[madmanslitany]

There's a great applicable quote from Nikola Tesla here: “If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”

[gjm11]

As I just pointed out to someone else who quoted the exact same thing elsewhere on HN, that approach seemed to work out pretty well for Edison.