Smelly Edison

[Thomas Edison] had the Victorian aversion to water, and throughout his life took at most one bath a week . . . [his] appearance was often accentuated by a pungent odor of things organic and inorganic.

Robert Conot, A Streak of Luck: The Life and Legend of Thomas Alva Edison (New York: Seaview Books, 1979), p. 86, quoted in Jon Gertner, The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation (New York: Penguin, 2012), p. 367.