2.10. Lesson 11: Miss No Detail
On July 12, 1885, Thomas Edison recorded in his diary: "I think freckles on the skin are due to some salt of Iron, sunlight brings them out by reducing them from high to low state of oxidation—perhaps with a powerful magnet applied for some time, and then with proper chemicals, these mud holes of beauty might be removed."
It is an odd, apparently random observation from the "Wizard of Menlo Park." It comes in the diary apropos of nothing—and that is just the point. Edison was a compulsive observer; he harnessed his natural inclination by making it a deliberate, conscious practice to miss no detail in all that he observed and, having noted a detail, to make a written or drawn record of it. To be sure, there is ...
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