The rewards of vision and hard work

In the fall of 1894, Guglielmo retreated to his room on the third floor. All summer while on vacation, he read books and filled notebooks with squiggly diagrams. Now the time had come for him to work. Every day, he rose early. He worked all day and long into the night, to the point that his mother became alarmed. He had never been a robust person, but now he had become appallingly thin. His face was drawn, and his eyes were often glazed over with fatigue. Finally, the day came when he announced that his instruments were ready. He invited the family to his room and, pushing a button, he succeeded in ringing a bell on the first floor! While his mother was amazed, his father was not. He saw no use in being able to send a signal so short a distance. So Guglielmo laboured on. Little by little, he made changes in his sending circuits so he could send a signal from one hill to the next and then beyond the hill. Eventually his invention was perfected – partly due to vision and inspiration, but mostly due to perseverance. Guglielmo Marconi was eventually hailed as the inventor of wireless telegraphy, radio’s forerunner. He not only received a Nobel Prize in physics but also acquired a seat in the Italian senate. If you want what successful people have, you must be willing to do what successful people do. And 99 percent of their success is due to vision and hard work. “Lazy people want much but get little, but those who work hard will prosper.”