Bright Ideas
August 7, 1920
How did one of history’s most revered inventors come up with his next big idea? In August 1920, Forbes ran an interview with “the busiest man in the world”—Thomas Edison—to understand what inspired and motivated him. His answer took the magazine’s founding editor by surprise. “I read Forbes,” the Wizard of Menlo Park, then 73, told B.C. Forbes. “I like it. It stimulates people to work, to think and to do things to make progress in the world.” Forbes went on to explain that Edison reads “to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from owers.” By the time Forbes published his “long talk” with Edison, the inventor’s legacy—the phonograph (1877), the rst practical lightbulb (1879), the movie camera (1891), reliable alkaline batteries (1910)—was largely behind him. Eleven years after appearing on the cover of Forbes, Edison died with 1,093 patented inventions to his name—a record that would last more than 70 years until he was surpassed in 2003 by Japanese inventor Shunpei Yamazaki.
SOURCES: THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING, BY FRANCIS BACON; FAREWELL MY YOUTH, BY SIR ARNOLD BAX; THE LIFE OF SAMUEL JOHNSON, BY JAMES BOSWELL; MADE IN JAPAN, BY AKIO MORITA; VALENTINE’S DAY, BY CHARLES LAMB; THE COMPLETE POEMS OF DOROTHY PARKER; SOPHIE’S WORLD, BY JOSTEIN GAARDER; THE COMPLETE ESSAYS, BY MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE; OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET, BY C.S. LEWIS; FAIR PLAY, BY TOVE JANSSON; PENSÉES, BY BLAISE PASCAL; WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES, BY CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS.