Thomas Edison (1847-1931) was possibly the greatest   inventor who ever lived.  He received more than 1,000 patents in his lifetime, many for items we take for granted today: the alkaline battery, the motion picture camera, the phonograph and, of course, the light bulb.  There’s a story that it took  Edison more than 2,000   experiments before he got his light bulb to work.  When a reporter asked him how it felt to fail so many times, Edison said,... [read more]