I just read an amazing story about a French man who invented a audio recording device 20 years before Edison invented the phonograph.

What’s amazing to me is that the French inventor, Edward-Leon Scott de Martinville, called his invention the phonautograph, a device that would record sound… but he had not even conceived of the possibility of playing the recorded sound back! A recording he made in 1860 has recently been “played back” with the help of modern digital technology…

It took about twenty more years for Edison to imagine that recording sound and playing it back was possible...

If you recall your history, Edison was determined to make a “dictaphone” type recording device to be used in offices for dictating letters. The fact that it was immediately used to record music was not something he envisioned.

How many times have we seen discoveries and inventions sidelined and forgotten because the full potential was unknown. It seems strange that someone would bother to invent a process for recording sound and not even imagine playing the recording back… but that’s exactly what happened.

How does this apply to your day-to-day reality?

I absolutely guarantee that you already have and will continue to do things in your life that your limitations will blind you to…regarding the full potential. It’s called standing in your own way.

The astonishing thing about the French inventor was the years he spent perfecting the recording process without any proof it would work… cause he didn’t put any attention on playing the recording back. He was only concerned with capturing a “picture” of the sound waves. Which he apparently did.

Is it possible that we can become so focused on a single aspect of our lives that we miss the full potential of what our lives can be?

It happens all the time.

-Bob Baran