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Seek to Misconstrue   + a

Failure: The Blog  

August 2018

  • When This Executive Was Fired, He Took Charge
  • Obeying The Speed Limit Has Never Been More Fun
  • London Black Cabs Helped Uber Grow
  • Bette Graham Created A Product To Fix Her Mistakes
  • Flamin' Hot Cheetos Had An Interesting Start

July 2018

  • Fear This Instead Of Failure
  • Re-Releasing Songs Created Success
  • A CEO's Purposeful Mistake
  • The Tardy Student And The Unsolvable Problem
  • Fixing Potholes Through Graffiti

June 2018

  • A Surprising Mistake In The Oxford English Dictionary
  • US Army Embraces Mistakes
  • Blocking A Hymn
  • Eddie Shore Was Truly A Tough Guy
  • [Video] Elon Musk Didn't "Pivot" He Failed

May 2018

  • 8 Examples of Mental Toughness Part 2
  • Necessity Turned Accessory: Allen Iverson's Sleeve
  • This Doctor Has Continued To Fail
  • 8 Examples of Mental Toughness
  • MIT Accidentally Creates New Smelting Process

April 2018

  • Johnny Cash Quit Singing Lessons
  • Cruise Control Came Out of Frustration
  • Time Spent Gaming Pays Off In The Navy
  • Rock Around The Clock Was a Commercial Failure
  • Sigmund Freud Should Have Been Discouraged

March 2018

  • Superman Couldn't Fly
  • This School Shares Failures
  • Jim Croce's Parents Hoped He Would Fail

[More archives...]

« Swanson’s Leftover Turkey Issue Brought Success
Manufacturers Helped During The Great Depression »

General Electric’s Joke Turned Into Success

April 12th, 2017 - by Alyssa Shea

When faced with the impossible, many people will shy away or simply not try at all. Marvin Pipkin didn’t run away from a challenge that was thought to be impossible. He created an item every household has to this day!

As a joke, GE would haze their new employees, asking them to invent frosted light bulbs. This was considered an impossible task at the time. Pipkin refused to believe that.

GE failure
Photo © Flickr User trekkyandy

“When I was fussing around with inside frosting experiments, back in 1919, everybody laughed at me, and kept calling me off to tackle something ‘more practical,'” Pipkin told Popular Science magazine in August 1927. “They told me about the manufacturer who had contracted with the railroads to supply 50,000 inside frosted bulbs, and had begged off on his contract when he found he had 50 percent breakage in his product. Inside frosting was an exploded dream.”

One company’s joke turned into a raging success!

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