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United States Patent and Trademark Office

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--Now, in any society, only a few human beings ever have original ideas or make inventions. Of these inventors, only a fraction have the courage, stubborness, and energy to keep on bettering their inventions until they really work and to keep on promoting them until they persuade others to take them up.--L. Sprague de Camp, The Ancient Engineers

--It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones. The hesitation of the latter arises...in part from the general skepticism of mankind which does not relly believe in an innovation until experience proves its value.--Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

--Putting a thing off until tomorrow was a practice unknown to Edison. He kept going forward relentlessly, and when an obstacle came in his path either passed round it or turned it to his advantage.--Francis Jehl, Menlo Park Reminiscences

--I was certain, but as Edison always wanted to be 'dead certain,' he had me take off the bell and regrease its rim while he oversaw the operation.--Francis Jehl, ibid.

--When Edison predicted the coming of the electric light, he sent gas stocks crashing temporarily. The British gas companies were badly worried, and a Parliamentary commission was appointed to make investigation into the possibility of such an invention. After much deliberation, it was pronounced an impossibility, a dictum in which the leading scientists of Europe concurred. This, however, did not dampen Edison's enthusiasm; he paid absolutely no attention to it.

...Thompson and practically all the other scientists who appeared before the commission scoffed at the suggestion that Edison had accomplished what he was said to have.

...All of the scientific authorities in the world, including Lord Kelvin (who however was always conservative and reasonable in his statements) were of the same opinion. The sub-division of the electric light was, said all the scientific men, impossible, and yet at that time Thomas A. Edison had actually solved the problem.

...That was the way in which his ideas appeared to men who viewed them honestly in the light of laws of physics and electricity as understood by them. Edison approached the matter in a different way. He found that, by the sound and intelligent application of these same laws, the stupendous result of the incandescent lamp with its filament of high resistance and small radiating surface could be produced. That was the revolution brought about by Mr. Edison. By the correct application of the of the inexorable laws of physics, electricity, heat and light, he achieved a result which every one said was impossible.--Francis Jehl, ibid.

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