392 THE PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL POW ER
time, he found himself staring at a basket sitting on the seat of a wooden folding
chair. Goldman had an idea. He called his mechanic, who added wheels to the chair
legs, added another basket below the seat, and the first shopping cart was born.
Thomas Stemberg was the manager of another supermarket, and he began to
wonder if there wasn't some other kind of retail operation that could be run the
same way. He decided to apply the supermarket concept to office supplies and he,
with Leo Kahn, gave their first new store the name Staples.When Thomas A. Edison invented the incandescent electric light
bulb he merely brought together two old, well-known principles and
associated them in a new combination. He, and practically all others
who were informed on the subject of electricity, knew that a light could
be produced by heating a small wire with electricity, but the problem
was to do this without burning the wire in two. In his experimental
research Mr. Edison tried out every conceivable sort of wire, hoping
to find some substance that would withstand the tremendous heat to
which it had to be subjected before a light could be produced.
Edison's Imagination finally delivered for him when he compared
his problem with the making of charcoal. Charcoal is created by burning
wood under a mound of dirt. This cuts off most of the available oxygen
that is necessary for combustion. Edison needed to make the wire burn
like charcoal. His solution was to enclose the wire in a glass bulb and then
pump out almost all the oxygen. Combustion still occurred, but at such a
slow rate that the wire lasted long enough for the light bulb to be usefUl.
Even then, Edison's idea still required many refinements in terms
of the right kind of wire and the proper thickness and type of glass.
Those refinements continue today, but nothing obscures the fact that
it was Mr. Edison who made the essential connection, and he did it by
repeated attempts to apply his Imagination.
When the sun goes down tonight, you step to the wall and press
a button to bring it back again, a performance that would have mysti-
fied the people of a few generations ago. Thanks to the use of Edison's