The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 79: Bobby Brings Home the Bacon

Episode Date: October 17, 2017

Only problem is - it's not Bobby's bacon.

The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelp forests. The ocean teaches us how our choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects. This is the way I heard it. At the Grammy Awards, Britney Spears forgot to thank the pig. Nobody called her on it, but looking back, the facts are clear. Without that pig, Brittany would have never sold 100 million hours.

albums. No way. Likewise, George Lucas would have never gotten Star Wars on the big screen, and Neil Armstrong would have never walked on the moon. And yet, none of these people ever acknowledged the pig. Bobby, on the other hand, he thought about that pig every day. And why wouldn't he? Thanks to the pig, Bobby died with a net worth of $3.2 billion, and a product that changed everything. Fundamentally, Bobby was a tinkerer and a risk taker, but not necessarily in that order. When he was 12, he built a box kite, strapped it to his back and dove off the roof of Grinnell College just to see if he could fly. Turns out he could for about 30 seconds. Then there was a time he took a propeller and welded it to the back of his sled along with an engine from an old washing machine.

Turns out sleds with motors and propellers don't fly either, but they do go faster than normal sleds, much faster. Bobby was a tinkerer, you see, and a risk taker, but not necessarily in that order. And not just as a boy. When he was 21, Bobby volunteered to procure the guest of honor for a fraternity luow. In the light of a harvest moon, low and fat in the Iowa sky, The young physics major regarded his options, rooting around and grunting and the muddy pig pen in front of him, so many to choose from. Surely the farmer wouldn't miss a single swine, would he? Twelve hours later, the guest of honor was turning slowly on an open spit,

roasting to a crispy golden brown with an apple wedged in its mouth. It was, by all accounts, a very successful luau, but the next day, the moral hangover weighed heavily upon Bobby. What was he thinking? The pig was not his to take, and yet he had taken it. So Bobby returned to the burgled pig pen, confessed his crime to the farmer, and offered to compensate the man for his loss. And that was the moment. If the farmer lets bygones be bygone, all bets are off, but he doesn't. Because stealing a pig in Iowa back in 1948 was like rustling cattle in Colorado a hundred years, earlier. It was larceny, especially in Grinnell, where every action had an equal and opposite reaction. And so, even though the farmer forgave Bobby for his sin, like the good Christian he was,

he still had to press charges. And even though the sheriff liked him, he still had to arrest him. And even though the dean of the college admired him, he still had to expel him. As for Bobby's father, even though he loved him, the preacher could say nothing in the face of such obvious guilt. And so he didn't. That's the way it goes sometimes when you live in a town of great consequence. But not everyone believed the reaction to Bobby's crime was equal or opposite, or for that matter, just. Ironically, it was the physics professor at Grinnell College who came to Bobby's defense. Professor Grant Gale implored the dean, the sheriff, the mayor, and all the good people of Grinnell to rethink the penalty for perloined porcine and find a punishment that fit the crime.

In the end, the farmer was persuaded to drop the charges. The sheriff backed off and Bobby's expulsion was reduced to a single semester suspension. For some students, that might have translated into a three-month vacation. But not for Bobby, because in the midst of Grinnell's great swine scandal, Professor Gale received in the mail a very interesting package, a package containing two prototypes from Bell Laboratories, sent from a former Grinnell graduate. The professor was intrigued and used one of these prototypes

to demonstrate the flow of electrons through a solid. In what turned out to be, the very first college class, ever offered in solid state electronics. And the other prototype, that wound up in the hands of a suspended senior who liked to tinker and take risks, but not necessarily in that order. For Neil Armstrong, it really was a near thing. Without Bobby's tinkering, there would be no manned space mission because there would be no on-board computer.

For George Lucas, there would be no Star Wars. Wars because there would be no CGI. And for Britney Spears, there would be no Grammy Awards because there would be no auto tune. It's true. America came that close to

hearing exactly what Britney Spears sounds like when she sings without technical assistance. The exact details of how Bobby turned that first simple transistor into the most important product of the modern age would take days to share, but this month,

can be explained in a single sentence without his willingness to assume risk. All that tinkering would have been for nothing. Because if you think diving off a roof strapped to a homemade kite is risky, try launching a startup in Silicon Valley back before the Silicon was even there. That's what Bobby did in 1968. And even though you might not know his name, you know what's, Inside. Inside your coffee machine, your electric razor, your car, your remote control, your kid's favorite toy, your Fitbit, and of course, the computer on your desk, and the smartphone

you can't leave home without. It's the same thing Bobby started tinkering with back in 1948 during his fortuitous suspension from a tiny college in a small town of great consequence. the same thing they're still tinkering with today, a little company called Intel. That's the legacy of Robert Noyce, the man who liked to tinker and take a little risk, but not necessarily in that order. But let's not forget his silent partner,

the 25-pound suckling pig, whose impact on our lives, began with a brief appearance at a long-forgotten luau in America's heartland, and whose ultimate sacrifice gave us a tiny piece of silicon we call the microchip. Anyway, that's the way I heard. The ocean moves us, surfing a wave or savoring the view. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kelpores.

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