Yes, it’s OK it took me 5,127 attempts to make a bagless vacuum

We’re good at learning by tinkering—which is fortunate, because we’re terrible at getting things right the first time.

In 1983, after four years of building and testing 5,127 handmade prototypes of my cyclonic vacuum, I finally cracked it. Perhaps I should have punched the air, whooped loudly, and run down the road from my workshop shrieking “Eureka!” at the top of my voice. Instead, far from feeling elated—which surely after 5,126 failures I should have been—I fel