It’s hard to overstate the impact Thomas Edison had on future generations. From his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, the inventor and his staff devised or improved upon prior designs for such influential objects as the lightbulb, the movie camera, and the alkaline battery. He’s forever tied to 1,093, the record-setting number of patents he earned alone or with others. But an additional 500-plus patents were rejected or left unfinished, and, most likely, many of Edison’s ideas never even reached the patent stage. In admitting the many, many times things didn’t go right, Edison humbly encouraged budding creators to persevere.