Who is credited as the first person to say, "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration."?

Thomas Edison is held up to be the person that around 1903 first said, "Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration." In the September 1932 edition of Harper's Monthly Magazine, journalists for the magazine specifically pointed to the fact that Edison made this clear comment. At that point in time (1932), they wrote that no one else appeared to have uttered the statement before him.

Nevertheless, there were several other people who had expressed very similar thoughts before Edison. The Comte de Buffon (a.k.a. George-Louis Leclerc), 1707–88, had the following line in Hérault de Séchelles' Voyage à Montbar, in 1803: Genius is only a greater aptitude for patience.

Also, Thomas Carlyle was reportedly held to have said, "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains". But, what he actually said, in the History of Frederick the Great, written 1858–65, was: 'Genius' (... means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all). Finally, in Notes by Mr. Ruskin on His Collection of Drawings by the late J. M. W. Turner, 1878, John Ruskin directly stated, "I know of no genius but the genius of hard work."

So, Edison and the men just mentioned held that great accomplishments result not so much from ingenuity, but from very hard and persistent work.