THOMAS Edison is said to have made thousands of prototypes of the light bulb before he finally got it right. In spite of ‘failing’ so often, Edison never let it get the best of him.

Instead, he turned them on their head. All of these ‘failures’ showed him how not to invent something. His resilience therefore gave the world some of the most amazing inventions of the early 20th century; the phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture.