Founders - #271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

Starting point is 00:00:00 On his death in 1974, the New York Times honored Bush with a front-page obituary, calling him the engineer who marshaled American technology for World War II and ushered in the Atomic Age. Jerome Weisner, science advisor to President Kennedy, judged Bush's influence on American science and technology so great that the 20th century may not yet produce his equal. Acts of importance were the measure of his life, and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. He was a contrarian skeptical of

Starting point is 00:00:33 easy solutions, yet willing to tackle tough problems without a compass. He was a pragmatist who thought that knowledge arose from a physical encounter with a stubborn reality. Suspicious of big institutions, Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for mass mediocrity long before such complaints became conventional wisdom. He believed the individual was still of paramount importance. The individual to me is everything, he wrote. I would restrict him as little as possible. He never lost his faith in the power of one. That was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Endless Frontier, Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century, and it was written by G.

Starting point is 00:01:23 Pascal Zachary. Okay, so this is the second podcast I'm doing on Vannevar Bush. Last week, I covered his autobiography, Pieces of the Action. That was episode 270. And this is actually the second time that I've read the book that I'm holding in my hand. The first time I read it, I did not feel I understood Vannevar Bush enough to make a podcast on him. After reading his autobiography last week, I have a better understanding of him, but it's still not perfect. In my mind, Vannevar Bush and Dee Hawke, the founder of Visa, are actually very similar

Starting point is 00:01:49 in the sense that I don't quite grasp how they were able to accomplish what they did. And I still feel that way even though I've read Dee Hawke's autobiography twice. I just most recently did another podcast on his autobiography. It's number 260. But I just think there's too many ideas

Starting point is 00:02:04 that are in this book that are gonna be helpful to you and I for me to not do a podcast on his autobiography. It's number 260. But I just think there's too many ideas that are in this book that are going to be helpful to you and I for me to not do a podcast on it. And even that introduction on the second page of that introduction, a lot of the way that Bush speaks and a lot of his beliefs are very much in line with his friend, Edwin Land. And discovering and studying Edwin Land was such an important part of my life that I've done six podcasts on him. I think I've read five or six books, multiple, I think two or three of those books I've read twice. So I just want to go through a couple of these things just on one page to just give you an idea, because I guess the important part here is like studying Edwin Land and studying Bush. One of the main themes is they

Starting point is 00:02:37 both had a profound belief in the individual capacity for greatness. So the note I left myself on this page was this is more on Bush's philosophy. A lot of this sounds like Edwin Land. And so it says he was a contrarian, skeptical of easy solutions, yet willing to tackle tough problems without a compass. He was a pragmatist who thought that knowledge arose from a physical encounter with a stubborn reality. He was suspicious of big institutions.

Starting point is 00:03:04 Every single thing I'm saying is Bush is what Bush believed, but also Edwin Land believed the exact same thing. They objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for mass mediocrity. And that's not hyperbolic. Edwin Land is a two-time Harvard dropout. He winds up going and MIT asks him to give a speech. This, I think, happened in the 1950s. And Land was worried that our education institutions at that time got so bureaucratic. He said that a student would get a message. He's talking about MIT, for God's sake. He said a student would get a message that a secret dream of greatness is a pipe dream. And then he made the point that there's little connection between the way they're being taught and how the world

Starting point is 00:03:43 actually works. And he says, he asked with passion, this is Edwin Land speaking, if this is preparation for life, where in the world will a person ever encounter this curious sequence of prepared talks and prepared questions, questions to which the answers are known. And so Land's point is if they're able to survive this educational indoctrination, they may be good, but they'll never be great. And so you see in Bush's, the way Bush would think about that is like we have, we're essentially mass producing mediocrity. And finally, a belief that they both share that's related to what you and I are talking about right now. He believes that the individual was still of paramount importance. The individual is everything to me.

Starting point is 00:04:21 I would restrict him as little as possible. He never lost his faith in the power of one. And to me, that's why I think it's important to read books on Bush and to do podcasts about him because he wants to inspire other people to greatness. So the prologue of the book gives a absolutely fantastic overview of Bush. I want to quote from there right now. It says he was the most politically powerful inventor in America since Benjamin Franklin. It says Bush came from an American line of can-do engineers and tinkerers, a line beginning with Franklin and including Eli Whitney, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, and the Wright brothers.

Starting point is 00:04:54 Bush tinkered with gadgets as a boy, co-founded a radio tube company as a young professor, and designed the world's most powerful mechanical calculators in the 1930s, laying the groundwork for the advent of the digital computer and the information revolution made possible by this machine. During World War II, he advised President Roosevelt on science and technology and organized a successful effort to build the first atomic bomb, popularly known as the Manhattan Project. In 1945, he published two landmark essays that expressed a stunning vision of a future in which technology would serve humanity's highest intellectual and political needs. The first essay, as we may think, predicted that new technologies would somehow deliver an unprecedented ability to receive and manage information. He's describing

Starting point is 00:05:35 the world that you and I are living in, right? Thus improving the quality of life in untold ways. His words contain the germ of what would become the internet. The second essay, Science, the Endless Frontier, skillfully equated scientific and technical progress with national health and convincingly made the argument that government must finance independent researchers at levels far above those seen before the war. In fact, as I was looking for another book on Bush, this author, G. Pascal Zachary, actually just published, it's another book, I'll leave the link in the show notes, it's called The Essential Writings of Vannevar Bush. It's a collection of 50 of Bush's most important essays. So I'm going to get the book. I think it's

Starting point is 00:06:15 important because a lot, the reason I started studying him, and I told you this before on other podcasts, is like, if you study, there's this gigantic economic explosion in American history that happens during and after World War II, right? And when you're reading books about these founders, and I probably read, I don't know, 30, 40, 50 of them, Bush is in every single one. His writings and his ideas were influential to generations of technology company founders. And then this book goes into more of how he viewed the world. Bush saw the engineer as a pragmatic polymath. And he's going to describe here what that means.

Starting point is 00:06:47 The engineer, he once wrote, was not a physicist, a businessman, or an inventor, but someone who would acquire some of the skills and knowledge of each of these and be capable of successfully developing and applying new devices on the grand scale. And that's important to you and I because he saw entrepreneurs as the people to organize

Starting point is 00:07:06 these inputs and to convert the inputs into an actual practical product that could be used by other people. This realization that the engineer was the engine of the 20th century capitalism qualified Bush as the godfather of high technology and a leading proponent of industrial vitality through innovation. He co-founded one company and inspired many others that formed the nucleus of the Route 128 high-tech cluster near Boston at this time in American history. Bush's keen appreciation on the value of entrepreneurs made him a lonely advocate for economic dynamism

Starting point is 00:07:37 when most economists welcome the concurrent rise of big business and big government. That's an important point to pause on. He's having these views. These views are completely opposite. He's having these views in 1950. It's completely opposite to the world that he's living in, and it's why the author at the very beginning called him a contrarian. He was among the few who realized

Starting point is 00:07:55 the curative power of new ventures. The best way to limit monopoly economic power, he insisted, was through the advent of small new industrial units, what we call startups today. For if these latter have half a chance, they can cut rings around the great stodgy businesses. And so not only did he have opinions, but he forcefully argued those opinions in writing, in speeches, in actions. So this is what I mentioned last week, where when you read Bush's words, it's clear that he's smart, he knows that he's smart,

Starting point is 00:08:26 and he likes to fight. His philosopher King Orr smacked of arrogance. He struck his critics as imperious, intimidating, and at times even a bully who harbored a relentless, perhaps insatiable drive for power. His intelligence, vitality, and candor impressed many. He enjoyed a good tussle, meaning a good fight, refused to back down from anyone, and when opposed, could explode in anger. He rubbed people in authority the wrong way, and he never shied away from a fight. He took as much ground as his opponents ceded. My whole philosophy is very simple, he told a few generals during the war. This is actually a good idea. My whole philosophy is very simple, he told a few generals during the war. If I have any doubt as to whether I am supposed to do a job or not, I do it.

Starting point is 00:09:13 And if someone socks me, I lay off. So I want to pull out a couple things from Bush's early life. His father, Perry, was his hero. In his autobiography, Bush calls him the best teacher he ever had. And so this is an example of a lesson that his father taught him when he was five years old. Perry expected his children to be grateful for what they had and not to dwell on what they lacked. He had a kind of fearlessness in the conflicts of the world, which made him seem stoic at times. When his son was five, he joined his father at a funeral, only to break down in tears during the service. On the way home, Perry stopped his son's crying by saying, we've paid traits are appearing when he's a kid, and they're much more pronounced as he gets to be an adult. than mere bravado. He was fiercely independent and a budding maverick. All these personality

Starting point is 00:10:05 traits are appearing when he's a kid, and they're much more pronounced as he gets to be an adult. He did not like to be told what to do. He credited his ship captain forebears for instilling in him, quote, some inclination to run a show once I was in it. So he's growing up in New England. This part actually reminded me all the way back on Founders number 103. I read the biography of Hedy Green, who was the richest woman in America at the time. And she came from a family of whalers. She actually grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And in that book, the author makes the argument that New Bedford, Massachusetts was the richest city per capita in the world at the time. And that was a direct result of the fact that the whaling industry was so large at that time. So that was a direct result of the fact that the whaling industry was

Starting point is 00:10:45 so large at that time. So here we see, this is actually absolutely incredible. When Bush is growing up in New England as well, he's in Cape Cod. And for entertainment as a boy, he would read old whaling logs over and over. And this is why. It said the logs taught him about leadership and group dynamics. The relations between the captain and the mate during voyages that lasted for years strained human nature to the utmost, he wrote. He learned that successful captains were autocratic. Let me actually pause in the middle of this paragraph. So he says he learned that successful captains were autocratic. It doesn't say how old Bush is when he's doing this, but let's say he's, you know, maybe 10 or 15 years old.

Starting point is 00:11:25 That would mean since he was born in 1890, he's doing all this reading, let's say 1900, 1905, somewhere in there. But 110, 120 years later, I'm doing all this reading too. Instead of reading old whaling logs over and over, I'm reading biographies of entrepreneurs over and over. I've come across like that's the same conclusion that I've come to. He learned that successful captains were autocratic. And so let's define that word, a ruler who has absolute power. You and I have talked about that before. The best founders, they run their companies, their dictatorships are not democracies. Hopefully they're benevolent dictatorships. But I think what he what he picked up on here, the fact that successful capital captains were

Starting point is 00:12:03 autocratic is dead on that. They were met that they met all kinds of people and did so on their terms. That they could lose everything on a gamble but were richly rewarded for success. Somebody sent me a book they want me to read called The Power Law of Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. And it was written by Sebastian Malaby. I actually have another book of Malaby's that I haven't got to yet, but I will. It's called More Money Than God. But there's a lot of crossover between the early whaling industry and then the venture capital startup industry today. In fact, I think some of the terms, if I'm not mistaken, come from there. But I guess I'll

Starting point is 00:12:33 read the book and I'll find out more. That just popped my mind when I'm reading this. They could lose everything on a gamble, but were richly rewarded for success. And they demanded loyalty, even deference from subordinates. He's still talking about the most successful captains. They demanded loyalty, even deference from subordinates. He's still talking about the most successful captains, okay? They demanded loyalty, even deference from subordinates, but they were fiercely loyal and protective of those who stood by them. And then here's the punchline. Bush had captaincy in his blood.

Starting point is 00:12:57 And then he brings up how important his father was. In fact, I think this exact line is in his autobiography. That's probably where the author is quoting from. He's talking about his father, the teacher. When I think of teachers who have molded my own patterns of thought i think at once of my father i acquired much from him although i hardly realized it at the time so his father's a clergyman they don't have a lot of money bush sees entrepreneurship he's going to call it in inventing but we think about it in terms of entrepreneurship as the path to change his financial situation. Well aware of his family's modest means and the absolute requirement for him to turn an education into a good livelihood, Bush realized that the path of the inventor offered him

Starting point is 00:13:34 perhaps the only means of achieving conventional success without sacrificing his maverick leanings. So he's in his late teens, early 20s. He's going to college at this point, and we see that he's got this founder mentality. He relieved his anxiety through endless activity. He admired men of action, despised rules, and felt that merit meant everything. I don't have the Kindle version of this book,

Starting point is 00:13:57 but I would have to guess if you could search it. The word maverick or stubborn would come up dozens of times. He was like that way as a kid. He was like that later on in his career, even when dealing with the highest forms of the U.S. government. But you also see that in college when he's trying to actually get to graduate school. The note I left myself on this page was stubborn, independent, and in a hurry. Bush next tried to gain admission to MIT as a doctoral student in electrical engineering. But when the professor handling his admission refused to give him credit for his Tufts,

Starting point is 00:14:26 that's the school he was at before, his Tufts course in thermodynamics, Bush fought back. The professor said that the man who taught Bush thermodynamics didn't know any thermodynamics. That's correct, he didn't, Bush retorted. But he isn't trying to enter MIT. I am. Bush's arguments carried the day. He wanted a promise from MIT that he would be awarded his doctorate within a year, so long as he produced the thesis. Impatient as always, he now had a specific reason for haste.

Starting point is 00:14:52 He planned to marry his college sweetheart as soon as he finished at MIT. He's in a rush because he's got no money, so he can't take a lot of time. If the course is going to be two years, he's like, I've got to figure out how to do it in six months or a year. This is kind of the mentality he applied to everything, and it was extremely helpful in World War II. He had barely enough money for one year of study, and he wished to avoid dragging his new wife into a life of pernury.

Starting point is 00:15:17 So he didn't have enough money, so he said he wound up working two jobs to get by. One job, he's on the faculty at Tufts, and then he's also working at this company called AM Amrad, which is American Radio and Research Corporation. And I mentioned this last week, but the reason that's important is because this is out of Amrad comes the invention of these radio tubes. That's the foundation for this gigantic company that's going to make Bush wealthy called Raytheon. And this is an example of being at the right place at the right time with the right set of skills. They time their move well. In 1924, the number of homes with radios tripled. Within two years, the first nationwide radio networks were in place.

Starting point is 00:15:50 Raytheon's radio tubes were destined for success. They brought down the price of home radios and made them easier to use. They took away the sense that mastering a radio required a zeal for gadgetry. The ability to plug a radio into a wall socket rather than rely on unwielding batteries domesticated the radio. It was now no more threatening than an electric lamp. It will never cease to amaze me how all of these ideas fit together. So this jumped out at me. I had just recently reread Becoming Steve Jobs, which to me is the best single biography on the life of Steve Jobs that I've read so far. I read it for the second time, made another podcast on it.

Starting point is 00:16:25 That's episode 265. In that book, there is this like 200 word mini speech that Steve gives off the cuff. I think he's like 22 years old. The reporter writing this article finds him at a computer show and he uses that exact terminology. So they say, hey, this is what Raytheon did. It brought down the price of home radios, made it easier to use, took away the sense that mastering a radio required a zeal

Starting point is 00:16:49 for gadgetry, very similar to what Steve Jobs thought. He's like, hey, why are we building computers for hobbyists? For every one hobbyist, there's a thousand people that just want to buy a computer from the store, plug it in and use it. The ability to plug a radio into a wall socket, it's the same idea. Rather than rely on unwielding batteries, domesticated the radio. It was now no more threatening than an electric lamp. This is incredible. So let's go. I'm going to read the whole 224 word because it was included in the book because it says it gives you an idea of Steve's fully formed verbal mastery and the fact that he had this verbal mastery and magnetic charisma even when he was young. And so the magazine reporter comes up to a young Steve Jobs at the computer fair at the

Starting point is 00:17:30 Apple computer booth, right? And this is what Steve says. I wish we had these personal machines when I was growing up, Jobs tells him. That's hilarious considering that he's still in the process of growing up when he's talking about this, right? It's just hilarious. Jobs tells him before continuing on for a total of 224 words. People have been hearing all sorts of things about computers during the past 10 years through the media. Supposedly, computers have been controlling

Starting point is 00:17:51 various aspects of their lives, yet in spite of that, most adults have no idea what a computer really does. Or excuse me, computer really is. What it can or can't do. Now, for the first time, people can actually buy a computer

Starting point is 00:18:02 for the price of a good stereo, interact with it, and find out all about it. It's analogous to the camera. There are thousands of people across the country taking photography courses. They'll never be professional photographers. They just want to understand what the photographic process is all about. Same with computers. We started a little personal computer manufacturing company in a garage in Los Altos in 1976. Now we're the largest personal computer company in the world. We make what we think of as the Rolls Royce of personal computers. Here's the punchline, the reason I'm reading this to you, his next sentence.

Starting point is 00:18:34 It is a domesticated computer. That is so wild to me. I love how these ideas all connect. And the crazy thing is this is what speaks to the importance of rereading books. I read this book for the first time, I don't know, maybe a year ago, year and a half, I can't actually remember. Just like I read the Becoming Steve Jobs probably two or three years ago. The fact that then I pick up the book, the Becoming Steve Jobs book, years later, or two or three years later, whatever it is, reread it, reminded of this fantastic excerpt that's in that book of a 22 or 21 year old Steve Jobs. Then a few weeks later or a month later or two months later, I don't actually remember when it was. I picked this book up again, reread it. I'm like, oh, wow, where have I heard the word

Starting point is 00:19:14 domesticated? It's a domesticated radio. What the hell? Why is my brain going crazy when I read that? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure somebody said that about they domesticated the computer. So who the hell said it? Then I go to Readwise where I have 20, I'm pretty sure somebody said that about they domesticated the computer. So who the hell said it? Then I go to Readwise where I have 20,000 highlights from all these books and all my notes and this crazy database on the history of entrepreneurship that I'm not sure anybody else in the fucking world has. I type in the word domesticated computer and boom, I immediately see the ideas, the philosophy and the communication skills of one of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 00:19:45 That is wild. That is how you know it is a good idea. If you could take something complex and a little bit scary and domesticate it. Make it easier for the customer to immediately get a benefit out of. When you do that, you explode the fucking market. The size of the radio market before this invention was tiny compared to what it is now. What is the size of the computer market in 1976, the personal computer market in 1976 compared to now? That is an incredibly powerful idea. Domestication.

Starting point is 00:20:17 And I would have never, ever, ever come up with that on my own. And these two separate experiences are separated by 50 years. This is happening in 1924. And that Steve Jobs quote is from 1977. That gets me fired up. Okay, I want to switch to the next page. This goes back to, I just love Bush's personality. I like the fact that he likes to fight, that he won't back down.

Starting point is 00:20:43 And he knows that it's important because you're going to have throughout your entire life, you're going to have people that try to bully or try to enforce their will on you. And those kinds of people tend to only respect people that actually push back. So this guy, Jackson runs the electrical engineering department at MIT. Technically Bush works for him. And so the main theme of this paragraph is that you have to stand up to bullies. He says, I remember one day Jackson told me that he didn't like the way I was running a research lab. Bush said, I told him, if you don't like it, you can stick it up your rear end. We parted on those kind words and I came home and told my wife, well, I guess we're all through at MIT. Where would you like to go next? Maybe I can go out to Caltech. Do you want to go out to California? I asked her. The next day I

Starting point is 00:21:24 went in and met Jackson and you'd never know anything had happened. We walked down the corridor together and you'd think that we were old buddies. But if you took it lying down, you'd get it in the neck. So actually, maybe that's a better punchline of that paragraph. Don't take it lying down. And then this is Bush on his father's death. So it says with Perry's death, Bush lost his only hero. He had revered his father in a way that can only be defined as hero worship. While Bush had followed a vastly different path in life than his father, they had shared an outlook and a personality. They had never drifted apart either.

Starting point is 00:22:02 In the last years of his life, this gives me goosebumps. Because I think about like even if you have imperfect relationships with your family like you can fix that you can change that so i hope my kids describe me this way and i hope we have a relationship as they go off and become adults and live their own world where bush is an adult but he's still talking to his dad all the time and still having look, they have family dinners every week. So it says, well, Bush had followed a vastly different path than his father. They had shared an outlook and a personality. They had never drifted apart either. In the last years of his

Starting point is 00:22:33 life, Perry joined Bush for an evening meal every Sunday. So the phrase ceaseless activity is repeated over and over again in descriptions of Bush. This is another example of this idea where Marc Andreessen says that in a startup, you only ever experience two emotions, euphoria and terror, that you're prone to flip rapidly from a day in which you're going to own the world, that you think you're going to own the world, and then to the next day, you'll feel that your business is doomed. And so we see Bush going through that now. Bush found that all his striving for knowledge, status, and wealth had taken a toll on him. Though he generally succeeded in taming his nervous energies through ceaseless activity, it wasn't always possible to exercise the demon of anxiety.

Starting point is 00:23:14 He remained susceptible to bouts of nervous tension throughout his prime years. These eruptions of anxiety were hard to predict, but undeniable all the same. I can't think of one person I read a biography about that did not experience that. And I think the lesson there is everybody's got to figure out for themselves like how anxiety, terror, discomfort, emotional pain, all this stuff, it's inevitable. So what can I do to lessen its effect so I can work my way through it and not give up. Something that Bush used was he was a believer in hobbies. And so it says, as hard as Bush worked, he seemed equally intent on relaxing. And he did so by pursuing a myriad of hobbies. He was a great believer in the tonic effect of hobbies and took his private pursuits seriously. Whenever he fancied something, he did not go halfway. That's for sure. This guy

Starting point is 00:24:07 is incapable of doing anything by halves. And then there's just this random line that I think is fantastic advice. It's advice that he gave his sons. My father used, this is his sons talking. My father used the phrase, justify the space you occupy, which graphically conveys a message. Justify the space you occupy. Throughout the book, from the very first page almost to the very end, is this theme that reappears over and over again, the fact that the world that we live in is going to be dominated by science and technology. And if you don't learn how to utilize these tools, you're going to be run over. And he applies this to all kinds of different domains from education to war to building a company and so i pulled out this one specific paragraph and this one specific quote from bush because i love it you can reduce it down

Starting point is 00:24:55 to a maxim which is do not emulate the ostrich for better or worse we are destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering if If the road we are on is slippery, we cannot avoid a catastrophe by putting on the brakes, closing our eyes, or taking our hand off the wheel. What is the sane attitude of a scientist or layman? Absence of wishful thinking. No emulation of the ostrich. As you can imagine, for somebody like Bush, learning was a lifelong pursuit. And one way to express the value of that is this maxim. It says, his success and his pleasure in

Starting point is 00:25:32 his success lent credence to this assertion. Brains are wealth and wealth is the chief end of man. A few pages later, it goes back to this idea. For better or worse, we're destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering and the increasing effect of technology on the world that we live in. Bush disagreed that America had overdosed on technology. That's hilarious because this is happening in the, this is before the 1940s. Bush disagreed that America had overdosed on technology. Snapping at critics, would we go back to an earlier time with less sophisticated technology, he asked? Of course not, because the standard of living has gone up, not down, due to technological advance.

Starting point is 00:26:10 Besides, humanity cannot separate itself from technology. It is us. For better or worse, he warned, we are destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering. And then we get an overview of his entire life philosophy. You could even say this was Vann's religion. He insisted that discipline must be self-applied or will be externally imposed. Bush's own personal religion stood in sharp contrast to the collectivist ideal. Shunning organized denominations, he raised his faith in individuality into a secular spirituality, a capacity for joy and self-mastery, a sense of tradition and the courage to meet difficulties with a smile or a joke.

Starting point is 00:26:56 These were the hallmarks, in Bush's view, of a life worth living. The greatest thing, he told his MIT students, is to play an effective part in a complete scheme of things. He found romance in adversity and solace in hard work. Sheer activity was his antidote for doubt and the avenue leading to existential satisfaction. And then he goes back to this point that universities are just mass-producing mediocrity. Bush bemoaned the failure of teachers to show students how to tackle a comprehensive engineering problem in its entirety, drawing his tools from various sources, ranging across mathematics, physics, chemistry, and even economics. Instead, students were usually taught by a narrow specialist with an interest in the minutia of a very limited field. That's a direct quote from Bush.

Starting point is 00:27:50 They're taught by a narrow specialist. Remember this part because he's going to contrast the way people are being taught with what the education, the self-education from Leonardo da Vinci and Ben Franklin. So he says students are being taught by a narrow specialist with an interest in the minutia of a very limited field. As a result, the student is hounded, Bush insisted. His hours are crowded and closely scheduled. He has little time for reading or reflection, and

Starting point is 00:28:15 he does little such. All but the exceptional students become automatons. For Bush, this is a really good punchline here, actually. For Bush, using freedom wisely was the whole point of life, and so must be the entire thrust of education. And I would compare what he's saying there with what Edwin Land said, that formal schooling destroys the capacity for individual greatness. And so he goes into more detail why he thinks this is dangerous and unnecessary. In these days when there is a tendency to specialize so closely, it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of being at once broad and deep did not pass with Leonardo da Vinci

Starting point is 00:28:57 or Ben Franklin. Men of our profession, we teachers, are bound to be impressed with the tendency of youths of strikingly capable minds to become interested in one small corner of science and uninterested in the rest of the world. It is unfortunate when a brilliant and creative mind insists upon living in a modern monastic cell. We feel the results of this tendency keenly as we find men of affairs wholly untouched by the culture of modern science and scientists without the leavening of humanities. I'm going to pause right there. Think about what his friend Edwin Land said, that he wanted to build a company at the intersection of science and the humanities, or technology and the humanities. One most unfortunate product is the type of engineer who does not realize that in order to apply the fruits of science for the benefit of mankind, he must not only grasp the principles of science, but also know the needs and aspirations, the possibilities and the frailties of those whom he would serve. In other words, he's got to know the nature of humans.

Starting point is 00:30:08 Another way to think about Bush is the fact that he's an evangelist for entrepreneurship, for inventing, for learning, and that he couldn't help himself. He would invent for fun. Bush was an irrepressible inventor. While an astute manager of research teams, he often pursued his grandest intuitions alone. For him, inventing was a calling, a way of life. Inventing was a game. He was good at it, and it relaxed and amused him.

Starting point is 00:30:33 No matter how tight a schedule, Bush never stayed away for long from his own experiments. He would find sheer pleasure in tinkering. And then out of his own experience, he realizes the need to develop some kind of tool for thought and what he's going to describe here. So he, what I'm about to read to you here, he's thinking about this in the 1930s. He's going to describe the way you and I use personal computers today. He mused about ways to automate the activity of thinking itself. People trying to think straight in the midst of complexity,

Starting point is 00:31:10 as he often did, needed more than a device that just crunched numbers. They needed help in disciplining their random ideas. More important, they needed a way to manage the rapidly growing amount of documents and data that threatened to overwhelm the specialist and render whole fields incomprehensible to even the intelligent layman. Bush wondered if some sort of thinking machine might forestall what looked to be an inevitable information glut. And so not only did he have these thoughts, but he put them out. He wrote them. He shared them with other people. He spoke about them. In fact, I came across this paragraph a couple pages later after he's talking about, hey, I need a tool for thought. Like, what can we do here? What he's about to describe here, he's describing the Kindle, right, in 1936.

Starting point is 00:31:58 So he publishes an article in Technology Review magazine, and he says he envisioned paper books being replaced by microfilm readers. He outlined a device that would store and reproduce on a screen thousands of books. Okay, so now I gotta fast forward in the timeline because I gotta get to why Bush, the most important thing he ever did, and what he was most well known for is this idea of being the liaison

Starting point is 00:32:24 between government and industry and researchers. So I'm going to read this whole part because I just think it's fantastic and it gives you an overview of why he was so important. Then he tackled a crucial topic that so far had been ignored. This was the possibility of quote a liaison between government and industry and researchers arising in a time of stress. So I guess I should pause here. I just said I was going to read the whole thing and then I immediately interrupt myself. What we've already discovered is like how he he was like so far seen.

Starting point is 00:32:55 He's constantly finding himself at the right place at the right time with the right set of skills and being able to see on the horizon a need for change. And so this he's describing something before world war ii before i don't actually it might be it's uh before america is in world war ii i should say so he's got this idea it's like hey in a time of stress we're going to need to coordinate and no there has to be somebody coordinating between government and industry uh and researchers right he soon made it clear that the stress he worried about was another world war. He hoped that the U.S. would not be drawn into another conflict,

Starting point is 00:33:29 but if that happened, an organization that united government, academic, and industry researchers could prove of great value to the nation's military establishment. That was the idea he had before it actually occurred, and he was dead right and this is why i feel quite quite strongly he said that it that if this organization of corporate research directors gets into healthy operative condition it would also be an important factor an important link in the chain between government and the industries of the country in times of stress for the purpose of the national defense. So this is happening in 1938. The looming international crisis ended Bush's days as a world-class inventor. And then he does something unbelievably intelligent here. He moves to Washington, D.C. in anticipation before he's

Starting point is 00:34:22 asked to do this. And this is why. Bush could not tell if the U.S. would be drawn into the war, but he considered moving to the nation's capital in case it was. Washington is a central point, he thought, and I might be useful there in time of war. He didn't, and this is crazy, he didn't want to do this. He just thought it was the right thing to do. He did not relish the prospect of living so far from his cherished New England. Washington struck him as alien ground, and even visiting the city was an irritation to him. And then we see this repetition. He's repeating this idea that's said throughout the entire book. It applies to war, education, company building. This is happening, this chapter is on 1939 to 1940, so I think this

Starting point is 00:35:03 is when he said it. It is being realized with a thud that the world is probably going to be ruled by those who know how, in the fullest sense, to apply science. And so in the early days of World War II, before America jumps in, Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator, gives this speech. You probably know his name because he actually was the first one to make that first nonstop flight over the Atlantic. I think he flew from New York to Paris. But anyways, he gives this speech saying, hey, the Germans are just so much, the German Air Force is just so much further ahead. There's no way we can compete with them. I've read in a bunch of different books that people thought he was like a Nazi sympathizer. I have no idea. I haven't looked into it.

Starting point is 00:35:43 But the reason I bring this to your attention is because I just love Van Bush's response. His response to an enemy with superior technology. All right, cool. We're just going to have to get smarter. I absolutely love this guy. Lindbergh left a mark on Bush who did not easily accept influences. Lindbergh showed such respect for German air power that he usually convinced listeners that the Nazis should be granted a wide berth. But Bush reacted differently to Lindbergh showed such respect for German air power that he usually convinced listeners that the Nazis should be granted a wide berth. But Bush reacted differently to Lindbergh's scare tactics. He was impelled to action by the very threat which Lindbergh so forcefully presented. This is, I know I've repeated this over and over again, but this is a main trait of Bush that we have to get in.

Starting point is 00:36:23 He likes to fight. Not one to retreat likes to fight. Not one to retreat from a fight. Bush felt the country could keep its peace only by showing its strength. He wisely asserted that every innovation in war could be stymied by a counter-innovation. He glimpsed around the curve of knowledge, exuding a poise and confidence that tomorrow's inventions would erase the advantage of today's dominant weapons. This is way before the invention of the atomic bomb. How crazy is this? He was not unnerved by Germany's lead in military hardware. Neither did he accept

Starting point is 00:36:59 American weakness. This is a little bit about Bush coming to respect FDR, even though he did not agree with his policies. He says Roosevelt wanted an inventive government rather than an orderly government. That's a really interesting idea to apply to companies. We want an inventive company rather than an orderly company. I think big bureaucratic companies, right, they optimize for order over invention, where startups or smaller little groups of smart people actually want the opposite. I like that idea. Roosevelt wanted an inventive government rather than an orderly government. Not a team of reliable workhorses, but a team of high-spirited and sensitive thoroughbreds.

Starting point is 00:37:37 Even if that meant he must spend time hand-holding his prima donnas. That just made me think of something. Let me grab it actually i have a couple quotes when i got to this section it's about how it says fdr and bush brevity is the soul of wit david ogilvy has really influenced my thinking on the importance of brevity but then i'm just sitting here thinking it's like oh like he wants an inventive government rather than an orderly government and he's willing even if he has to spend time hand-holding his prima donnas i'm like where have i heard that before i just put in the term lay golden eggs.

Starting point is 00:38:08 This comes from Confessions of an Advertising Man, which is David Ogilvie's autobiography. I did this all the way back on Founders No. 89. I got to reread that book soon. It's been, when did I put that podcast out? September 15th, 2019. Yeah, Ogilvie's like a hero of mine now. I got to reread his autobiography. But he says something fascinating. It's very similar to what the conclusion FDR is arriving at here. And David Ogilvy says, tolerate genius. Conan Doyle wrote that mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself. My observation has been that mediocre men recognize genius, resent it, and feel compelled to destroy it. There are very few men of genius in advertising agencies

Starting point is 00:38:46 or in any company anywhere, but we need all we can find. Almost without exception, they are disagreeable. Do not destroy them. They lay golden eggs. So let me repeat that even smaller. Tolerate genius. There are very few men of genius,

Starting point is 00:39:03 but we need all that we can find. without exception. They are disagreeable. Do not destroy them. They lay golden eggs. Absolutely fantastic. Go back to this book. Bush was a high spirited thoroughbred and no doubt a prima donna. He pulled out a single sheet of paper that contained a crisp description of his plan for mobilizing military technology. Remember, brevity is the soul of wit. That's what we're talking about here. He pulls out a single sheet of paper that contained a crisp description of his plan for mobilizing military technology. Bush then steeled himself to answer tough questions.

Starting point is 00:39:37 And he does it in like this six point is like six. It's number one through six, like basically bullet points of what's like what he has in mind. So he says he steeled himself to answer tough questions from the president. But Roosevelt had already made up his mind after a few casual comments. He wrote, OK, dash FDR. This is what he would do throughout the war. Like you send him in information like you need authorization to do something, whatever the case is. This communication, the way he the FDR would communicate. Think about all the stuff he's managing at this time. It's got to be insane, right?

Starting point is 00:40:05 And that's what you were looking for. You wanted OK-FDR on the paperback to you. OK-FDR on the single sheet of paper. Bush was elated. He had his endorsement and it had come in less than 15 minutes. And so Ogilvy's religion, David Ogilvy's religion was brevity. I'm going to quote from a couple different, I have all these highlights saved from his books. This is from Ogilvy in Advertising.

Starting point is 00:40:28 He says, I ask you to forgive me for oversimplifying some complicated subjects. And for the dogmatism of my style, the dogmatism of brevity, we are both in a hurry. And this is also why his love of brevity is why I think David Ogilvy may be the single best writer that I've ever read any books from. It says Ogilvie believed in a model of clarity and brevity. His ideas gain power from a terse, compact writing style. I believe in the dogmatism of brevity. All of the books, and I'll leave a link in the show notes and available at PunishedPodcast.com to list all the different books I've read and podcasts I've made about Ogilvy. But what I try to convince people is like, listen, just right now, go on Amazon,

Starting point is 00:41:14 go wherever you buy your books, order the unpublished David Ogilvy. It's like a collection of memos and writings he did. These were internal things. These were not meant for external publications. You don't have to read the book. It's like a collection of just ideas. Put it on your nightstand, put it somewhere out on your desk, whatever, pick it up, read it for two or three minutes, five minutes a day, whatever it is. It's going to prompt thinking and ideas in just a few minutes. It's absolutely fantastic, but it's a great description of his like terse, compact, you know, writing style. More quotes from Bush here. I'm going to read his quote first,

Starting point is 00:41:47 and then I'm going to read what my thinking, like how can we apply it to what you and I are doing? If we had been on our toes in war technology 10 years ago, we would probably not have had this damn war, Bush said. And so my thinking is how do we not fall behind with technology inside of our companies? Something that appears over and over again in these biographies is that these people have personal mottos.

Starting point is 00:42:10 Teddy Roosevelt's personal motto, get action. Ernest Shackleton, the famous polar explorer, by endurance we conquer. Stan Lee, the creator of Marvel, had a personal motto. He says, ever upward. And this is Bush's personal motto. He actually kept this on his desk. It says, if the person was especially sharp, he might even understand the Latin phrase that Bush took for a personal motto.

Starting point is 00:42:33 When translated into English, it meant, don't let the bastards get you down. Don't let the bastards get you down was his personal motto. That's hilarious. This is Bush's advice on how to have meetings. He punctuated his meetings with precise declarations, which lent an aura of certainty to his off-the-cuff decisions. He would outline the situation up to that date using his precisely accurate recollections.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Then he would say, what's new? What are our alternatives? What are the pros and cons of each? Then we'd kick those around. Then he'd say, well, it looks like we should do so-and-so. But if we do that, what are the pros and cons? From this winnowing process, a decision would arise. He'd then say, we'll do that. We'll move. He would not dilly-dally. And then it goes into using technology to develop these unprecedented weapons of war. But I found one

Starting point is 00:43:25 paragraph in this section jumped out at me because it's describing what role Bush played. And it really sounds like the role of a great founder, right? So it says Bush's role would not be to build more powerful bombs, but to organize the experts who would. He would not immerse himself in the making of any special weapon, but become the father, in a sense, to all weapons that would spring from his lab. He would sustain his far-flung researchers financially and organizationally, protect them from arbitrary demands of others in government, and Bush, they're really operating in a hidden world that very few people know exists.

Starting point is 00:44:18 There's some detail. I read this fantastic book about the partnership between Groves and Oppenheimer. It's episode 215. If you haven't listened to it, it's called The General and the Genius, Groves and Oppenheimer. It's episode 215. If you haven't listened to it, it's called The General and the Genius, Groves and Oppenheimer, The Unlikely Partnership that Built the Atom Bomb. And of course, Bush is in that book as well. But this was just one paragraph, just fantastic writing I wanted to share with you because it's a way to think about the Manhattan Project. Throughout the war, Bush shared in a secret world. This secret world was like a box within a box, a hidden room behind the wall of war.

Starting point is 00:44:46 It had its own rules, or rather, no rules. It mocked all of Bush's other war work, looming in the background like a ghoulish shadow. With the passing of each day, the shadow grew larger and larger until it engulfed everything in sight. This was the new world of the atomic bomb. And then a few pages later, just two sentences here that I think are very important because Bush has got a giant ego, but he's got to subjugate his own ego in service of the country. And so this is how Bush saw his role in this project. Bush saw his role as the relayer of reliable opinions from scientists in the trenches to Roosevelt and his aides. He did not mind serving as a messenger, provided he believed in the intelligence and judgment of those who had written his script.

Starting point is 00:45:42 So something Bush has mentioned multiple times. He mentioned his autobiography, mentioned in this book, he talks about how rough and tough, it's like we live in a tough world. The direct line is we are living in a real and tough world. And I think that statement is informed by all the things that he had to live through and just saw that you have to do when your survival, your literal life and death survival is on the line, that you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to actually win and so throughout the book there's some examples of how far they're willing to go and even like a cursory study of history is like in a time of war there is no

Starting point is 00:46:14 limit to how far humans will go this is an example of that throughout the war the state of germany's bomb project was the great unknown so they had to ponder ways to reduce this threat one of those actions that this is this is an idea that Oppenheimer, Groves, and Bush are discussing, one of those actions might be the kidnapping of the top Nazi physicist, Werner Heisenberg, who at the time was considered the key to Germany's hope for an atomic bomb. This idea was taken seriously enough by Robert Oppenheimer that he discussed the possibility of kidnapping Heisenberg with Bush and Groves. Bush doubted the value of the Heisenberg scheme. But this is the reason I'm reading this point to you.

Starting point is 00:46:50 He had no moral qualms, but thought the kidnapping would be hard to carry off. And then he goes into the amount of stress and anxiety he's under. Really, there's only like one other person. Maybe he might be the only person having his set of experiences in the world. Bush felt isolated and he knew he had few people to lean on. He was well aware of the extraordinary loneliness of his own situation. The anxiety was intense. Yet Bush refused to trouble the president simply in order to calm his nerves.

Starting point is 00:47:19 He later said of his situation, No one who has not been placed in a post of heavy responsibility can realize what a lonesome feeling it is. The best antidote for Bush's anxiety was action. And then there's a great description of like the tangible effects of Bush's work, along with thousands, maybe tens of thousands of other people. But really the lesson here, what I'm about to read to you, and this is just a paragraph, is for our purposes, the more resourceful entrepreneur is the one who's going to win. The material output of the Allies was extraordinary,

Starting point is 00:47:54 all the more striking when contrasted with the inability of their enemies to make the most of the resources they had. It took expertise, in other words, for the Allies to outproduce the Axis. Germany and Japan were handicapped by an inadequate level of conversion to munitions production and utterly haphazard planning procedures. By contrast, Allied administrators proved astonishingly competent at churning out useful equipment. While the Axis began the war with a huge lead in weaponry, by 1943, the material balance had reversed. In that year, the Allies outproduced the Axis in aircraft by a factor of nearly four to one. The more resourceful entrepreneurs are the ones that will win. And then after the war, there's an entire chapter on his essay called As We May Think. This is important because it inspired generations of computer scientists and

Starting point is 00:48:49 founders and inventors. The Atlantic published an essay by Bush entitled As We May Think. In it, Bush describes a futuristic machine called the Memex that produced, or excuse me, that promised to give man access to and command the inherited knowledge of his ages. He imagined the Memex as a work desk with viewing screens, a keyboard, and a set of buttons and levers. Printed and written material, even personal notes, would be stored on microfilm and retrieved rapidly and displayed on the screen. This device would be more than a private library. It would be a personalized aid to memory that would remove the drudgery from

Starting point is 00:49:25 human thinking. Bush presumed that the human memory organized information by association, so he imagined a process by which any two pieces of information could be linked together. He considered this an aid to memory, hence its name. By mechanizing the process of association, the memex would extend the powers of the human mind. And this is a great summary on the impact of this essay that he wrote. He put into plain English a set of problems that technologists must satisfy if they were to claim victory in the drive to mechanize cognition. That he had barely a clue how to actually achieve this in no way detracts from the value of his vision. He gave a generation of inventors a target to shoot at.

Starting point is 00:50:12 And then I just want to include this one line for completely selfish reasons, because I feel that an apostle of the individual is a main theme of Founders Podcast. An apostle of the individual, Bush imagined a machine that could amplify the consciousness of a single person. I love the fact that they described him as an apostle of the individual. And then I'm going to get to what Bush said after the test.

Starting point is 00:50:36 He was at the first successful test of the atomic bomb. It says it was July 16, 1945, and the Manhattan Project was a success. The atomic age had begun. After things settled down, Bush heard that Oppenheimer, the project's scientific chief, was leaving by car for a day or two of rest. Bush walked down to the base gate and waited for Oppenheimer to pass.

Starting point is 00:50:54 When Oppenheimer arrived at the gate, his car slowed. He could see Bush standing at attention. At the moment of recognition, Bush took off his hat to Oppenheimer. Then the car sped off. For Bush, there was little left to do in New Mexico. That afternoon, he hopped a plane back to Washington. Bush remembered only feeling tremendous relief, what he later described as, quote, about as great a release of tension as a man could possibly have. And this is a hell of a sentence and great writing to put everything into perspective.

Starting point is 00:51:30 Perhaps no inventor since Benjamin Franklin had exerted such a direct effect on American political life. Bush expressed no guilt over the nature of his achievement. He had married science and the state, invention and destruction. And then I want to end where his autobiography leaves off. His autobiography is published in 1970, the one I did last week. He dies in 1974. And to me, this is a reminder, no matter how formidable you are, and Van Bush is one of the most formidable people I've ever studied, we all share the same fate.

Starting point is 00:51:57 So this serves as a reminder. Our time here is limited. Bush recovered slowly at home from a prostate operation. But at 83 years old, he was worn down and he knew it. His eyes were failing and his hands were no longer steady. He could not work in his shop. Even worse, he apparently had lost his fierceness. He missed his wife Phoebe, who had died five years earlier, and often just stayed in bed.

Starting point is 00:52:20 Maybe his age is against him now. He just wants to lie there, his housekeeper said. We are all in hopes that he will get mad enough someday and get up and get the show on the road again. But Bush felt his melancholy. Compared to his illustrious past, his present life meant almost nothing. And that is where I'll leave it. If you want the full story, this is a giant book.

Starting point is 00:52:44 There is so much more in the book. If you want to read a fantastic biography of Van Bush, I will leave a link in the show notes and it's available at founderspodcast.com. If you buy the book using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to remember more of what you read and you want to use the app that I use when I was pulling up all the stuff I was mentioning earlier about the domesticated computer and how it relates to the domesticated radio in this book. I was using this app called Readwise. It's the best app I pay for. You can try it for free for 60 days. 60-day free trial.

Starting point is 00:53:13 You go to readwise.io forward slash founders. That is 271 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

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Founders - #271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

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