there were other notable American inventors in his time but they were more usually lonely troubled souls and his personality out shown theirs by 1929 two whole generations of Americans had grown accustomed to watching the progress of this self-educated man who worked in a laboratory that had its Windows
virtually open to all of the world he had known how to dramatize his inventions he had known how to gather interest faith and hope in the success of his projects He typified the independent lonh handed inventor of the 19th Century's heroic age of invention he had begun his work in the age of gas and kerosene lamps and was leaving it
with the cities throughout the world lit up with his lights and music and voices sounding everywhere that is an excerpt from the book I'm going to talk to you about today which is a 60-year-old biography of Thomas Edison originally published in 1959 it is Edison a biography written by Matthew Josephson okay so I want to tell
you why I started with that paragraph in particular when I read that paragraph towards the end of the book it made me think of Steve Jobs quote that we're here to put a dent in the universe that paragraph describes the dent that Thomas Edison put into the universe and so the way I think about the conversation that
you and I are about to have it's really a continuation of the conversation I think started back on episode 263 to me these last I guess this is the fifth episode in the series that I think are heavily related to each other so it starts back on 263 and 264 with Edwin L the founder of Polaroid then 265 Steve
Jobs and 266 Henry Ford and the reason to me it's just one conversation that is appearing over five different episodes is because they all admired and studied each other so Edwin land studied Thomas Edison Alexander gambell who's also in this book that but I'm not going to talk about today and Henry Ford Steve Jobs is
the one that turned me on to all of them so Steve Jobs talked about how Edwin L was his hero jobs also talked about what he learned from studying Henry Ford and Edison and then you get to Henry Ford and Henry Ford essentially idolized he winds up becoming almost best friends with Edison who's like two decades older
than him but he idolized Edison and the reason I'm bringing that to your attention now is because Edison to me is different than land and jobs and forward so when you and I are going through these books when you're listening to this podcast one of the main points is like okay This Is How They did their
life how they how they built their company what are the ideas like how can I let those ideas influence my life and that is what I was thinking of as I was working through this is a 500 Page biography it took me over 25 hours to read and actually ingest before I can sit down and talk to you about this and so as I'm doing so I like Edison like he
is wicked smart really funny and he gave all of his life energy to inventions that made the world a better place but if I had to choose between Edison's approach to his life and his career and the one that Henry Ford Steve Jobs and Edwin L used I'm choosing Ford jobs and land because I think what they did that
Edison did not was focus and this is not a criticism of Edison I don't think he could it was clear like go back to what Charlie Monger says you got to follow your natural drift Edison's natural drift was that he was curious about a lot of things he wanted to work on a bunch of different things at once where
if you go back and listen to the last few podcasts one once Ford had one idea right he's like I just want to make an affordable car for the Everyman and he dedicated his entire life to that once Steve Jobs making starts making products he's same thing he's like I just want to make insanely great products and then I
want to build a world-class organization that outlives me Edwin Lan literally invented the industry that he worked in in instant photography and dominated that industry for four decades and I want to give you another example I was just reading yesterday this fantastic newsletter it's written by my friend
Frederick I'll link to it below I feel a little funny linking to it below because at the beginning he talks about me but that's not why I'm linking to it the entire thing is worth reading but this one section Frederick does a fantastic job of like weaving all these different ideas together and so in his post he has
this story that Warren Buffett is relaying and Buffett is talking about being at dinner or I guess drinks maybe with Bill Gates and Bill Gates dad and this is what Buffett says then at dinner Bill Gates Senior posed the question to the table what factor did people feel was the most important in in getting to where they've gotten in life
and I said Buffett saying focus and Bill said the same thing and if you think about just from that one post the last five weeks of the conversations you and I have been having together we have Bill Gates Warren Buffett Henry Ford Steve Jobs and Edwin Lan all saying the exact same thing focus a simple thing to say
and a nearly impossible thing to do over the long term so with that let me jump into the book I wanted to read a description of some of the ancestor ERS of the Edison Family which I found fantastic because they're a family full of misfits this one trait is probably what I admire about Thomas Edison the
most it said they were a simple hearty pioneering people most of them were short on education the family was full of dissident and eccentrics a marked family trait distinguished them they were strong individualists often naysayers and independent-minded to the point of obstinacy obstinacy is just a fancy word for stubborn and so the
author says they're hey they're a family full of dissident uh he means that literally there's a fantastic story Edison's dad had to literally run for his life and if you think about this this changed the entire trajectory of his son's life so Edison's dad was part of this like Insurrection movement where they were literally trying to overthrow
the Royal Canadian government and so his dad's name is Sam it says Sam Edison was publicly denounced as a leading figure among the wouldbe revolutionists Before Dawn Sam was off Through the Woods running like a deer towards Ward the United States border that was more than 80 mil away he was hotly pursued by the
King's Men I don't know why but that line made me laugh just the idea of being pursued by the King's Men uh by performing The Incredible feat of running for two and a half days and stopping only for brief intervals of rest and food he managed to reach the United States why is that important why am I reading this section to you this
line explains that it was by this stroke of chance that Thomas Edison happened to be born in the heart of the American Republic that line is even more important because not only was he born in America but he's born at a time where in America at this point in history they idolize the lone inventor Edison's
lifelong fetishization and grasping for as many patents as he could possibly gather was not an accident it was heavily influenced by the Light by the by the this point in history they happen to live in where people thought that was their way to freedom and wealth then we fast forward to something that happens
to Edison when he's 6 years old that he remembers for the rest of his life and so this is how the author describes this event there was a bunch of people uh they were gathering in the Village Square what were they Gathering to see Sam Edison was whipping his youngest son a public chastisement carried out an
anger in the presence of the neighbors and their children this is a crazy sentence right here Sam Edison had advertised the event in advance so it says a public chastisement carried out in cold anger in the presence of the neighbors and their children was something drastic Ed had set a little fire inside the barn quote
just to see what it would do he's 6 years old the public thrashing he received St this is why I'm reading this too the public thrashing he received stamped itself on the boy's mind and memory for Thomas described it all 60 years later when he thought back upon his Boyhood from his description we have
a picture of the boy receiving blow after blow and early in life learning that there was inexplicable cruelty and pain in this world that part especially stood out to me because this happened to me as well I was 10 years old and I lit a newspaper on fire in the house and my dad beat the out of me and I knew
it had to be bad than the other times he beat the out of me cuz my mom was trying to get him to stop and that's actually an important point because not only you see it in the books but also in your own life because my daughter is the same age I was when that happened to me and I'm about the age my dad was when he did that and I could never imagine
laying a finger on her never have never would and so that the important point is like all I understand it happened in their family and up and down the family tree and all that other stuff but it's okay it only takes one person to be like no that stops here and I think the idea that one person can not only change the
world around them but also change the relationships that families have is exhilarating to me so I want to move forward this is very bizarre this is this is one of the things I like about Edison right where he's obsessed with he's just constantly asking questions constantly getting trouble as we just
saw very mischievous very independent-minded very hard to control in fact on this page where I'm about to read to it says he was very headstrong and willful when he could not have his way early signs that he was meant to be an entrepreneur right but what was fascinating is that he had this life he just knew he's like I want to invent
things and that's kind of bizarre when I'm going to read the description of the first inventor that he ever meets and so there's this guy says this this eccentric person named Sam Winchester often Edison would be found with his nose pressed against the back window of Winchester's shop watching the strange
things being done there the mysterious Winchester was constructing a passenger balloon so he fills a Balloon by hydrogen and he's trying to fly in a hydrogen balloon and the reason I think this is so strange is because again this is the first inventor that a young Edison sees what's about to happen to
this guy is not going to be good and Edison's like yep I want to do that and so it says he had a few attempts at flight didn't work out but it says then during the the next trial Mr Winchester managed to ascend into the air then was waed slowly in the direction of Lake eie never to be seen again and to think
Edison's like yeah I want to I want to be an inventor after seeing this guy disappear into the sky so Edison's constantly getting in trouble he's not people like he can't even last in school so he gets in so much trouble that he has to be homeschooled but his mom does something that's so smart and intelligent here and so she's going to
be his teacher so I'm going to describe her method of teaching and then Edison's going to tell you why this is so important that she did this for him she literally changed his life Nancy Edison had Superior taste believing that her son uh was far from being dull witted so what they're talking about is the fact
that he didn't he hated wrote memorization he was very curious he wanted to basically have like self-directed learning his teachers at the time like think about what kind of school he could possibly be in you know this the mid 1800s and I think they're in Royal Ohio but basically his his teachers misinterpreted his own like will for
self-directed learning as you know maybe this boy's stupid so her his mom's like no I I know son I think he's 12 at this time uh and she's like Noe I'm pretty sure he's not stupid so it says uh she she believed that her far her son was far from D wited um and she had unusual reasoning Powers she read to him from
such books as the decline and fall of the Roman Empire the history of England and then from literary Classics ranging from Shakespeare to Charles Dickens he grew fascinated oh he's actually nine he's even younger than I thought he grew fascinated and at age n was inspired to read such books himself he became a very
rapid reader this is one of my favorite things about Edison later on I'm going to have a highlight for you where he's not making a lot of money I think he he he has to buy a subscription to a library right and I think that P the subscription to the library equates to like two day two full days of work and
there's no such thing as an 8 hour day at this point in history he's working like from the time the sun rises till coming back at like 10: in the 10 at night and he's like 11 and so when he goes to the library it's not like okay I'll just pick out some books he reads the entire Library every book all of them it's incredible so I'll get there
in a minute uh she brought another book on physical science which was called the school of natural philosophy this book changes his he's got a few books that change his life this is the first one which described and Illustrated various scientific experiments that could be performed at home the boy had truly
caught fire he read and tested out every experiment in the book all of his pocket money went for chemicals purchased at the pharmacist for experiment thus his mother and this is the important part the reason I'm reading this entire section to you thus his mother had accomplished that which all truly great teachers do for their P
pupils she brought him to the stage of learning things for himself learning that which most amused and interested him and she encouraged him to go in on that path it was the very best thing she could have done for this singular boy amen at that and he he sums this up for you and I she let me follow my bent so
at one point in childhood his father had a profit for business there was a lot of ups and downs this is now the down part where his father's not doing well I think he might have even lost the business so this is where he starts work at 12 years old this is actually going to change his life so okay he's gonna
actually save a young he's going to work in the railroad he's going to work on a train and the reason and I'll get to this in a minute but the reason this job that he gets at 12 is going to change his life is because he's going to save a young boy's life I think the kid was like 3 years old uh he was like on a
train track and Edison winds up grabbing him before he could be hit by train and in return I think it's a station master's son if I'm remembering this correctly the station Master is like how can I ever repay you thank you so much and he teaches Edison how to operate a Telegraph and why is that important because Edison's first experiments were
how to make a telegraph better it may this may sound stupid to you and I or like silly to you and I but at this point in history the telegraph is the Leading Edge of communication technology in the entire world the best description in case you don't know what it is it's just a point-to-point text messaging
system so instead of sending a letter by horse that gets there three you know 3 months later and then maybe you get a response 6 months after that you can send a message immediately if you were a young person interested in the edge of Technology at this point in history you would have worked on the telegraph so we'll get to that in a
minute uh he learned that there would be a job on the daily train for a news boy so he's selling newspapers and then he selling like food and sweets to the passengers he was only 12 and this is the beginning of these extremely long hours at work that he maintains his entire life he would leave at dawn and
the young boy would return uh to home at 10: or 11: at night and so this is the first example of a young Edison's Relentless resourcefulness there's all these times where like he's riding a train all day long he has to get off and switch trains and sometimes there's like this long layover right and so what does
he do he's constantly into in and out of Detroit and he realizes hey I have a a several hour layover every day uh in Detroit and there's this fantastic library and this is the what I was referencing to you earlier in Detroit during the hours of layover he found his way to the Public Library this is Edison
describing this point in his life my refuge was the Detroit Public Library I started with the first book on the bottom shelf and went through the lot one by one I did not read a few books I read the library and so when I got to this section it made me think of this what I call what I've told you over and
over again I hope you've watched it have you watch I hope you watched it five times right now what I feel is the best talk on YouTube for entrepreneurs is by uh the investor Bill Gurley it is called Running Down a Dream How To Succeed In thrive in a career you love I will leave a link in the show notes anytime I say
hey there's something in the show notes it's in the show notes in your podcast player it's also available at Founders podcast.com okay I will leave a link for the full video in the show notes I will also leave Blake Robbins incredible notes on Bill gurley's talk and I'm going to read from those notes right now
this is the section that came to mind when I read this part Bill Gurley says greatness isn't random it is earned if you're going to research something this is your lucky day information is freely available on the internet that's the good news the bad news and this is why I think the this um I think this video is so important for entrepreneurs and
Founders to to watch and listen to over and over again because it just holds you to a higher standard he goes into great detail how bad people want and like there's five examples how bad these people want the dreams that they that they're going after and this talk also helped shape my approach to Founders and
so let me start this part over greatness isn't random it is earned if you're going to research something this is your lucky day information is freely available on the internet that's the good news the bad news is now you have zero excuse for not being the most knowledgeable in any subject you want because it's right there at your
fingertips that is something Thomas Edison knew instinctively he is 12 years old yeah 12 years old this time and he's like all right cool I got access to the library I'll read every single book that's something he does throughout his entire life I I have a bunch of I'm pretty sure I'll get to him I have a
bunch of highlights he just does this over and over again and when you know he's studying million different fields of study and he's just like okay where can I start he was extremely big on experimenting but before he experimented he would just you would just see him laying out on the floor with like 50 books on the subject he's like I'll just
read everything so let's go back to this fact that he's on this train he's got this job now it's a few years later and again resourcefulness he's like well I'm selling somebody else's newspaper for like a quarter why don't I just make my own so he says he undertook The Venture of editing Printing and selling a small
local newspaper which was produced in his baggage car he sold it for 8 cents a cop and had a circulation of about 400 people it was said to have been the first newspaper in the world that was published on a train so that was a good idea it's like okay instead of selling somebody else's product I can just make
my own here's the bad idea he allowed another person to influence the direction so he starts printing like personal stories of people in the industry because his friend convinced him that they would sell more the problem is Edison's like a 15-year-old country boy he doesn't know too much about human nature yet and so this is
what happens to him one of these candid little stories touched on a local figure this proved to be excessively candid and so the person he's writing about did not like the fact that his business was put for everybody to read and he says I'm going to find this Edison kid and I'm going to extract my Vengeance so now
this is a grown man a grown adult attacking and beating the hell out of a 15-year-old kid one day the man cited the young editor near the Ducks he laid violent hands on him and then threw him into the river shortly after Edison closed down that operation this is the event that changes his life that
referenced earlier Edison noticed that the three-year-old son of the station M master was playing uh right on the main track in the path of the car he dashed towards the child and snatched him up in order in time to avoid the car uh the guy's name was Mackenzie Mckenzie was filled with such gratitude and express a
desire to repay him in any manner within his power he had noticed that Eden hung over his Telegraph table constantly he offered to teach the boy to be an operator that is really important because even if he fell back and he made jokes out his life obviously later on he's much wealthier than he is now but he's like oh worst case scenario I can
always be a telegraph operator for 75 bucks a month it's almost akin to being like a programmer today so it says uh with him within him within Edison that is there is a passionate curiosity to learn certain things so what they're talking about is like as soon as they start teaching him the telegraph you had
a hard time getting him up from it he says he works alone at his experiments for long hours and enjoys himself heartily and so most of these Telegraph operators are young men they really they're know like myself here is the telegraph operators were the digital Nomads of their day so it says Edison could find work almost anywhere because
the need for telegraphers was so urgent during the Civil War uh these were his wandering years that began when he was only 16 in those days the strange new tribe of telegraphers were generally young men uh noted for the nomadic or Bohemian habits they would travel light pinching their tents for a brief season
in one place and then journeying on to another that seemed to offer greater pastures a few steady young operators Rose from the ranks to become industrial magnets like Andrew Carnegie cuz that's what one of the first jobs Carnegie had and I think he was around 12 at the time too so not only do are they making good
money for their for their age and their time uh their trade is in high demand and also they didn't really need much because they just hop a train and in many cases they were like trying to sleep in the offices where their telegraphs were so that's another trait that Edison would use his entire life he would just fall asleep wherever whether
he was in New York trying to build out the electrical system right or he's in Meno Park he' just sleep where like he go to the corner and just fall asleep fall asleep in a chair on a table he just didn't really care so for the next few years he becomes obsessed with the telegraph this is the electric Telegraph
so remember there is no electrical lighting before him this is like The Cutting Edge of electric like if you have an electrical industry it's manifested most pron like it's most pronounced manifestation is in the Telegraph and so he's just sitting there constantly getting better at it constantly thinking of ways to improve
uh the telegraph the reason that's important is because what he's focused on now leads him to everything else that happens in his life after the germs of many ideas and strategies perfected by him him in later years were implanted in his mind when he worked at the telegraph he described this phase of his life
afterward his mind was in a toart he said it was besieged by all sorts of ideas and schemes the future potential of electricity obsessed him day and night it was then that he dared to hope that he would become an inventor and the next step in his life that was hugely important was he discovers his hero this is when he
discovers his hero Michael Faraday and so Edison's fired up about being an inventor but at this point he still has a job and the problem is like he kind of neglects his duties to follow whatever he's most excited about at this point uh though he intended to be reserved at this point in his life he could become
excited and vment in expounding his novel schemes he would hold forth with undeniable eloquence on every conceivable subject accepting that relating to the prompt dispatch of messages that the company had on file for transmission so that's one of his co-workers saying hey this guy knew a lot of stuff he would speak passionately
about it but he would neglect his work and if he kept doing that he's going to get fired and says his job to him was a distasteful bondage it was at this time that he bought a secondhand copy of Michael Faraday's book experimental researches in electricity Edison said this first encounter with the great
English scientist journals on his experiments was one of the decisive events of his life what I wrote down here we've seen this over and over again not only did Edwin land also uh Michael Faraday was one of his Heroes and somebody he studied uh immensely but there's always like a book that changes everything so in Lan's case it's that
book on light by the physicist wood that he would keep underneath his pillow and read like The Bible he said but what really popped to mind when I got to this point was what Buffett said that that the day that he discovered Warren Buffett said the day he discovered Ben Graham's book changed his life the exact
same thing is happening in Edison's life right now and I think he's around 19 or 20 years old so it says uh this was one of the most most decisive events of his life this is why here at last was the Lucid exposition of Faraday's long searches in the field which most fascinated young Edison and it was
steeped in the spirit of truthfulness and humility before nature that was always in Faraday's character his explanations were simple Edison said and then he starts seeing parallels between Faraday's life and his life he's like oh okay there's another me out there it's very comforting Michael faray had been
poor like Edison and though virtually without schooling had taught himself everything too like Edison and so check out Edison's insane schedule he he purposely picks the night shift because few less messages come in overnight and it gives him more time to learn so it says though he had worked to an early hour in the morning at the
telegraph office Edison began reading uh Faraday's book when he returned to his room at 4:00 a.m. and continued throughout the day that followed so that when he went back to the telegraph office he had not slept he was filled with determination to learn all that he could two sentences here that give you an idea of what's Happening his brain
was on fire and then this is a fantastic quote he he he loves the word hustle and he loves Hustlers he likes hustling he he repeats it over and over again in the book he's hilarious I've got so much to do and life is so short I'm going to hustle so this is where he gets the inspiration to become an entrepreneur he
is rather crazy for doing this because it's one thing okay I'm going to start a business there's a demand for the product he's like I got to invent the product I'm going to sell and I haven't invented it yet so to describe why this was important I'm actually going to read from a different book so this is
technically the fourth book on Edison that I've read the first one was The Wizard of mundel Park I'll leave all the episode numbers and the show notes for you uh the wizard of Menlow Park then I read empires of Light which is about the the war of the currents between Edison Tesla and Westinghouse that's episode 83
and then I read uh the book vagabonds which is about the relationship between Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and that's episode 190 but this excerpt that I'm about to 32 comes from the book The Wizard of benow park I think this might have been like the second or third episode I ever did at Founders and
really I think it describes just what was important to Edison and this is the step one in chasing after this dream 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 no nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee and so his first invention flops I'm going to skip over that because I thought this was just fascinating and this leads to so many opportunities after this and it's a
great example of that maximum that you and I always talk about that history doesn't repeat human nature does and so it says during the Gilded Age after the Civil War speculators in gold and securities on all the financial exchanges were of course greatly dependent on the telegraph Market quot ations were Rush rushed by wire to
distant cities and to newspapers all over the world and so he has identified a willing party that would pay for his invention which he's like hey there's these things called stock tickers they already exist I guess this I guess I need to pause here too because this is another Maxim that you and I always talk
about especially at the beginning of your career imitation precedes creation we are all going to build on the work of people that came before us in many cases the first few iterations of our product are going to be imitations of them as we understand and we go along and we learn more we understand more of what we're
doing then we get to actual creation so the very and that's that's exactly what happens in Edison's career the very beginning he's like okay there's already stock tickers let me just take an existing product and make it a little better because it's like there's clearly like the people that are trying to sell gold or speculate in all kinds of
financial instruments if I can get their information faster or better they will pay me for the ability to do so that was true in the 1870s when this is happening and it's still true today and so that's the first reason I'm reading this to you the second reason is because he gets taken advantage this is what I meant
about I'm not going to call him a cautionary tale by any means but if you looked at Ford and land and jobs they always had control over what they did Edison was so scatterbrained he never did and so he gets taken advantage of later on by people like Jay gold JP Morgan I mean it's not really his fault I'm not like I don't want you to think
I'm like judging this guy for any means like imagine being in your 20s I think he was 22 when Jay gold buys his patents like come on undoubtedly Jay gold would have tied me up in pretzel if that was me when I was 22 he'd still he' still did that to me today you're talking about one of the most sophisticated
investors and entrepreneurs to ever walk the planet so let me finish this before I get ahead of myself so it says Edison conceived a number of refinements on the stock ticker which he Incorporated in his own model uh this was his second invention and he acquired another backer who had lent him some money uh he was in
his early 20s Edison was a whirlwind of activity sleeping little and working all hours of the day and night his patent rights were sold off to a large Telegraph company and thanks due to his want of business experience meaning he didn't know what he was doing Edison received almost nothing for his work on this venture
that is why I'm reading this to you the early career of Edison is him constantly linking up with bad Partners go back to what I can't remember if his Warren Buffet or Charlie merer said you can't make a good deal with a bad person and one thing is clear from history you should not expect other people to not
act within their own interests and so in many cases these are much older men they see like this young country bumpkin he may be a great inventor but he doesn't know much of anything else and so they're like okay we can take advantage of this guy and that happens over and over and over again so I think the there
is just be very very careful about who you're letting into like your your work and who you're partnering up with because after this happens he's left with no money so he's in Boston now he's got to go to New York he can't raise money for anything and what's crazy is like you find somebody that may be they're going to make the point here
like there's very few people on the planet that knew more about Telegraph like the the Science and Technology of telegraph telegraphs than Edison did at this point yet he literally has to borrow money like he has no money he's almost homeless so it says the moment was a desperate one he was deep in debt he seemed to
have gone from one failure to another step by step and now his credit and Boston was virtually ruined there was no chance of finding new patrons or investors for his experiments his only hope was to reach the bigger city of New York he arrived the next morning in New York with not a coin left in his pocket
and this is why there's such a a disconnect between the knowledge and the talent that He has in his financial station in life at this point there were not even 10 people in America who knew the tricks that he had with currents relays and resistances for the telegraph his mind buzzed with ideas for improvements in electrical
communication he described himself as a fire with no chimney through which his smoke might Escape so at this point Edison's 22 no money but the te all these Telegraph people like is very common and all the engineers and everything they kind of know each other and so he goes and seeks out this other guy named Pope and Pope is working in
this company called the gold indicator company and so the gold indicator company is just another company set up this is really like there's a there's multiple versions of this basic idea in different forms throughout the book but it's essentially saying that any machine that facilitate facilitated or sped up
communication concerning this key Market assumed immense importance remember this is New York City in the 1950s okay by the 19 by the 18 or 1850s Sorry by the 1850s the telegraph was the Prime instrument for Rapid Financial intelligence and so that is what this company traffics in they traffic in Rapid Financial intelligence okay so he
just happens to seek out this guy Pope Pope is working in this office and he's got great timing because he's going to wind up getting hired at this company that's transmitting value information to investors right and he gets hired by by being immediately useful the day he shows up the entire system goes down and
Pope who's the head engineer there can't figure out what's going on and so while Pope and the founder of the company are yelling at each other and they're all going going crazy you have all the customers like they're literally the customers are like rushing their office they're like dude the thing that you
sold us it's off it's not working I need this information so they're going crazy and so it says Edison had been quietly engaged in looking over the machine himself and soon ascertain the cause of the trouble he managed to convey to them that his belief was that one of the contact Springs had broken off and
dropped between the two Gear wheels which stopped the whole mechanism fix it fix it fix it be quick for God's sakes laws yelled at him this is the guy that owns the company that's about to hire him remember Edison does not work at this yet so it's like yelling he like fix it fix it fix it so it says within 2
hours the gold indicators quotations were being communicated all over the street once again and so law is like okay who are you strange kid how the hell did you do that they wind up talking and then law is like I'm going to hire this guy right away laws hired him at once at a larger salary than he had ever received and so now this guy's
got this giant organization that Edison can actually apply his trade to a fruitful and prosperous period had opened for Edison who now perfected a whole series of new devices mainly refined ments upon the telegraph this instrument was Edison's first great love this is why I keep bringing it up to you
we cannot understand the invention of the phonograph the invention of the electric light the invention in many ways of the early movie industry and everything else that Edon did without understanding this period of his life everything was built upon this Ed this was Edison's first great love the primary invention out of which
many other in Innovations were to flow that I just ran over my own point there some of them eventually destined to supplant the morse's instrument itself and so they're talking about Samuel Morse the inventor of the telegraph Edison along with bell obviously Bell's credited this Edison's try to figure out
is like how can we do a speaking Telegraph that's the way telephones this hilarious that's the way telephones were thought of at this point in history it's like well Telegraph will transmit text how can we how can we get it to transmit voice and if you think about what a early telephone is really to this day
it's like a speaking Telegraph now this part blew my mind okay so you know or you probably know I did this podcast on J gold this is back on episode 258 if you haven't listened to it you got to listen to it when you're done listening to this go listen to that why is J gold why is listening to episode 258 um
important why he studying and and reading about Jay gold important because if you ask Rockefeller who's the best businessman ever met he said Jay Gold without hesitation Cornelius vanderbel who doesn't give out uh give out compliments for anything said Jay gold was the smartest man in America and at that time Vanderbilt was like 40 years
older than go you got to study Jay gold the reason this blew my mind is because in that book that I read on gold and I'm going to read many more in the future and that podcast I talked about that J gold became Infamous because he tried to Corner the gold market I had no idea that the person inside the gold
indicators company transmitting all of these quotes on the go price of gold the day this is happening was 22-year-old Thomas Edison that blue I always say like it's amazing how many events in history are kind of interlocked and connected to one each other this is crazy it says he was an eyewitness to one of the most stirring events iner
America's Financial history so after the whole like Market collapses he goes outside climbs up on like a telephone pole and he's so bewilder because he's got no it's like we you have financial markets melting down right he's a 22-year- old kid with almost no money I think he's like sleeping at the office
or something of this point so he's just looking at these grown men losing their entire life's Fortune going crazy and he can kind of just step outside of kind of like this bmuse spectator but that's wild the day J gold a corn J gold and for Fisk is it Frisk or Fisk I can't remember his part J J uh name at the
moment it's either Fisk or Frisk but yeah the day that happens Edison's actually the one at the machine that's remarkable so there is a telegraph Monopoly at this point um it's Western Union this is the one J gold is actually going to fight with and one of the weapons that gold uses to fight that Monopoly is actually patents that Edison
uh they were actually patents granted to Edison but Edison's a freelance inv ventor at this time so he's selling uh he'll sell his patents and and uh his inventions to you know basically the highest bidder I guess per se so he's actually selling something to Western Union at this point and I just want to
bring this up because it's the continuation of this idea that Edison just keeps making more and more improvements to telegraphic stock tickers and as a result of doing so and keep doing so I think this is now two years later or thereabouts he gets his first big payday and I thought the description of that was rather funny and
so he's meeting with the people at Western Union he says well young man the committee would like to settle up the account how much do you think they are worth his invention Edison was uncertain about what to demand he had thought that he should ask for $5,000 instead he said can you make me an offer and then the
guy from Western Union said how would $40,000 strike you and Edison was hilarious because he's describing this later on he goes I felt near fainting Edison managed to stammer stammer out that the the offer seem fair enough he gets the money in cash goes back to his like little he's in a dingy boarding house in New York
New Jersey this is just one sentence this is funny I had to read to you he sat up all night unable to sleep for fear of being murdered for the sake of his great of his great reward he had never seen so much money in his life he's like oh somebody's going to kill me for this so now we fast forward a few years in the story he's 26
years old and he makes the mistake and he corrects it later on when he opens up Meno Park but he's just like he's like trying to invent he's trying to be an inventor and a manufacturer at the same time so eventually he's going to realize hey I picked the wrong path and he's going to change course but I want to
bring up how he managed because he the way he managed at when he was 26 years old and very it's very much the way he managed throughout his entire life and it's why he had a lot of dedicated employees that worked almost their entire lives with him because they didn't work for him they worked with him
Edison was as dirty as any other Workman I immediately felt that there was a great deal to him one of his employees said he was like no other shop boss those men had ever known he was approachable and yet in the next breath he was very severe with them and he was bent on keeping them quote unquote hustling perpetually his intuitive
powers and his endless curiosity about everything amused and intrigued his co-workers he showed them an irrepressible enthusiasm like that of a child he kept his Men at Work long hours but he himself would work even longer he's working on a bunch of different ideas but the most important idea that's
going to come out of this period of his life is What's called the multiplex telegraphic system think about it just like way to send two message simultaneously so it essentially takes the existing Telegraph uh machines and makes it just allows them to send more messages this is one of the weapons gold
is going to use in his war against Western Union but it says uh Edison's meth I want to read this part to you because he's this is one of his most important inventions and it also reminded me of Edwin L where like he'll just read it all like Edwin L goes and reads every single book on light in the Harvard uh library then he goes to New
York and he reads every single book on light in the New York Public Library you see the same thing that Edison's doing over and over again um and so it says Edison's methods of Investigation were described as requiring complete knowledge of everything that had ever been done before in such a field as
automatic telegraphy uh books and periodicals describing all that these other experimenters had done uh and and all these other people had attempted and indeed all records of previous experiments and automatic mechanisms were Acquired and one of his employees is describing Edison at this point I came in one night and there sat Edison
with a pile of chemical books that were 5T high this is kind of what my house looks like uh but they're just biographies of entrepreneurs he studied them night and day he ate his a desk and slept in his chair I don't do this thank God because I have a family but I'm glad I do have a family because I think I
would and so another thing about Edison is like the cautionary tale aspect is I think especially you know I know a ton of entrepreneurs we're obsessive people and I think having guard rails on your obsession is necessary because you're it's very likely that you'll over optimize if the history of Entrepreneurship is any indicator of
such uh I think it's highly likely that you'll over optimize uh your professional life to the detriment of your personal life Edison definitely did that you know his kids are in this book and I don't know if I'm going to read this to you later or not but his kids are in the books anding you know we
didn't know our dad he didn't spend any time with us that kind of stuff and if somebody is smart and has driven as Edison made this mistake then what's the likelihood that you and I won't it's very likely they will so again cautionary T to some element I came in one night and there sat Edison with a pile of books that was 5 feet high he
studied them night and day he ate at his desk he slept in his chair in six in six weeks he had gone through all the books made 2,000 experiments produced a solution uh that could do the one thing that he wanted and so this gets the attention of Jay gold there is like Gold's a huge like supporting character in this
book I'm not going to I think listening to 258 you'll get an idea of of gold I'm just going to give you a couple things from him Jay gold had taken over the ownership of this other company called the automatic Telegraph company and he he bought the company because he wanted its new telegraphic patents and this is
the instrument that he's going to use to wage war with Western Union gold to determined to force his way into the rich telegraphic field this is very fascinating how he realized it was really important because gold had a lot of um it's this idea where you can you can identify an opportunity because you have deep knowledge about one
industry and you see that there is an industry developing in parallel to that industry that you know about so you can kind of get there before anybody else I don't know if that was very clear let me read this and hopefully it becomes clear gold had determined to force his way into the rich telegraphic field gold
began to build up an independent and competing Telegraph system whose real object was to harass and raid Western Union's Empire until they'd be forced to pay him his price by acquiring this company gold had also acquired the services of Thomas Edison and the rights to his automatic patents a powerful Pawn
in the campaign for the conquest of the nation's Telegraph system Edison at this point was completely oblivious to any of this all he was focusing on is like trying to make the best invention possible trying to make the telegraph more functional and hopefully build a business around that he didn't understand what a lot of these like
Robber Baron characters were doing and so what I was referencing there I thought this was the section I was I was actually confused but gold makes the point later on in the book that as he's developing that it was very common for telegraph lines to be laid next to railroad tracks but the railroad tracks
came first and so he's heavily invested in railroads and he's noticing this parallel technology shoot up he's like oh I'm going to dominate the railroads I might as well dominate that too at one point Edison describes all the stuff that's happening in his life that he doesn't understand a strange Financial Warfare which is a great way to think
about it but he also learns a little bit about that we'll get to that in one second on the very next page but this is why like it's very highly if you were a young person interested in technology you'd be doing exactly what Edison was doing at this point it's like why would you work on the Telegraph and I've tried
to explain this to you earlier and I don't know if it was clear but this is pretty clear the importance of the telegraph in 1850 to 1880 before the day of the telephone uh was the mighty impetus it gave to the American economy can scarcely be measured nowadays so it's the importance of the telegraph uh
the mighty impetus he gave to the American economy can be scarcely measured nowadays okay that was wasn't actually very clear at all that's actually a little weird writing basically what they're saying is that the the entire information economy is running on the telegraph just like the entire information economy today runs on
the internet so if you're working on the internet highly likely you would worked on the telegraph at this point So eventually Edison has a vague idea of what all these people are doing and why these Telegraph companies are are being bought and try to be merged with one another you know because Western Union
is kind of relentlessly monopolizing the entire industry so it says I'm going to read this paragraph to I'm going to read what I think you and I could take away from it although Edison invariably posed as a country boy who knew little about the ways of the wicked world he had already appreciated how inventor patents
even this is a really important phrase here even without operational value so he had already appreciated how inventor patents even without operational value could be used as pawns or bargaining uh measures by moneyed patrons of applied science if you think about what is happening behind his thinking he's
asking what is an asset that you have inside your company that is valuable to other people and so gold actually gives him $30,000 for his invention and Edison's like holy this is amazing but again I think this is hopefully the last time I mentioned gold because he's all over this book but this is again fascinating
the way that Gold's mind worked it says it was said but at the time when the news came out that Edison had been lured into Gold's Camp the stock of Western Union fell sharply under heavy Short Selling by J gold so that he that he gained so gold gains in a single day 20 or 30 times that which he paid the young
inventor so he used he convinced Edison hey I will give you $30,000 Edison's like oh crap that's a lot of money I'll take it gold uses that news to drive down Western Union's stock obviously he short sold it and so he makes 20 or 30 times in one day what he gave to Edison and then I'll wrap up this section just
with one paragraph because this explains to you and I like first of all Edison is 27 years old at this point in the story but why is J gold and Western Union fighting over Thomas Edison like what is happening here and so it says why did the great Barons contend with each other in the courts for possession of Edison's quadruplex it was not only a superb
invention but one of the most important contributions to the telegraphic art and would bring dominance of the great industry to whoever owned it so the last decade that he's been in New York it has been he starts out with no money right then makes a lot of money then goes down it's like there's these Peaks and
valleys that are that are happening he's under incredible Financial stress he gets like a Payday and this is where he's like okay I need to change course now he's almost 30 years old he's like I need I'm getting out of New York and I'm going to the middle of nowhere New Jersey and I'm going to build a
laboratory of science at Meno Park And so there's a few authors that have stated that they actually think this the his creation of men low Park was just a significant invention because it was like the first of the Laboratories to pursue like practical commercial applications of research and that was all it did and Edison arrived at that
just by following his natural Bend just like this is just what I want to do I want to wake up I want to invent all day long not worry about money not worrying about manufacturer and then do that until I'm tired I'll take a nap and I'll just get up and do the same thing over and over again and so this is a quick
description into like his frame of mind for doing this uh my note is after a decade of financial struggle he wants to build a library this is the Menlo Park part of Edison's or not Library laboratory this is the Meno Park part of Edison's life he turned back on the threshold of the Hidden World of electronic science and turned back
abandoning these perplexing experiments to devote himself to O to other more immediately rewarding investigation so what they're talking about there is that this is where again I think the focus of a Ford a land and a jobs is going to yield Superior economic results in your lifetime for sure he would invent
something and then once he figured it out he kind of like jumped on to the next thing like he's going to vent the phonograph which just think about like phonograph is like the first way that you could have recorded audio in the world he invents it and then doesn't try to commercially exploit his invention for like 10 years and by that time
there's all these other competitors he's making a lot of non-economic decisions which may be better for the world but weren't better for his financial outcome he was by no means a poor person but the difference in wealth that like a Ford or jobs and a land had access to it'd be like 50 times a 100 times more than than
maybe even larger than Edison did so that's what they're talking about there but it say as at this stage his career he was prosperous again but he was also determined to bring about a sweeping change in his way of life this is actually smart what he's doing it's like you got to build a company that you actually like to enjoy working in he had
built companies he didn't enjoy working in he must at all cost quit business he said and Manufacturing and live in some Quiet Retreat where he could give himself entirely to the vocation he loved inventive research and so that is the why behind Meno Park and then a few pages later I write this is interesting
and a course to be avoided so they're talking about hey why the hell did you set up menal Park in the middle of nowhere uh and because to Edison it's like why do you need distractions so he brings people out there they build like little houses they have like a little scientific Community but there's nothing
for like the wives and the kids to do and so it says this became a community devoted to experimental science what would these people do to entertain themselves here in the quiet Backwater they would invent things Edison said and after that they would invent more things so that gives you a perfect insight into
like what was important to him not realizing that other people are not going to share his obsessive 247 nature on inventing now he is also very charismatic person and so he's able to convince people to share his mission but also in many cases it actually goes against what's actually good for them and so this is what I mean when I got to
this section I was like uhuh nope not doing this John a who served under Edison for half a century uh at the end of his life described the sacrifices that some of Edison's old co-workers had made and commented on on their reasons for doing so my children grew up without knowing their father he said when I did
get home at night which was seldom they were in bed why did you do it he was asked because Edison made your work interesting he made me feel that I was making something with him and that I wasn't just a Workman and then in those days we all hoped to get rich with him so this is more about Meno Park and why
Edison did this and he loved it the years at at Meno Park from 1876 to 1881 were by All Odds the happiest and most fruitful of Edison's life he was in his early 30s and at the very height of his creative Powers the business of inventing was humming along he was in the happy condition of being at Liberty
to absorb himself in a whole variety of inviting studies here he could allow himself to meditate permit his mind to wander even to play without fear of interruption when he wished to inform himself on some special subject of moment to him he would gather together a great mass of books lay them out on the
floor flinging himself down among them and then pour over them for hours on end after which he would go back refreshed to the manual part of his task and so one thing he works on is he actually finds a way to record voice and then replay it back at a later time this eventually going to take form in a product called the phonograph but he
also had like a primitive way to actually transmit human voice over a long distance and it was actually under the heading in his notebooks of something called the telephone repeater the most interesting part of this section though was not that what's most interesting is that who he tried to sell
this technology to and why they would not by it so he says he approached Western Union people with the idea of reproducing and recording the human voice but they saw no conceivable use for it and there's an exclamation point at the end of that sentence by the author and so you think about this it's like Western Union was a telegraph
Monopoly they did not want to believe or maybe was impossible for them to believe this is really a a lesson on human nature if you think about it so they don't want to believe or they don't want to see or maybe they can't see anything that would disrupt that so if if you're inventing something or your new product
renders another product obsolete probably the worst place to go and sell that product is to a person that has economic incentives that your product does not continue I talked about this on episode 200 with James Dyson CU he's like what the hell is going on here I built a technologically Superior vacuum I go to the vacuum cleaner companies and
they don't even see it they're like this is crap and he realiz like oh my vacuum is Bagless it does not have a bag and these dudes sell $500 million doll wor a bags every year of course they don't want they can't see what is against their economic incentives and so that's when you realize like I got to do this
myself so this is when he invents the photograph I'm going to skip over that part because what he does is he sets it aside so it's like the lack of focus or a different area of focus I guess it's one way to think about it and he starts getting this idea that he's eventually going to vent which is the electric
light bulb right and this is one way to describe that one undertaking particularly gripped his imagination it was described as being that of dispelling night with its Darkness from the arena of civilization dispelling night with its Darkness from the arena of civilization is what you and I call the electric
light so Edison's going to need a ton of money to build out the entire electrical system right and so he's going to link up with Morgan and Vanderbilt and all these other people in a minute but I just want to pull out something that's very interesting it is mentioned a few times previously in the book but I
haven't drawn your attention to it and it's the fact that it says he had an air of supreme confidence with which he sought to imbue everyone around him including interested capitalists so he was very good at selling others on his ideas including selling people like investors on the fact that hey you should give me money to pursue this
invention because we can turn it into a company and the note out of myself on this page is passion is infectious Danny Luen $500,000 check story so Danny Luen is was the co-founder of Alami and I read his biography years ago it's called no better time and the reason this came up now is because Danny Luan is also
widely believed to be the first person killed in the 9/11 attacks he was in first class on one of the planes stood up to try to do something when they were hijacking and he was stabbed to death he was only 31 but in his biography it talks about that he completely believed in what he was doing and once you believe in
something it's easy to transfer that belief to other people so I just want to read a section from this book called no better time and it says stunned by what he saw on Lumen at the Whiteboard FR this is a syester said he felt a familiar sensation the same one he experienced when he watched some of his top musical talents at the start of
their careers Dany was like ambition and intellect on steroids he said his belief in this thing was so profoundly convincing that I believed too so that's what I meant about the transferring of the belief which is extremely powerful which is exactly what is happening in this where we are in the book with
Edison right he's transferring his belief in a electric light to people that he needs help with right on the spot FR pulled out his checkbook and handed Danny a check for a half a million dollars and when I read that book four years ago whenever it was the note out of myself on there was passion was worth half a million dollars and
more and so you go back to the Edison book he had an air of supreme confidence with which he sought to imbue everyone around him including interested capitalists and so this is when he starts partnering up with Vanderbilt this is Vanderbilt son because Cornelius had just died and left I think like 95% of his money to his oldest son and JP
Morgan there's a lot more detail in the other podcast I did on episode 83 which is empires of light that entire book is just about this point in Edison's life so it goes into way more detail in the book I hold my hand but I want to pull out a few things here because I think they're important for you and I to
understand because he's going to get you know he gets kind of you know screwed over multiple times by Partners uh in effect the Western Union people were buying rights but not an existing invention but in an unknown quantity a promise Edison said their money was invested in confidence of my ability to bring it back again undoubtedly these
Finance years were risking were taking risk with their Capital though for such R for as people as wealthy as the Vanderbilts who at that time was the richest man in America uh it was only peanuts so it's a collection of very rich people he's raising money from one is the Vanderbilt po JP Morgan's the one
organizing all this which I get to in a minute but some of them were also like the founders and Executives in Western Union who were extremely rich at the time uh behind this whole Venture stood JP Morgan who kept his name off the board of directors but had its partner serving as director of the new company
and they also made the company bank with uh Morgan's firm so his name might be off of it but he is very much in control uh Edison believed that the chances of ultimate success of his project were fastly greater because of the Morgan connection the launching of the Edison Electric Light Company by such sponsors
is noteworthy also that it inaugurates a phase of increasingly close close relations between big business and technology in this company so how think about how crazy this is remember the words that you and I are talking about right now they were written in 1959 9 and he's like this is a phase of increasingly close relationship
relations between big business and technology in the company or EXC me the country even more so today and so before I move ahead I want to read this section from Empire's light because this is how this story ends uh and so it was that JP Morgan whose house had been the first in New York to be wired for electricity by
Edison a decade earlier now erased Edison's name out of corporate existence without even the courtesy of a telegram or a phone call to the great inventor uh Edison's biographer Matthew Josephson which is the guy that wrote the book that holding my hand wrote Morgan to Morgan it made little difference so long
as it all resulted in a big trustifi big trust for which he would be the banker Edison had been in the vocabulary of the times morganized and that was something that pops up in these books over and over again would prey on weak finan financially weak companies if they needed his money and his uh the money of
his investors then he would take over in many parts take control of the company combine them with other companies they this happened so much that there was a term for it that term was morganized and that is the beginning of General Electric book goes on for quite a while how difficult you can imagine trying to
build the electric industry from scratch there's just two lines actually I was just having this conversation with my daughter this morning before school so it says uh he seemed to be meeting with fresh difficulties at every step that's sentence one and then step sentence two no great n can be obtained without considerable doubt and tribulation so
really the summary of what's Happening across these like set of like 20 pages is problems are the rule not the exception and so the conversation I was having with my daughter this morning is just like you know being upset about something going on in our life or maybe you don't like whatever is happening at
the moment it's just like that is an everyday thing you were concerned and worried about this today I was like you just have to really I actually quoted the podcast I go problems are just opportunities in workflows it gives you an opportunity to use your brain to solve it but don't think that because you solved this problem or now you've
overcome whatever is taking place in your life that that is the end it's highly likely and a near certainty that you'll just have another problem the next day or next week life we always on the podcast you and I always talk about the business is problems and that companies are just effective problem solving machines life
is problems everybody has problems in their lives so the point I trying to make to her is like you shouldn't try to eliminate problems completely because that's futile you should just get good at problem solving and then if you enter every day it's like okay most likely going to encounter something today that
I don't like or there may be a problem they're the rule not the exception do not let it upset you just handle and then move on to the next and so there's a small analogy between the conversation I'm having with my 10-year-old daughter that Edison is describing the book about holy damn how difficult what he's trying
to do and in many cases I wonder I haven't come across this in the book but I I have to wonder like he dips out so he leaves menow Park goes to New York because that's where he has to do this right and there a big struggle and then he winds up leaving and getting kind of upset and selling all his G stock later
on and then going and doing Mining and and all this other stuff that he does the rest of life right but I wonder if he could go back and just be like I should have never left Meno Park and whether that's like a partnership with somebody else develops it a license agreement I don't know what it is but he gave like his life and soul again and I
don't think he wanted to be in New York and I highly suspect that if you and I could talk to him today he'd like yeah I shouldn't have done that I should have stayed where I was cuz I was happy and so what I want to do is get into like his mindset as he's setting out to do this and is a multi-year process even at
the beginning he's like okay I figured it out but then he doesn't really he hasn't figured out completely and so he'll have like a promising experiment and then he'll like have a fall like a setback and what I found Most Fascinating is this section where he talks about like he was inspired by a Victor Hugo novel so it says the this is
now a quote directly from edicon the electric light had caused me great amount of study and and required the most elaborate experiments Edison said I was never myself discouraged or inclined to be hopeless of success but I cannot say the same for all of my associates he was like a man possessed after every
reverse or disappointing trial of which there were many right he worked on day and night compulsively one of Edison's favorite books was Victor Hugo's toilers of the sea in the book the hero of the book gillot described by his neighbors as both crafty and laborious and believed by them to be in communication
with Supernatural powers that could be a description of how Edison was viewed at this time because he's already world famous from the the um Not only was he world like he was world famous from the invention of the phonograph and the electric light just takes them to like other levels of Fame uh so they belied
by them to be in communic super mar power set out alone to extricate a small steam ship from a reef in the English Channel so he is taking the metaphor that he's reading in this story as as what's taking place in his life at this point so it says this this hero sets out tries to get this Reef or tries to get
the this this ship that's stuck on a reef in the English Channel on which uh the ship has been stranded in his long effort he must contend against the immeasurable forces of nature the Sea The Tides the storm to reach his goal by his courage his powers of endurance and his mechanical skill the hero of the book assumes for us the symbolic figure
the steamship that he is bent on saving of course symbolizes progress so Edison to strove on so Edison seeing parallels with where he is in life with the story that he's reading about actually motivates him to go on and then this point is just full of very like some of the best Edison quotes you all ever come
across his enthusiasm was infectious at such moments he would say proudly the trouble with other inventors is that they try a few things and quit I never quit until I get what I want and then another great quote remember nothing that's good works by itself you've got to make the damn thing work he winds up
testing maybe thousands maybe tens of thousands of different materials for the filament that's inside of a light bulb and I just thought Edison's worldwide search for filament for his light bulb actually lead to some surprising ends and so it says another agent of Edison was sent to on a similar mission to the
West Indies in Central America but he died of yellow fever that's the second person he sent out right the third person uh was this guy named Frank McGowen who was dispatched from Meno Park at Edison's expense to explore the upper Amazon River journeying by canoe to the wildest regions on Earth mgaw was
gone 15 months the newspapers carefully following such reports of his hering adventures after having survived the hazards of life among the men and beast of the Amazon Macwan at last came back to New York was given a large sum of cash by Edison's secretary and celebrated his safe arrival by going to a cafe then he walked off in the night
towards the Westside docks never to be seen or heard of again thus creating one of the great police mysteries of the80s that is the 1880s by the way and if you think about it this guy's got a pile of money let's flash back to what was what was Edison worried worried about right he gets that what $ 30 or
$40,000 can't sleep cuz he's in this like dingy boarding house convinced somebody's going to wind up coming and killing him for the money which is very likely the outcome maybe this guy's drunk and he fell off into the water and drowned that that you know that we don't actually know but he's walking around
with a sack full of cash he's super famous and he leaves the cafe or leaves the bar and he's never seen again so the story of Edison's electric Adventures are just a series of Peaks and valleys Peaks and valleys over and over again and one thing that Edison had to contend with Was Not only was it very
frustrating if he found like a deadend and he couldn't get it to work the way he wanted to he also had to manage the expectations of not only his employees but also his investors and he was remarkable at always putting together like this front and it's probably true that he absolutely believed that whatever difficulties they were going
through at the point at the time were temporary and that they figure it out and I think the best description of this is that quote by Mark andreon he says if you're starting a business or running a startup you only experience two emotions uh Euphoria and Terror and almost nothing in between and so that's also
occurring with his backers which his financial backers which was a big pain in the ass to Edison hope and pessimism alternated in the minds of Edison's Financial sponsors during the transitional stage between invent the invention and its development and so I mentioned earlier how he managed and why people liked him
working when he was a young man in his 20s we still that we see that's still the same case at arguably the most important part of his life which is when he's in New York trying to make his electrical system work right and so it says to the young electricians it was wonderful to see Edison working by their
side all covered with grease and suit what they enjoyed most was his attitude of caring nothing for what others thought of him and paying no attention to Frills and fancy so what they're talking about is like New York has the the highest population in the United States at this point he is super famous and he's working in the streets of New
York so he's constantly haggled constantly harassed people are following around almost like some kind of like Messianic character and when there's an issue they would just like dig up the lines and he' jump in and try to figure out what the hell's going on and so that's what they mean is like he paid no
attention to Frills or fancies this reminded me very much of Sam Z Murray and the huge he Advantage he had over his competitors I just reread that book the fish that ate the whale if you haven't listened to it it's episode 255 one of my favorite books I've ever read but Sam did this where his competitors
are in an office in Boston trying to run their fruit company right and he's actually in the fields in Honduras with his workers Sam knew his business on an intimate detail from a toz that his competitors could only wish to know theirs and so Murray was a very hard dude and a Taskmaster he was by no means easy on his employees but they respected
him because they knew he worked just as hard if not harder than they did I think Steve Jobs picked up on that too when he came back to Apple and he's like wait a minute the CEO of Apple Gil aelo is described as a turnaround uh as a turnaround expert and he's like how can you be a turnaround expert uh when
you're sitting he job said something like when you're sitting in your office eating lunch alone on China that looks like the from Versailles and so if you compare it in contrast to the way Gil worked with his employees at Apple and the way Steve did Steve was in there every day in fact that made me think of
this quote there's a book called creative selection I did a I've read it I've read this book three times anybody building a product should read it um it's written by one of the programmers that work directly under Steve but our work with Steve rather and demo to him multiple times I did a bonus episode I'll go back and figure out where it is
and I I'll leave it in the show notes but what was fascinating let me just read this whole section because I think this gives you an indication of like what Thomas Edison's doing here what Sam Murray was doing what Edwin L did and Steve Jobs did so reading from the book creative selection right now Steve was
the center of all the circles he made all the important product decisions from my standpoint as an individual programmer demoing to Steve was like visiting the Oracle of Deli the demo was my question Steve's response was the answer while the pronouncements from the Greek oracle often came in the form of
confusing rle riddles that wasn't true with Steve he was always easy to understand he would either approve a demo or would request to see something different next time whenever Steve reviewed a demo he would say often with highly detailed specificity what he wanted to happen next this is the the part this one paragraph is what made me
think of uh this excerpt when I got to where I'm at in the Edison book he was always trying to ensure the products were as intuitive and straightforward as possible and he was willing to invest his own time effort and influence to see that they were through looking at demos asking for specific changes then
reviewing the changed work again later on and giving a final approval before we could ship Steve could make a product turn out like he wanted that's absolutely fantastic can't recommend that book enough it's it's really fun to read and you can read it in a weekend there's no reason not to so I want to bring to your attention I mentioned
earlier he's like oh I'm involved in business and Manufacturing that was annoying so then he revers course goes to men park right then 5 10 years later whatever it was he reversed his course again this time in the other direction and this is why I said earlier I have a feeling that he should have just stayed
or he he would have if you could ask him now he he would say you know I should have stayed at men Park because really what I'm about to read to you is like this is a sign that you pick the right profession and he says he could pretend that he was giving up inventing for some years because of the pressure of
business Affairs so that is the actual making like he invented the electrical lights now how do you like actually scale the company and do all that stuff right so that's what he's talking about like they're they're now he's not inventing anymore and now he's doing like the practical application or the
business application of his invention I guess but he could no more stop observing things or experimenting than he could stop breathing so that line is why I think he might have wanted to stay in Meno Park he could no more stop observing things or experimenting than he could stop breathing and I think a main theme of this book and the
conversation I think you and I are having today is the fact that Founders are learning machines and part of being a learning machine is just always being the curious about the world around you and so there's a guy named Charles kering a lot of Founders I talk to don't actually know who he is I did a podcast on him a long time ago it's episode
number 125 the reason he is important to study is because he was called the 20th Century's Ben Franklin if that pequs your interest go back and listen to 120 episode 125 it was on his autobiography if I remember correctly but this is Char this is K as everybody called him K uh this is K now looking back on what
Edison was able to accomplish and I think what he's describing is again why Founders are learning machines and why it's so important to just keep trying things it was because Edison was always looking for things as as K said that he inserted a straight wire into an incandescent light bulb and found he
could pull a current of electricity out of a vacuum thus discovering an inexhaustible source of free electrons want to read his quote one more time it was because Edison was always looking for things that he inserted a straight wire into an incandescent light bulb and found he could pull a current of electricity out
of a vacuum thus discovering an inexhaustible source of free electrons and So eventually there's this rather dark period in Edison's life where they call the war of the currents I covered it all the way back there's an entire book called Empire of light on it I read it it's episode 83 Edison's rather disgusted and so he goes back to New
Jersey but I actually think this interaction that Edison has with the famous explorer Henry Stanley gives you and I who Edison was as a person and what was important to him and it brought a smile to my face when I read it Henry Stanley was a sternly religious little man who believed that God had brought
him safely Through the Jungle he visited the Edison laboratory and spoke a few words into the Talking Machine then he turned to the inventor and said Mr Edison if it were possible for you to hear the voice of Any Man known in the history of the world whose voice would you prefer to hear napoleons replied Edison without
hesitation oh no no I should like to hear the voice of Jesus our savior said Stanley oh well laughed Edison you know I like a hustler and that is where I'll leave it for the full story by the book if you buy the book using the link that's in the show not to your podcast player you'll be supporting podcast at the same
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it's how I can remember all the stuff I read and is by far the best app I pay for I have an official partnership with rewise so they'll give you 60 days free to try it if you go to re wise. i/f Founders that link as always is uh below and at Founders podcast.com that is 267 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you soon