On the flip side, he was using up millions and millions of company dollars on his singleminded pursuit with no obvious results to show for it. Had things gone even a little differently, things would've gone very differently indeed. Hard to imagine most companies tolerating an employee flat ignoring instruction to change to another task when their old task was proving fruitless.
Hindsight is clear enough here, but in context it was pretty nuts what the guy was doing.
Makes you wonder how many great inventors of revolutionary tech were shoved off their path by dumb luck.