Are watching American History tv, all weekend every weekend on American History tv. Tv,ext on American History novelist and historian kevin baker discusses his book, america the genius how a generation of tinkerers changed the world. At an event in cape cod, mr. Baker describes what he thinks are key factors in the nations innovative spirit. Guestant to thank our tonight. Kevin baker has written several your, at you are still in but also was raised in rockport, massachusetts. He has experienced being a massachusetts person. Tonight,ing forward to keeping an ion the weather, but please welcome kevin baker. Mark, for having me. Great to be on the cape, if only virtually. Hoped to be there, but i am going to have to make do. Talk to you about america the ingenious, this book i wrote. The best thing about writing books is that hopefully, you learn something. I learned a great deal writing this. Americansory of how invented, developed or learned to exploit so many innovations that would shape the modern world. But beyond the inventions, as fascinating as they are, i found more telling was how things are invented, how invention is encouraged and nurtured, at least how it has been in this country in the past. It is easy to say, as i do in my book, that we are a nation of tinkerers. We americans like to think of ourselves as natural adventurers, risktakers, entrepreneurs. What does that mean . I a believer in american exceptionalism, but as marines it has to be earned, never given. How did we earn it . How did we do what we did, and how can we get back to doing it right . It is the first nation to exist wholly in the modern age. The United States has exist wholly in that time when nation we invented almost everything about america and constantly reinvented everything as we deemed it necessary, including our institutions, ouroms, laws, above all, definition of who is american and what that means. This is not to say that americans, as we were taught in grammar school, invented everything. Or at least as i was taught in grammar school. I am the fourth from the left in the second row, class of 1930. You who went to school more recently probably taught more accurately. Many of the american inventions eyesight work in spot were inspiredite by theories, inventions and prototypes from other times. Dry cleaning, by some definitions, goes back to ancient greece and rome, where it consisted of dipping togas into public lavatories. This was taxed by local government and provided a steady stream of revenue. The rotary Printing Press was invented in america, but china had Printing Presses going back to the seventh century. Yankees from a couple of places you have heard of, nantucket and new bedford, came to dominate whaling around the world before the civil war, using techniques largely borrowed from medieval basques. The iron change suspension bridges were first thrown over by ahasms of the himalayas buddhist saint in 1430. Dress codes for engineers were more lax than. Thewestern world, outset of industrial age, was a hotbed of ention, even if all myth even in fall mouth, where the Smith Brothers invented the and awringer selfgumming envelope folding machine. So credit for just two did what often remains disputed, to this day. John baird with his hand puppets. Baird invented mechanical television and perused the idea that everything in the world was invented by the english, which is to say, a scotsman. We are often just as arrogant. Yet every one of the inventions i have written about, these devices, remedies, systems, styles, enterprises and entertainments, were fully realized in america. If they were not wholly invented in the United States, it was here that they were made commercially viable, widespread, affordable, indispensable. In america, the ingenious included many things that are not generally included in books about inventions. , the Tennessee Valley authority, the Transcontinental Railroad, Frank Lloyd Wrights Falling Water house, the cities of new york, chicago, and los angeles. Why not . They were invented by people just as much as anything else in this book and are constantly cited by other peoples at some of our greatest creations. But all these inventions and many more are inextricably linked the american experiment. They were made possible by the character of our country. So what did we do right . Six they things come i think. Six, six keys to our inventiveness i could identify. First, freedom. Es, you did build that sorry, president obama. At every turnoss and studying the history of American Innovation is that this womenat free men and can do when they are afforded the freedom to pursue would government wish pursue whatever mad wish. Whether it is the inventor of the tool to remove cataracts, or knight,orse, or mattie inventor of the paper bag, the entrepreneurship of an andrew madame demarest, who found a way to invent the dress pattern business and use it flight use it to fight slavery. The courage of a armstrong or a. Alter reed i had a little mechanical glacier. Glitchttle mechanical here. Or dr. Charles, who came up with the process for blood , bettysions in battle nesmith, who made white out a household word, the dazzling aesthetic of frederick thompson, who built coney island, the most beautiful amusement park, or a meal everson, who invented incredible houses and invented to phonograph machine immigrate and chant to imitate enchanted night for. E nightfall. , inventor of almost right down to the safety pin. Them, the value of the individual shines through. More than anyica, place, where these individuals could find the freedom and the capital to go where their dreams could take them. The vision of a Transcontinental Railroad was promoted more assiduously by aza whitney in the beginning, a dry goods merchant in new york city who saw that it would place us in the center of the world, europe on one side and asia and africa on the other, to pass through us. This was a moment in history when it seemed impossible africa or asia would be Major Trading partners with us. The erie canal sprang from the mind of one jesse holly. Corrupt bright was a bankrupt flour merchant who ended up in debtors prison in geneva, new york, because he could not get his goods to market on time. Extraordinary thinkers in america and their voices could be heard as well as anyone elses. Keyumber two, sorry number two, sorry republican, here toheroes, i tried demonstrate how much we owe to countless, unnamed individuals who made our progress a reality. The generations of anonymous pioneers who gave us the conestoga wagon, then adapted it into the prairie schooner over the course of decades, when the great lowtech inventions. The trail of extraordinary craftsmen on the 18thcentury frontier, who gave us the pennsylvania rifle, that did so much to win the revolution. Fearless Chinese Railroad workers, who lowered themselves down rock walls in the sierra to set off nitroglycerin to blow out the tunnels for the Transcontinental Railroad. The nameless irish nationals who duck out the erie canal by hand. The blackandwhite sand talks, one of the first integrated workforces in america, who risked the bends every day as they tilt the Railway Network beneath new york rivers that is used to this day. The rivet gangs of irish and native americans who will do together our skyscrapers in their dance with death hundreds of feet above the sidewalk. Their contributions and those of capless others countless asers, were as valuable anything in making us what we are today. Number three, government matters. Rugged individualism aside, the history of American Intervention american invention shows government,ain that which means democracy, is vital. First, government is needed to set the rules. It is a myth that we americans only lately became litigious people. The famous hatfield and mccoy feud took place over 28 years and killed 15 people. The two clans sued each other hundreds, maybe thousands of times over everything, no matter how minor. As late as 2002, they were still suing each other over access to a cemetery. Americans have long been the most litigious people on earth, and we are quick to go to court when we think somebody is taking our Million Dollar idea. It took government patent law to settle and resolve what would have otherwise been endless legal battles involving dozens of litigants over just to inventions, just two inventions, the cotton gin, the mechanical reaper, the automobile, and the movie projector, among many things. It is not something we want to believe today, but again and again, it has been up to the government to prevent powerful and ruthless forces from ripping off individual inventors and getting them there do. It was the federal government farnsworth and rca of robbing Philo Farnsworth of credit for inventing television. It took the courts to prevent to protect elias howe and his sewing machine patent when that brilliant thug isaac singer tried to literally beat him into submission. It protected rights after years of backbreaking work went General Electric tried to steal the mri from the inventor. In protecting the individual, the government deliver not only justice, but encourage toped untold numbers of future inventors. Scenting the rules has also meant stopping monopoly power with all sorts of wonderful unintended consequences. Federal antitrust laws forced the breakup of standard oil, and thereby 10,000 wild calves across the land spurred an oil strike in texas. Spindle top kill at its peak hill at its peak was quite crabbed. Was quite crowded. After the transistor was invented at bell labs in the 1940s, the Justice Department refused to allow at t to invoke its phone Company Monopoly transistors. Licensed to five Domestic Companies and 10 Foreign Companies to use the transistor for just 25,000 a pop. In honor of Alexander Graham bells lifetime devotion for finding a way for his wife to here come they give the patent to any Company Working on methods to restore hearing, just gave it away. In the wake of governmentmandated dissemination, William Shockley recruited many of the best and brightest engineers and in palo alto, california, opened Silicon Valley for business. What else does government do besides setting rules . It provides the money. It does this in part by building what we take for granted today that is when the fundamental requirements of modern civilization, a universal system of public education. It has been taken for granted. This was largely pioneered in the United States, built from kindergarten through high school by 1000 Small Town School boards and city councils. This was president lincoln signing the act that created our great, landgrant universities, right through the landgrant johnsonsbuilding Great Society and guaranteeing access to higher education. But we are talking about government directly subsidizing so many great developments and inventions. The men who built the Transcontinental Railroad were not willing to lay a single foot of rail without government guarantees that all but assured they would not lose money. The government provided them at pretty much every railroad ever built with exactly that. Receivedcontinental 16,000 to 48,000 a month and government loans, the equivalent of 3 billion in todays money. They received 20 million free acres of land along the railroad, as you can see. That is a lot of real estate. Indirectly, the government also subsidized railroads with the homestead act, which ended up still more land virtually free to anyone willing to work it, which meant a readymade railroads tor the cart out and settled there. It led to an immense financial scandal that enmeshed at least nine senators and 13 congressmen from both major parties, including two Vice President s, the leading president ial contender, the speaker of the house and the future president. I cant think of a single scandal involved think of a single scandal involving both clintons, tom cotton, Mitch Mcconnell and donald trump. Its not hard to imagine. You get my drift. Who else could finance a railroad across 1700 miles of empty desert plains, not to mention the greatest mountain ranges on the north American Continent . Who was going to pay for that. Only the government. In the end, all that scandal and all that pocketed or misused money was paid back 100,000 times over by the ribbon of rail that tied a nation together. It enabled us to move tremendous numbers of people, goods, may lend troops across the country andeople, goods, mail troops across the country and leaving us with the greatest system in the world. Government was everywhere, and the development of electric lighting on the telegraph and the hoover dam. In the running of the space race and the cold war and all the attendant inventions that created our electronic, computerized world today, government money was indispensable in tilting our thet suspension bridges, transatlantic cable and the erie canal, and will be indispensable in building our future, that is to say if we still want to build our future, and everything from solar energy to gene therapy, developments that will continue to change our world for the better. Or anyonenk elon musk else is going to get to mars and build something there without massive government support, think again. Does this entail picking winners . You bet it has. No one picked winners better than abraham lincoln, who not only gave us the nation ride rail system, but repeatedly override the democracy of civil war washington to put weapons he liked into production. Repeatinge spencer rifle, which he tested himself on the washington lawn. Or teddy roosevelt, who not only shows the engineers to build the panama canal, but created the country it was built through. Or dwight d, john f. Kennedy and lyndon b. Johnson. I am not sure who the other guy is there, who chose the firms and even the cities, that would put man on the moon. Government is unavoidable, it will pick winners. Liberals, conservatives, no matter what they tell you. Is another it reason why who you pick to pick the winners mattress. Government puts up cash to allow private industry to take risks. Beyond that, as important as it is, vital as it is, more important is what government does to build the free work of capitalism. We see over and over the great Multiplier Effect that great, wellthoughtout infrastructure, magic word, infrastructure, as an enterprise and invention, by throughthe erie canal the great lakes to put new york city in the cockpit of the western world at the height of the industrial revolution, setting off an economic boom that would last 150 years and making every town and city along the way a humming engine of commerce. Of everyone in new york state, lives within 25 miles some part of the erie canal system. Chicagos first mayor built his city into the nations Central Industrial hub almost singlehandedly, creating a network of steamship and Railroad Lines that connected to pretty much everything, bringing stockyards and grain silos, the first great and you facture, cyrus mccormick, to set up shop with his reapers. They had these shiny, red farming machines going out on the railroads, and all the bounty of the nation pouring back in. William mulholland made modern less on jiles made modern williamjiles mulholland made modern los angeles by bringing water from the desert ringing water to the desert. Authority. Ee valley this was a lush, beautiful region that had been suffering under what seemed like a biblical array of threats since the civil war, floods, disease, ignorance, deforestation, problems that seemed impossible to eradicate. The twa change that almost overnight, once its first great hydroelectric dams and power plants were placed. And not only because it down public power drove the price of power all over the country, much to the chagrin of private utilities. It meant all of a sudden you had electrical power, think of how that must have felt going from a nearly medieval existence to the 20th century, people can now by electric stoves, refrigerators, washing the teams washing machines provided made possible by the financing from the federal government. Producedte of dams while lakes became a major tourist trough. A program for unemployed youth. You could bring in the power lines and the airconditioning that made Major Business enterprises and manufacturing viable in the deep south for the first time. Everything from bottle factories thehe space center to atomic Power Research labs at oak ridge, tennessee where they seemed to be handing out free atoms. My favorite on anticipated librarian tennessee who was in charge with providing meeting materials to the workers who built the tva. She started Public Libraries where previously there were none. General stores, post offices, everywhere she could. 80 years later, those libraries remain permanent and much expanded, a testament to how much we dont even know we are doing to ourselves when we build for the future. What else is key to our success in inventing so much . Number four. Immigration is crucial. Americashing ingenious, how much of this country was made by immigrants. Many of these where those anonymous men and women, freed and slave, who did the hard work welding, but so many contributed their brains as well. There are 76 inventions in this book and among them are at least 65 immigrants and another 15 children of immigrants. What would america have been without them . Im not just talking about the more famous ones such as Alexander Hamilton or carnegie or henry fords father. Croatians. Ns carla briere, son of a german immigrant who that a revolution possibly the and most gorgeous automobile ever built. Uslovakian who helped give some of the First Electric guitars. Printerglish immigrants gave us the road repress rotary press. Jewishtunis been men came to america, changed their names, and gave us bluejeans. The list of immigrant contributions is almost endless, but nowhere are they more evident than in the decades Long Development of man amick of the mri. It started with a jewish who liked to say, having stayed in europe, i would have become a tailor. Instead, because his family went to america, he became a Nobel Prize Winner and quintessential american. He gave us back so much more than he received, working to the point where as a student, his teeth began to fall out from malnutrition. He went on to become one of the founders of the Brookhaven National laboratory and the Particle Physics Laboratory in geneva and led one of the greatest University Physics atartments in history columbia university. He passed on this work to colleagues who would come to include three more Nobel Prize Winners from immigrant families fleeing oppression in europe. Finally, innovations were taken raymond who emigrated from armenia and would being theories to fruition in the forms of the mri. All we got in return from these remarkable individuals was that mri plus the satellites, laser oven, and theve space telescope. Lifeblood is immigration. To shut it off would be fatal. Number five. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. The oldest of engine invention in america is the corn 1715, and emrick and from bermuda. Sent immigrant from bermuda. From bermuda. T her patent had to be filed in her husbands name. A woman could not patent anything in her own right. The earliest american patent for a drycleaning process was in Thomas Jennings in 1821, it was also the first patent known to have been earned by an africanamerican in our history. Cry that nop the slave was allowed to hold a patent. Mr. Jennings had always been a free man. How many enslaved African Americans were deprived of the fruits of their labor for things that invented . How many women saw their achievements purloined by fathers, husbands, bosses . It is instructive to note that 100 years ago, women could only claim 1 of all patents issued in the United States. Today, they earn 7 . Not nearly enough, but a big leap forward. The role of africanamerican inventors includes dr. Charles drew who against impossible odds invented a system to get dried blood plasma to the battlefield and have it reconstituted, saving countless lives. Dr. Patricia bass emerged from a revolutionizeto cataracts. Her mother literally scrubbing floors to center to school. It is imperative to note the men and women of color who gave what much of the world considers to be the greatest of american accomplishments, our music. Blues and jazz. Women were held back from inventing anything that was considered to be outside the realm of household economics. Even within these confines, they would produce inventions that shaped our lives. To live of us prefer with dishwashers, the disposable diaper, the paper bag . Margaret hamilton produced not only the Software Engineering that took apollo 11 to the moon but the term Software Engineering. The synthetic fabric that constitutes bulletproof vests vests was the daughter of a polish immigrant. It has saved the lives of 3000 police officers. An never saw a sent from invention that probably earned her company several billion dollars, but she never seemed to regret that. I dont think there is anything like saving someones live someones life to bring you satisfaction and happiness, she liked to say. Too broad and did pool of talent we have it to enrich us all. Number six. It takes a village. Bringing brilliant and talented people together produces magic. This is not just true of american colleges and universities, though they have played an invaluable role in so much. It applies as well to all sorts of informal settings, some of them unexpected. It can mean those practical individuals willing to gather around and support someone fixated on an idea, by which i include the longsuffering families. Samuel morris was able to give us give us the telegraph not just because of the government grant but also because of friends and quinton says who helped him. Acquaintances who helped him. He talked maurice into using the key that made the telegraph easily heard as it was fred and helped develop the binary system of morse code, that is one reason why historians have called telegraph the victorian internet. Leonard gale introduced morris to joseph henry, the leading scientific genius at the time, who introduced morris to the most powerful electromagnetic electromagnet which he invented and met a mechanic who convinced forget about telegraph wires under the ground where they kept shorting out and stringing them from pole to pole. Telegraph poles are a great metaphor for American Ingenuity. One great enterprise sparking another. Fortune wouldonal combined with the federal land grant and seen here in new york city on roads, putting out the technology of the future. Even mr. Morris would use some of his money to cofound a college in 1861 while joseph henry would run the Smithsonian Institution for decades and turn a citadel of american knowledge and learning. He would inspire the efforts of Alexander Graham bell. And so it goes, down through edisons workshops, the space , route Silicon Valley 128 in massachusetts, which im sure you are familiar with, the Microsoft Lab and washington byte, concentrations begun government or corporate or individual initiatives where all sorts of intelligent people have created vital nodes of creation and commerce. Detroit can be said for in the midwest in the first decades of the automobile industry. The mississippi delta during the evolution of the blues and jazz, chicago and the skyscraper began to rise, new york when america came into being, proximity matters. Six key elements of invention, i am sure there are more, but the singular thing about American Ingenuity is how many different grits, have invented collaboration, education, government funding, immigration, innovation, hard work, obsession, persistence, irrational optimism, and the occasional epiphany. To fight how things may seem right now, with hard work and an awareness of how we have succeeded, we will make it work again. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I will turn it back to mark. Thank you very much. My sincere thanks to your wife for keeping up with those slides. [laughter] im impressed. You obviously covered a tremendous spectrum of inventors and a whole realm of people. I think anybody you can incorporate, for those who dont nobody nesbitt dont know Betty Nesbitt and entire cities, the whole thing with chicago. Of one guy vision going out there and looking at this land that has brotherinlaw had ball. That his brother and lawhead ball. Incredible story. We have some questions coming in here. I later learned that his sister had invented it. Is it because women could not imply in patents at the time. The cotton gin was very disputed. Eli whitney went through years of litigation. He got so disgusted with the process. Instead he went to spring full and went through there. She was the wife of nathanael greene. One of the revolutionary generals. Georgia had given him a plantation and thinks of his service. Died of awn there and stroke. New englanders do not do so well and that kind of climate. He fell in love with her and came in the plantation. Started to have problems with kotten. Cotton it was too timeconsuming and expensive. To make profitable. Eli whitney go ahead and comes up with this machine. And the cottage in. Cotton ginhe he probably kept slavery going for longer than otherwise. These were unintended consequences. Yankeeas a connecticut he went down there. Some people think that she might have invented it. It does not seem to be any indication of that. When he was one of those mechanical geniuses. We were talking about this a little bit before. Are most inventions patented today by individuals or corporations . Think mostly by corporations who have done tremendously in getting smart educated people coming on board. Are fewer garage guys working away and coming up with patents of their own. It is harder now to do that. I am sure that there are individuals patenting a lot of stuff. What about adventures that did not work . You obviously detailed that not everything makes it. Theanals were after tremendous idea that works very well, canal media took over. Everybody was building canals everywhere. There were other things. One of the things that you always hear about is the flying car. The trouble with things like flying cars, which is why a lot of inventions that do not get made do not work. The element that goes into making a great car and a great plane, that is not the same. You end up with a bad car and a bad plane. It. E really is no point to where are you going to come down with your plane. On the highway . Is all that we need is traffic at a skyscraper level. This is not a viable thing. It mustve been a terrific way to travel on the originals. These airships that were very briefly a luxury way to go from europe to america. A mustve been incredibly beautiful as a cruise line through the air. They were not great flying devices. Linda berg was the most spectacular. Did you include walt disney and his mouth . I do not have walt disney and his mouth. I have his mouse. Park is incredibly beautiful. These are one of the things that disney learned from and took from. This kind of goes a little bit to the flying cars. Think Amy Coney Barret see Artificial Intelligence as a problem. If there are various ways that we could do that that would be disastrous. These tiny robots that would maybe get away from us and run amok. We could become a much more think of the things you already have. These new, mechanical legs. Thinking of that, things put in your brain that would put away with brain injuries and all. We could become tremendously resilient as people if we use this. I dont think that we have to worry about the robots taking over. You never know. Sometimes, i think they should take over when i see what other people are doing. One of the slides that you mentioned. Invented the women hugh invented dress patterns. She was this very young, upstate new york woman who came to new york, married this widower who was in the address business. Of came up with the idea making paper patterns. You could then mail out across the country. And people would buy them. Peopley little money, could make addresses out of them. Was when americans mostly made their own clothes. You have the latest fashions from paris or new york. You could make them into dresses and all kinds of other things. As filler, between the dress patterns, she has all of these various essays and things on different developments of the days. A lot of them are pressing for an end to slavery. , probablyr husband the only one where they hired people of color, as well as white people and paid in the same amount of money. Remarkable ahead of her time. How did you research all of this, and how long did it take you . Fast. Id it fairly a lot of it was on the internet. A lot of it was from other books. Things of ourat you mightite whatever see on facebook any given day, the fact that you can get information that quickly. It took me a matter of a few months. It was a lot of fun to do. I want to thank you very much for joining us. I want to thank your wife for being with us. I want to thank everyone for joining us tonight. You are watching American History tv, exploring our nations past every weekend on cspan three. This week, we are looking back to this day in history. On september 24, eisenhower flew to washington dc to address the issue. In little rock arkansas. Under the leadership of mobsmists, these orderly have deliberately prevented the carrying out of proper orders from federal court. Notl authorities have eliminated that violent opposition. I issued a proclamation yesterday. Morning, the mob gathered again in front of the Central High School of little rock. The admission of negro children into the school. You are watching American Children history. About thehor talks campaign, a series of skirmishes starting at the in of october 1862 under Confederate Forces and various units of the union army. On november 5, president abraham. Incoln historylt University Professor talks about his book, Henry Kissinger and American Power and takes questions from a panel of Foreign Policy scholars. A class is taught on new roles that women assume in the world of politics. To the virtual symposium. Thank you for joining us today. Online and in person. I want to give thanks to our friends at cspan to those who are promoting American History. Is kevin,peaker today and he works for he has his own battlefield. He also oversees a historic site