing the insulated copper wiring that would transport energy to homes all over the world cr also basically invented the grid prior to his invention edison idea was to send out energy like a tree branching off into smaller and smaller wires as it gets closer to individual homes well k comes up with the a grid system that reduced the need for copper by seven eights and really made electric light economical it was a really elegant really efficient invention it definitely wasn't a one man show but at the same time i think edison deserves a lot of the credit for the accomplishments of his subordinates he did a lot to push them and guide them towards solutions he was a great not just inventor but leader this was expressed well by one of his junior electrical engineers who had join the company a couple years later he said quote the effect that edison produced on me was rather extraordinary when i saw this wonderful man who had no training at all node advantages and did it all himself and saw the great results by you of his industry and application i felt mortified that i had sq my life so you know this young engineer felt really inspired by seeing how much edison could do and felt inspired himself to try and you know do try and match that and so in case you didn't guess that young engineer who was working for mister edison was a guy by the name of nikola tesla i'll get into their relationship their supposed rivalry and some of their similarities and differences in a separate episode because i think it merits longer conversation although i will just say here that the idea of rivalry between the two of them is sort of overblown but even with the assistance of this big team of brilliant engineers who assisted edison the whole elect unifying a city for the first time thing took a lot of effort and it took a long time two years later they still hadn't installed anything and people start to get anxious naturally you know hey when are we actually gonna get electric power and especially the finance years are like okay when to start seeing a return on his capital one of the big obstacles was getting the approval of corrupt new york city officials so edison comes up with a pretty brilliant plan he gets chief a john c morris and other new york sears the officials to come to men park where edison gives them a long lecture during which they start to get a little annoyed and very hungry and then he leads them upstairs to a pitch black room as they stand there waiting in this dark room soft golden electric lights slowly come on revealing an extravagant set dinner table and white glove waiters standing at attention the wine and the bourbon flowed and by the end of the night john morris was telling the table the edison was entitled to the thanks of the world for bringing this light to such perfection that it can now be made to take the place of gas and assuring everyone that he was now an advocate of electric light you could count on him the next day edison had a permit to bring incandescent electric light to fifty one blocks of downtown manhattan around this time edison decides that he can't really afford to be way out in men park so he moves his family up to new york city and establishes a new operating base and starts work on a power plant facility on pearl street he also establishes a new company he wanted to manufacture all of his own machinery but his board opposed getting into manufacturing so he starts edison machine works as a separate company which turned out to be a pretty good call as that little company would go on to become what we know as general electric which was a pretty big deal for quite a long time edison was juggling all these different constraints inventing and patent the technology building and manufacturing all the different components necessary for all this to finally happen but delay after delay piled up and then finally on monday september fourth eighteen eighty two edison turned the lights on on new york city he actually has them turned on at three pm so that no one would notice if they didn't work but by seven pm people start becoming aware we'll wait the electric lights are on all over the city it was a total transformational moment in the history of the world but it was also a little anti anticlimactic there were a few news reports about it no parties no celebrations just steady practical warm light but it was enough edison who said quote i have accomplished all that i promise now edison has a really really packed life he invented a lot and did a lot over a long period of time none of it probably matches the heights of inventing the pho photograph and the electric light so i'm gonna do sort of a quick overview of the rest of his before going back and diving deep on a few stories things started to go really well for edison electric business but then in eighteen eighty four he had the worst year of his life a giant financial crisis hits the us and sinks him into debt and around the same time his wife dies at the time no one could or no one would say what exactly it was that she died from but in retrospect it's pretty clear that she sadly died of a morphine overdose over the next couple of years edison managed to pull himself out of financial crisis and by eighteen eighty six he's a really good situation with more than three hundred thousand lamps in his circuit and booming revenue and profits he also remarried in eighteen eighty six to a woman by the name of mina miller and it's a great year for him business is doing well he's in love he's teaming with invented energy and even has time to patent an important non electric light invention the pho le but there's something else that happens in eighteen eighty six that should have concerned him on november second a patent was filed for alternating current electricity which would allow power to be sent over distances far longer than edison direct current system and at power levels that were much higher despite these advantages edison decides not to take advantage of ac power he said this was because was dangerous and could kill people which to be fair to edison was true ac was in fact much more dangerous than dc but i didn't matter all that much to people when it provided much more benefit for far cheaper than his dc electric light the west house company with nikola tesla who had left edison as one of its chief engineers takes up the mantle of ac power and acquire the rights to it in the united states by the end of eighteen eighty eight west house is crushing edison electric in terms of subscribers the same time edison nearly bankrupt himself again by putting money into an improved pho photograph business in the late eighteen eighties edison starts to put more and more control of his existing business into the hands of professional managers so that he can focus more time on inventing consequently in the late eighteen eighties edison makes integral contributions to the development of moving pictures what we now call cinema or movies and in eighteen ninety two edison is forced out as the director of his electric light company and decides to go into of all things mining he establishes this enormous mine called the ogden mine in new jersey and develops all these crazy mining and refining technologies to try and make this mine competitive even though the ore at this location was significantly less pure than other mines in the united states he keeps selling off ownership of his other companies especially general electric in order to fund this mining operation which is crazy he's just sinking good money after bad for this reason there are multiple people who become fabulous wealthy from edison inventions there's basically a small group of millionaires and billionaires most famously samuel ins insult but edison isn't one of them he keeps pouring money from his profitable businesses into his unprofitable ones edison was never really poor during his life but he was never rich either he was basically always a minor millionaire whenever he achieved a ton success he poured a bunch of money from that into these new ventures where he could tinker and invent new things but then often lost a bunch of money for him and that's because for edison money was never the point you might remember from the last episode that he was literally addicted to inventing like a junkie who only makes money in order to buy more drugs edison only made money to pour it back into unprofitable ventures where he could invent new things and so his mining business is just a total money pit he's losing astronomical amounts of money but he just keeps pouring more and more money into it until he literally can't lose anymore he basically hits rock bottom and people refused to fund the mine anymore despite this he never really cared he was never bitter about the mine in fact he had the time of his life he was inventing cool new mining equipment and would later write quote i never felt better in my life hard work nothing to divert my thought clear air simple food it was very pleasant on a return visit to the mine after it had failed he was able to cheerful joke i put three million dollars down that hole in the ground and never heard it hit bottom after he leaves the mind he comes back and partially resumes control of his pho photograph electric light and moving picture businesses over the years he also makes important new inventions in the areas of cement factoring x ray technology and most profit with the development of rechargeable batteries these were used cars submarines and dozens of other uses speaking of car batteries one of the most productive relationships with edison life came with a young and engineer who worked for him early in his career the young man named henry ford expressed to edison a desire to keep tinkering on combustion engines which edison encouraged edison and ford struck up a strong relationship that would last edison time and ford really really looked up to and admired edison and continued to fund some of his less profitable ventures even when ford kinda knew that that he was probably not gonna see a return on these investments he just really you know admired edison as like the saint this father of invention who gave him a start and would do anything for him so it was a very productive relationship for both of them in different ways toward the end of his life edison spent time trying to come up with inventions for the us navy but none of them were ever implemented after that the last major initiative of edison life which he undertook in his late seventies and early eighties was trying to find a domestic source of rubber in the united states but he wasn't able to complete that work before he died during his lifetime edison invented the pho photograph the practical light bulb the rechargeable nickel battery the the electric pen the electric stock ticker the underwater microphone the flu and he was a key innovator in mining motion pictures cement and chemical manufacturing tele and tele he also founded one of the great american companies of the twentieth century general electric and established many other crucial international companies that brought light and electricity to millions he did this despite growing up in obscure circumstances with no formal education and a disability deafness that he never made a big deal about and hardly ever mentioned to me the biggest lesson of edison life is finding something that you are passionate about the way he was passionate about inventing this is a little bit different from doing what you love as people say in a subtle but important way i'm reminded of one of my favorite quotes from my favorite tv show a show called patriot where one of the lead character says quote you are what you can't stop doing what that means is if we discover what someone is passionate about then that person and that thing will intersect passion involves comp people and what they love don't always intersect people and their comp compulsions do so if you're trying to be successful lean into doing what you feel compelled to do because if you do it's like a superpower you can overcome any obstacle deal with any setback none of it matters because you get to wake up every morning and do the thing that you are compelled to do the thing that you are borderline addicted to so for example in nineteen fourteen an enormous five swept through edison laboratories and manufacturing plants in new jersey damaging or destroying more than half the buildings and doing millions of dollars in damage really destroying his company he can only watch as the fire spread from building the building each new chemical or material that burned being set apart by a different color of fire and so what was edison response to this total catastrophe that destroyed his business he pulled aside his son and said quote get your mother and her friends over here they'll never see a fire like like this again and when someone from the advertising department said mister edison this is an awful catastrophe for you he responded yes maxwell a big fortune has gone up in flames tonight but isn't it a beautiful sight one other story that i found highly instructive about edison came from a lunch he had with henry ford and a man by the name of daniels it's very bizarre but here is what daniels wrote and keep in mind this happened what edison was in his late sixties daniels wrote quote i do not suppose anything so strange ever occurred at the luncheon in in new york and elsewhere after the first course edison pointing to a large chan ear with many globes in the middle of the room said henry i'll bet anything you want that i can kick the globe off that chan it hung high toward the ceiling ford said he would take the bet edison rose pushed the table to one side of the room took his stand in the center and with his eye fixed on the globe made the highest kick i have ever seen a man make and smash the globe into smith he then said henry let's see what you can do the automobile manufacturer took careful aim but his foot missed the chan by a fraction of an inch edison had won and for the balance of the meal or until the ice cream was served he was crow over ford you are a younger man than i am but i can out kick you he seemed prouder of that high kick than if he had invented a means of ending the u boat warfare and that last sentence is a reference to something he was working on during world war one during the time of the story so does that story remind you of anyone i know who it reminds me of admittedly i've just been watching some of the last dance on espn but it sounds just like michael jordan to me getting way too competitive over totally small and meaningless stuff but like m mj edison had this comp to win to be the man in charge the man on top he said as much when he said quote i don't care so much about making my fortune as i do for getting ahead of the other fellows i'd like to finish up with two last stories from his life you know i like to draw comparisons between people in this podcast so i particularly enjoyed this little anecdote a journalist asked edison whose voice out of all the people in history he most would have liked to have heard napoleon edison replied instantly the journalist responded in a approving tone while the voice i should most like to have heard is that of our savior edison thought for a moment and said well you know i like a hustle the last story i wanna share comes from the very end of edison life just two years before his death he was getting old and finally slowing down it was the fiftieth three of his incandescent light bulb and a huge international celebration was planned as part of it henry ford had the entire lab complex from men park which was long since abandoned descended and put back together in dear born michigan as essentially a museum ford had edison old lab completely restored to exactly how it looked when he invented the light bulb he even went so far as to track down the old chemical manufacturers who had stocked his lab so that he could have the shelves stocked with the exact same chemicals and materials as edison had had at the time he also ex the top foot of soil from men park and had it shipped out so the old laboratory could even sit on top of the same soil as it had when the eighty year old edison entered his old lab it took his breath away where do you suppose they got them all he asked they're all here every one of the chemicals i had at men park he paced around for a few minutes and then sat down at a work bench with tears in his eyes he said i could sit right down here and go to work with my old tools he attended a party and gave a speech later that night but in the morning he was un exhausted the exhausted old man needed a rest he turned to his assistance and said i'm tired of all this glory i wanna get back to work thank you for listening to this episode of how to take over the world next week as i mentioned i'm gonna try something different and release an end notes episode we're gonna talk about some of the random stories and thoughts that i couldn't get into this episode all also be talking a little bit more about edison inverse tesla the current wars and more until then thanks for listening