January 1, 2025 • 34 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Folks.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Almost every day, in some days more than once, we
get either Chad Nakanishi or I get pitches from book promoters,
from publishers saying, interview this person about this book. And
truly ninety five percent of the time or more, we
(00:21):
don't do it because unless it's something that we think
fits in with the values of our show, and unless
it's something that piques our interest, frankly, something that we're
very curious about, we just don't do it. So I
hope you know that when we have a book author
on it is because we're interested in that book, or
we've read that book and we found that book worthy
(00:43):
of commendation for you. And particularly this time of year,
people are thinking of good gift ideas. This may be
one that you either read or gift or both. And
as long as you don't mark the book up, you
can buy it and then also mail it off. And
I can't do that because I write all over my
books and I make notes in the margin of what
(01:04):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
To repeat later.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And we have just such an occasion today. The author's
name is Kevin Baker. The book is called America the
Ingenious How a Nation of Dreamers immigrants and tinkerers changed
the world. You remember we interviewed Michelle Malkin after her
book about ten tinkerers who changed the world and great stories,
(01:28):
and there's always an immigrant overtone to that. It's part
of the nature of it which makes it very interesting. Anyway,
Kevin is our guest, and I want to know, first
of all, what drove you to write this book?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Well, thanks for having me, And yeah, drove me to
write it was actually a invitation to do so on
a part of my publisher, Leah Ronan at Artisan. We
had done a book previously. We had done the companion
volume for the History Channel series America The Story of Us,
which I like to say is you know, which I
(02:03):
wrote in about three months, and which I like to
say is maybe not the best history of the United States,
but it it certainly was the quickest. So that was
you know, a lot of fun working with her. And
you know, she came up with this idea for things
Americans had invented, and we sat and you know, thought
about it and came up with we want to come
(02:24):
up with seventy six things. And I believe you, about
halfway through, I wish we had decided to do fifty
or something, one for every state, but it was. But
it was seventy six things, and it was a pretty
eclectic list. It was a lot of stuff that you
don't normally see in books like this, you know. I
mean there's a lot of science and a lot of
mechanical stuff, but there's also things about inventing cities such
(02:49):
as say Chicago, you know, the TVA and how that
changed things. You know, music, blues and jazz, which were
you know, all these things were invented by people as
well as anything else, and sometimes those are the things
that other people think of as our greatest inventions.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I'm guessing that you probably spent maybe not as much time,
but a considerable amount of time when you begin a
project like this to create a framework as to what
is you know, is jazz or the blues and invention
and those sorts of things. There probably was a lot
of framework setting.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Oh yeah, and you know, very much so. And you know,
it's a little difficult to take on things as enormous
as that in two or three pages, as we did,
but we were just trying to give an outline as
to how it got started. And it is interesting the
stuff that people have invented in this country collectively, you know,
over the years. One of the things we do is
(03:48):
the Pennsylvania long rifle, which was really something that came
from you know, craftsmen all up and down the frontier
what was then the frontier of Pennsylvania and Kentucky and
western Virginia, you know, just kind of working and reworking
these rifles to suit people on the frontier and ended
(04:09):
up being a major weapon in the revolution, you know,
really helped decide the revolution. You know. Another thing was
the Prairie schooner, which evolved again out of countless pioneers
developing this, you know, from the kind of Stova wagon
and adapting it to you know, to cover the big
distances out west.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh yeah, it's clearly necessity is the mother of invention.
But there are a lot of people that had the
need and very few that invented. Let's start with guns.
You mentioned one from Pennsylvania, the Kentucky I don't know
if you read Chris Kyle's book Ten Guns That Changed
the World, but the Kentucky long rifle. He tells a
fascinating stories the first gun he profiles in that book
(04:51):
about how that gun gave the pioneer settler an advantage
over the British that were But let's let's talk about
that Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Uh the gun first mentioned what was.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
The heck of a gun and kind of a hybrid
like so much in America is, you know, both from
English and German guns. It had, you know, it could
be tremendously you know, well aimed. Had it was a
spiral grooved barrel there, so you could fire things with
tremendous velocity, and you could use a smaller shot because
(05:29):
it was going at this, uh this velocity, and that
made a big difference to people who didn't have access
to a lot of ammunition, to a lot of lead.
You could put in a smaller piece there and a
smaller shot and have it be just as effective. And
in the Revolution, Dan Morgan, who's a great character in
one of the really underrated figures from the Revolution, used
(05:51):
it almost in uh you know, he used it in
a real variety of ways. One military historian said, he's
the only commander in that war who had an original,
uh you know, strategic thought, and he used the rifle
to do you know, kind of in place of artillery
at some places, you know, you just have this withering
barrage from it. He used it Saratoga very strategically to
(06:16):
cut down all of the first all of the British
Indian guides, which left them kind of at sea in
this in this foreign landscape, and then to shoot down
their officers. And this was considered, you know, very improper
for warfare at the time, but it was incredibly effective
and it you know, helped win the Battle of Saratoga,
and that helps, you know, bring the French into the war,
(06:37):
and really, you know, it plays a great role in
deciding the war in our favor.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I guess a question I would ask throughout the course
of the categories we're going to go through today.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You know, the entirety of the world was.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Engaged in in the need to find better weapons of warfare.
How did this happen on American soil? What was it
uniquely about out the American that was inventive.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Enough to do this?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Well, it was you know, it was again one of
these things because people needed guns going west for various things,
so they needed them for shooting game. Americans, unlike people
and a lot of europe were using guns from a
very young age on the frontier you know, you had
you know, basically, you had boys shooting these Pennsylvania rifles.
They had to know how to use them, so it
became a necessity. And then the Civil War was a
(07:26):
huge step forward two. You know, the Civil War was
something that in a way took military took military tactics
and strategies from almost Napoleonic wars to World War One.
So you had to adjust to this as this, you know,
as this war went on, and that's when we came
up with the repeating rifle. And it's a fascinating story
(07:47):
which I had no idea. Apparently Lincoln was a terrific
shot and liked to look at weapons himself, encourage people
to send in ideas for weapons. He loved to look
at them and uh, you know, and see how they worked.
And he, you know, he had this idiot quartermaster general
who had turned down the you know, the e repeating rifle,
(08:13):
even after the Navy had bought it. You know, the
Navy had taken it, buried in sand, dug it up,
and its still fired two hundred and fifty out of
two hundred and fifty one times, and they said, no,
they didn't want people firing too rapidly, so you know.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Like some idiots to that, Kevin, hold with me for
a moment. The book is called America the Ingenious. The
author is Kevin Baker. We'll talk more with him coming up.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
No Michael Berry's show.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
The book is called America the Ingenious. The author is
Kevin Baker, and make a great gift, make a great
read for a number of you. If, as I am,
you are fascinated by the tinkering spirit. I'm not a tinkerer,
I'm not an inventor. I could have never been an engineer.
I'm not a person with the patients of Thomas Alva
(09:04):
Edison or a George Westinghouse or any of the number
of great inventors in American or world history. But I
am fascinated by the types of individuals who do and
I'm fascinated by why so many of those happened to
do what they did on American soil in such a
brief period of time, and what factors came together. So, Kevin,
(09:30):
before we go to the next category, what is it
about this soil, this place, this particular You know, in
the compressed period of time that so many inventions came out.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Well, I think it's a number of things. I think
it's you know, I listen them in the beginning here.
I think it's freedom, you know, the freedom that people
had to go and invent things. You know, I think
it's immigration. It's a tremendous contribution. You know, there is
we were a doctor Isidore rob who was the founder
(10:05):
of this. He found discovered the theories that made the
MRI possible and won the Nobel Prize for it. And
he was an immigrant from Galicia, where he said that,
if you know, my family had stayed in Galicia, we
probably would have been you know, I probably would have
been a tailor. And in fact, he probably would have
been dead. You know what happened in not that many
years after his family immigrated to the United States. But
(10:26):
instead he comes up with the theory for the MRI.
And that's carried on by you know, three other people
who have fled Europe because of you know, because of
the war and the Holocaust and come to the United States.
They all win Nobel Prizes to furthering this this theory.
And then finally the MRI is invented by doctor Raymond Demodian,
(10:49):
whose family had fled the Armenian genocide years before. So
this is a tremendous contribution, you know, throughout And that's
a tremendous asset we have getting all of these people,
and not just you know geniuses, no, but bringing in
say the you know, the Chinese laborers who did an
incredible job, you know, working their way down the mountains
(11:11):
of the Sierra and the Rockies and putting in these
you know, little nitroglycerin tubes and then you know, blowing
the holes that became you know, the Transcontinental Railroad.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Right, the Chinese American laborers.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, this is you know, tremendous all the way around.
I think immigration is in many ways the lifeblood. So
that's part of it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I think let me stop you there, Kevin, because there's
an interesting point a note in the in the book notes,
it says of the seventy six inventions that your profile
in the book, at least sixty five were created by immigrants,
and fifteen involved children of immigrants. And I'm just finishing
Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, and it's it's talking about
(11:54):
how white America slid backward from sixty to twenty ten,
or at least the working class, and one of the
things he talks about is what made America distinct was
industry or industriousness. And he goes back to Tolkville and
Tokeville talking about these Americans. All they want to do
is work. They outwork anyone. So it's as if you
create this this piece of dirt and you bring people
(12:17):
from all over the world, it really doesn't matter where
they're from, encourage hard work and give them the freedom
to do so, and a marketplace to sell the product
and just let it go.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Sure, No, that is a key thing also something you know,
we don't like to acknowledge all that much, but government
plays a key role and has again and again and
it has, you know, and in democracy, a government, you know,
should be us. But government does pick winners, and government
does subsidize a lot of things. Nobody was going to
(12:48):
lay a rail, you know, a single rail of the
Transcontinental Railroad until they got big government guarantees and you know,
and subsidies a tremendous amount of money. And even though
that became very corrupted, even though it led to the
credit mobiler scandal, which is a huge government scandal involving
(13:09):
everybody from both parties. Nonetheless, the Transcontinental Railroad got built,
and that was a tremendous asset to us and led
to US building you know, which still the greatest freight
rail system in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Well, and I noticed you focused on some big governmental
projects that were that assisted industry, one of them being
you call New York's Governor DeWitt Clinton the most famous
person no one's ever heard of because of the Erie Canal.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, he's the greatest American you've never heard of. And
he had you know, and this is this is a
great example of how it all works together. You know,
you had this guy, Jesse Hawley, had a you know,
one room schoolhouse education in upstate New York, became a
flower merchant, and he ends up in debtors prison in Geneva,
New York because he could not get his products to
(13:57):
market on time due to all these terrible privately owned
toll roads that existed at the time. This is a
huge problem, you know, for getting anything across to New
York's harbor, which is one of the great natural harbors
in the world. So, you know, he comes up with
this idea for the Erie Canal, and DeWitt Clinton, who's
(14:19):
Mayor of New York, and the Governor seizes upon it.
He's all for it. Everybody's telling him it can't be done.
Jefferson says, you know, maybe in a hundred years. Madison
veto's the idea of any federal aid for it. But
he gets these government bonds pushed through on the basis
of the money the canal is going to make. And
you know, he gets the canal dug and it's the
biggest public works project since the Pyramids. You know, it's
(14:43):
just this tremendous, you know, big thing for the time
in a country that barely had an engineer then. But
it's dug out as I got, mostly by these four
Irish immigrants who are given, among other things, twelve to
twenty shots of whiskey a day, you know, and they're
dealing with stuff that's so dangerous, this black power, that
when they blow, you know, then they have an explosion.
(15:03):
They just put their shovels over their heads to hit
a big rock or kill them anyway, but a small
one will bounce.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Off, right.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
But this puts New York and therefore America right at
the cockpit of the Western world at the height of
the industrial revolution. So it brings all this amazing produce
from all these riches, from the heartland, from the Midwest
to New York Harbor, and then they can take it
over to Europe and bring in all these bringing all
(15:31):
these other goods coming back. So it's you know, it's
a tremendously strategic, you know, use of public funds to
really just you know, reinvent the country.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
From the very large to the very small. But something
we've all had at some point or another, there was
I'm looking at my notes and I can't find the
exact way you described it, But you were talking about
the copper riveting on Levi Strauss Genes.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Why is that important? Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, that was, you know, because that made they were
looking for. They wanted a pair of pants that would
stand up to the sort of work you did out west,
you know, taking ditches, digging mines, you know, building fences.
And this uh, this woman who seems to have had
a particularly lazy and particularly obese husband, uh wanted to
(16:22):
wanted to get a pair of pants so he wouldn't
have the excuse of not working so he uh you know,
so she's she writes in too, uh this again is
immigrant Jewish merchant about this and he takes basically what
are kind of like, you know, canvas flaps and kind
of copper rivets them together and boom you have. You
have what becomes blue jeans or dungarees or Levi's.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And still today, I mean and and one of those
things you can you can you can go to not
just third world countries, but particularly third world countries around
the world and see them marked up for higher than
they are here.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It's unbelieve believable.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, they're there. You know. They're like a
collector's item. If you have any if you found any
old you know, Levi's anywhere, contact the company because they
may pay considerable amount of money to find, like, you know,
a hundred and fifty year old pairs of pants.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It really is amazing to think of all the advancements
in a peril over the years, and to think that
that product, you know, you talk about counterfeiting or improving
upon and textiles and everything, and to think what they've
done and how timeless it's been. And there have been changes,
but how really timeless that particular product has been and
(17:40):
still be so successful. We're talking to Kevin Baker. The
book is America the Ingenious. We'll talk with him about
inventions large and small in American history.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Coming up next, the Michael Berry Show book is called
America the Ingenious.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You can find it in bookstores, probably make for a
great gift, or for those of you who are just inquisitive,
a good read. They sent me an advanced copy and
I promptly took mine home. The good news about it
is that it's broken up into bite sized pieces, so
I can sit down with my nine and ten year old.
And there are some things that are beyond their comprehension,
(18:25):
but there are some other things that are pretty interesting,
one of which is liquid paper.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Kevin Watch choose that, Oh yeah, liquid paper, because it
was a tremendously kind of a small invention, but beautifully
aimed at the market at a certain time. And it
was again by this one Barbara Nesmith, who also enjoyed
a certain fame later on by becoming the mother of
(18:52):
Michael Nedsmith, who some of you of my age may
remember as a lead member of the Monkeys back in
the sixties. But she came up with this. You know,
she was a sort of an artist on the side
and worked as a secretary, and you know she was
in typing all these things and having to you know,
when you made a mistake and you had to erase
(19:13):
it and go over it. Really was it was a
terrible choice. So she managed to mix together some painting
materials and came up with the white out and she,
you know, she got this for for typewriters and it's
you know, an electric typewriters and it's still around today.
But basically too she was smart enough to kind of
sell out when she saw that, you know, that the
(19:37):
age of a typewriter was was drawing toward an end.
And she, you know, she got out just in time
and set up anice philanthropy and everything else. But she
you know, because now with computers, of course, that's sort
of you know, that's sort of a past thing. But
you still see it in some offices where people have
you know, whiteout or liquid paper.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Oh, when I'm forty six and I can remember member
probably the eighties, well you know when you were, when
you were when you were writing papers, so you know,
we were still handwriting papers and submitting them.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
It was a lifesaver.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You didn't want you didn't want to, you know, if
you couldn't mark through, they wouldn't let you mark through.
You could wipe out, and it was since we're on,
since we're on small items that changed the world or
that were critically important. It's been in the news in
a negative way. But the lowly safety pin.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yes, yeah, the safety pin is quite something. And that's
one of my favorite characters in the book. This gentleman
Walter Hunt, who invented all kinds of things, and often
before anybody else did, or better than they did, and
would continually give them away or not exploit the patent
or in the case of the safety pin, he invented
(20:46):
it because he was very concerned about a fifteen dollars
debt so he which was nobody was pressing him to pay.
But nonetheless he invented the safety pin, sold the patent
for four hundred dollars, and was very relieved to be
able to set off, uh, you know, to to settle
his debt. I mean this, this gentleman, he would come
up with all kinds of things. He invented basically castor wheels,
(21:07):
you know, the little wheels on your rolling suitcases. He
invented circus equipment. He invented a really good repeating rifle
before other people did. Uh. He invented an early sewing machine.
But his daughter convinced him that this would put all
kinds of seamstresses out of work, so he never, you know,
(21:28):
did try to do anything with that. Of course, it
was exactly the opposite. The sewing machine created work for
or for so many women at the time. But he just,
you know, he never seemed that interested. He just seemed
to like to invent stuff. He never seemed all that
interested in trying to make a fortune for it. He
preferred to kind of, you know, dabble in New York
real estate and paint some and then go into his
workshop and something. Yes, the true true tinkerer.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
God bless the tinkers, think how they've made our lives better.
Kevin Baker is the author of America the ng Yes,
the running Shoe.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Why don't you put the running shoe in there?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Oh, the running shoe, because that was something else too
that really changes how we you know, how we dress
all the time. You know, I mean, nobody wore running
shoes really until the twentieth century or very rarely, you know,
and then they sort of come in and then for
years it's just the Chuck Taylors, who was another fun
character it's kind of apostle of of athletic shoes and
(22:25):
basketball everybody, you know, NBA All Star Games, everybody used
to be wearing a pair of Chucks. But then you know,
people started to take this apart scientifically, particularly Phil Knight
and his old coach, and they, you know, they look
at what was done with the moon landing and these
kind of moon tread shoes and they you know, the
(22:46):
coaching basically events the first Nike shoes in his kitchen
using a waffle using his wife's wafffle iron. So she
wasn't too pleased about the results, but you know worked out.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, why is dry cleaning one of the major in oh?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Dry cleaning is in there because again it's something that
you know, really transforms the way we live in many ways,
and it's again something you know in this in this
book too. We don't claim that Americans necessarily invented all
these things by themselves, but they were the you know,
we were the first people to make them viable. We
were the first people to add the special you know,
(23:23):
added thing that made them indispensable. And so dry cleaning
is fascinating process and it was also the first dry
cleaning process we know of in this country was patented
by a black man who got the first you know,
Thomas Jennings, who got the first patent for an African American.
And there were many objections a slave couldn't have a patent. Well,
(23:44):
he wasn't a slave. He was born free, you know,
he was.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
He is that the first patent by a black man
in America.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I did not know that, yep. And you know, and
the record is the loss of just what it was.
But he but he used it to buy That's an
interesting thing too, what American inventure have done with their money.
He used it to buy his wife and daughter out
of slavery, and his daughter later went on to you know,
she was a teacher and a church organist and went
(24:12):
our way to church. One day she hopped a street
horse drawn streetcar in New York which were which was
forbidden to blacks. They were segregated. She was hauled off
by a cop and she fought it in court and
became kind of the Rosa parks of the North, you know,
getting the New York street cars desegregated in the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Where are you located right now, I'm.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
On the Upper West side of Manhattan in New York City?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Is that is? Are those the local church bells?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yes, that's same, Michael.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That's that's a nice thing to, uh, to listen to
in the background.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, it's very nice. It's kind of a kind of
an old world feel to it.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I'm going to make you give an answer here. You
got sure?
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Uh, well, you know what, you don't have to answer
this segment because we're up against a break. Kevin Baker
is the author the book is America the Ingenious. But
I'm going to require coming up in the next segment,
you tell me your favorite of the seventy six inventions
and you have to pick one.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh you can't him in hall and.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Your favorite of the American inventors and why the book
is called America the Ingenious?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
How a nation? Where did I put this?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
How a nation of dreamers, immigrants and tinkerers changed the world?
Coming up next, unfortunately, our last segment with Kevin Baker.
He's the author of America the Ingenious, How a nation
(25:45):
of dreamers, immigrants and tinkerers changed the world. And I
want to know in this book of your seventy six inventions,
which of which one of them is your favorite?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Gosh, that's that's extremely hard to say, you know. I
just I love the beauty of the early Lincoln Zephyr cars,
and I love how cars and trains and planes of
that time were designed often by some of the same
people and were extraordinarily beautiful, the d C three and
the Lincoln Zephyr and the Zephyr trains. But I guess
(26:20):
my favorite has to be the the old movie palaces
and the amazing designs of that, and the fact that
you even had these machines that would simulate the the
end of the day, simulate the sunset over some beautiful
Mediterranean garden that the whole movie palace was made out
to be. Like this guy named a Meel Breerson, really
(26:45):
Emil Everson was really the guy who came up with
a lot of these things, including this Brenograph machine for
doing that, which he advertised for sale with fleecy cloud effects.
So I kind of love that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
But in addition to American ingenuity, there is the American
ability to turn a phrase in selling a product.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
We're great promoters, oh absolutely, And all these people in
this were terrific at it.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
It was amazing what kind of madmen chops they all
had for selling their stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Ford and a woman named called Madame Demarest who invented
dress patterns. You know, she came up with them back
popular magazines to put them in, you know, promoted it
all over the country.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I mean, look, this is a nation that made
Billy Mays famous for hawking products for nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He ain't the only one. So oh yeah, we like
our hype.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
All right, you are one favorite inventor.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Pick one.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Gosh the guy I you know, I like. I like
mister doctor Rob There a great deal. I mean, he's
somebody who came to America. He loved being an American.
He kind of refused to be a hyphenated American. You know.
He went to college, worked his way through. At one
point he was so poor up at Cornell that his
(28:02):
teeth were falling out of his head from malnutrition. But he,
you know, he went there. He you know, came back
to Columbia. He founded one of the great physics departments
of all time, and he invented the MRI and did
the theory. You know, he found the theories behind the
MRI and did theoretical work on all kinds of things
that led to you know, the Internet, the microwave, oven,
(28:25):
the space telescope, you know, tremendous person, tremendous view of
the future. And you know that's that's such a great example.
I think of what an immigrant can do in this country.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Well, and how many have over over the over the centuries.
You put Les Paul in there in his electric guitar,
and I did not know how he died.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Could you tell that story?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Well, you know, he didn't die from this, but he
managed to electrocute himself while inventing this.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
I thought I had read that he did, but he
nearly died right right.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well, when you read electric, you think dead, and he
nearly was, but he was. He was pounding out of,
you know, a key part of the electric guitar, which
weirdly enough came from Hawaii, you know, but he was
pounding out a key part of this, basically banging a
you know, electrical transistors do a board in his queen's apartment.
(29:20):
And he you know, nearly electrocuted himself and couldn't couldn't
play for a couple of years. So but he know
went on to be this, you know, went on to
give us the electric guitar, which.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Is he credited with the actual with the invention of
the electric guitar.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
No, there were, There were a bunch of different people,
and the first kind of you know, progenitor of it
really came from Hawaii and Hawaiian music, where they originally
they were kind of like you lay him on your
lap and play, uh, you know, play an iron instrument
across the across the chords, you know so, but which
(29:56):
which I had no idea of, you know so. But
it's interesting how the things feed into it, Like it's
possible guitars came to Hawaii in the first place, regular guitar,
acoustic guitars because the King of Hawaii brought in some
you know, Mexican cowboys to tend to the cattle he
had imported. So these things loop around generally to everyone's benefit.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Kevin Baker is the author of America the Ingenious. Let
me ask you for folks out there who want to
encourage their children to be inquisitive about matters scientific and
engineering and aerospace and logistics. Did you notice a trend
as to how adult inventors were raised or different things,
(30:45):
different factors in their lives that encourage this sort of behavior.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Huh, that's a good question. Nia not particularly, not any
one thing. They usually had a certain curiosity. I know
with Rob his he used to say that when he
came home, all, you know, all the other mothers would
ask their kids like, what did you learn in school today?
And his mother would ask him what questions did you
(31:09):
ask in school today? She was really encouraging that kind
of you know, that kind of inquisitive scientific bent. So
I think that that helped tremendously, you know. And I
was told that too by a chemistry teacher in high
school that like, you know, he didn't think most of
us would become chemists, that we certainly didn't show the
facility for it. But what he was really trying to
(31:32):
do was teach us how to think. And I think
that's a you know, I think that's the key thing
in any endeavor. You can always gather data more easily
than ever on the internet.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Was there a golden age of American ingenuity?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
And have we passed it?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Gosh, I don't know, and I don't think so. I
think this is kind of like, you know, punctuated equal
you know, is what do they call it? Punctuated equilibrium?
And in evolution. You know, like I think we have
periods where nothing seems to be going on. And I
was out talking at Microsoft and people there were saying, like,
you know, this is Jesus is so boring. People are
just inventing apps. But I think when certain things kind
(32:09):
of click through, then all kinds of things can change.
So I think, you know, we've always been incredibly in genious.
It's amazing the amount of inventors we had. In the
nineteenth century, there was incredible design changes and you know,
technical pushes forward. In the thirties, you know, of course,
the space race and the Cold War helped spur all
(32:31):
kinds of you know, help spur really the electronic revolution.
And I think there's tremendous stuff yet to come. You know,
the space elevator, you knowin a thin line up to
space in which we'll be able to put you know,
tremendous payloads. You know, self driving cars and trucks. We're
really transformed the way we live, huge health benefits potentially
(32:53):
from things like gene therapy and maybe microchips in the head.
You know, it's this will be uh, this can you know,
And there's always a challenge of how to do it,
you know, because things like self driving trucks will put
a lot of you know, will end a lot of
good jobs, put a lot of good people out of work.
But you know, we have to be able to know
how to move forward and deal with these disruptions that
(33:16):
this will cause.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, but it's also interesting that necessity is a mother
of invention, but the ability to make above the profit
motive also drives a lot of this ingenuity that I know,
and I think as long as we preserve, you know,
this country as a place for capital and ideas to flow,
I like our future.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Kevin Baker, America, the ingenious. Thanks for being with us,
Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
You go pick it up at local bookstores. There's an
ebook version you can find online. How a nation of dreamers,
immigrants and tinkerers change the world.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
That's your nation, and we should be very proud of it.
Folks.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
Almost every day, in some days more than once, we
get either Chad Nakanishi or I get pitches from book promoters,
from publishers saying, interview this person about this book. And
truly ninety five percent of the time or more, we
(00:21):
don't do it because unless it's something that we think
fits in with the values of our show, and unless
it's something that piques our interest, frankly, something that we're
very curious about, we just don't do it. So I
hope you know that when we have a book author
on it is because we're interested in that book, or
we've read that book and we found that book worthy
(00:43):
of commendation for you. And particularly this time of year,
people are thinking of good gift ideas. This may be
one that you either read or gift or both. And
as long as you don't mark the book up, you
can buy it and then also mail it off. And
I can't do that because I write all over my
books and I make notes in the margin of what
(01:04):
I'm going.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
To repeat later.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
And we have just such an occasion today. The author's
name is Kevin Baker. The book is called America the
Ingenious How a Nation of Dreamers immigrants and tinkerers changed
the world. You remember we interviewed Michelle Malkin after her
book about ten tinkerers who changed the world and great stories,
(01:28):
and there's always an immigrant overtone to that. It's part
of the nature of it which makes it very interesting. Anyway,
Kevin is our guest, and I want to know, first
of all, what drove you to write this book?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Well, thanks for having me, And yeah, drove me to
write it was actually a invitation to do so on
a part of my publisher, Leah Ronan at Artisan. We
had done a book previously. We had done the companion
volume for the History Channel series America The Story of Us,
which I like to say is you know, which I
(02:03):
wrote in about three months, and which I like to
say is maybe not the best history of the United States,
but it it certainly was the quickest. So that was
you know, a lot of fun working with her. And
you know, she came up with this idea for things
Americans had invented, and we sat and you know, thought
about it and came up with we want to come
(02:24):
up with seventy six things. And I believe you, about
halfway through, I wish we had decided to do fifty
or something, one for every state, but it was. But
it was seventy six things, and it was a pretty
eclectic list. It was a lot of stuff that you
don't normally see in books like this, you know. I
mean there's a lot of science and a lot of
mechanical stuff, but there's also things about inventing cities such
(02:49):
as say Chicago, you know, the TVA and how that
changed things. You know, music, blues and jazz, which were
you know, all these things were invented by people as
well as anything else, and sometimes those are the things
that other people think of as our greatest inventions.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I'm guessing that you probably spent maybe not as much time,
but a considerable amount of time when you begin a
project like this to create a framework as to what
is you know, is jazz or the blues and invention
and those sorts of things. There probably was a lot
of framework setting.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Oh yeah, and you know, very much so. And you know,
it's a little difficult to take on things as enormous
as that in two or three pages, as we did,
but we were just trying to give an outline as
to how it got started. And it is interesting the
stuff that people have invented in this country collectively, you know,
over the years. One of the things we do is
(03:48):
the Pennsylvania long rifle, which was really something that came
from you know, craftsmen all up and down the frontier
what was then the frontier of Pennsylvania and Kentucky and
western Virginia, you know, just kind of working and reworking
these rifles to suit people on the frontier and ended
(04:09):
up being a major weapon in the revolution, you know,
really helped decide the revolution. You know. Another thing was
the Prairie schooner, which evolved again out of countless pioneers
developing this, you know, from the kind of Stova wagon
and adapting it to you know, to cover the big
distances out west.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Oh yeah, it's clearly necessity is the mother of invention.
But there are a lot of people that had the
need and very few that invented. Let's start with guns.
You mentioned one from Pennsylvania, the Kentucky I don't know
if you read Chris Kyle's book Ten Guns That Changed
the World, but the Kentucky long rifle. He tells a
fascinating stories the first gun he profiles in that book
(04:51):
about how that gun gave the pioneer settler an advantage
over the British that were But let's let's talk about
that Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Uh the gun first mentioned what was.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
The heck of a gun and kind of a hybrid
like so much in America is, you know, both from
English and German guns. It had, you know, it could
be tremendously you know, well aimed. Had it was a
spiral grooved barrel there, so you could fire things with
tremendous velocity, and you could use a smaller shot because
(05:29):
it was going at this, uh this velocity, and that
made a big difference to people who didn't have access
to a lot of ammunition, to a lot of lead.
You could put in a smaller piece there and a
smaller shot and have it be just as effective. And
in the Revolution, Dan Morgan, who's a great character in
one of the really underrated figures from the Revolution, used
(05:51):
it almost in uh you know, he used it in
a real variety of ways. One military historian said, he's
the only commander in that war who had an original,
uh you know, strategic thought, and he used the rifle
to do you know, kind of in place of artillery
at some places, you know, you just have this withering
barrage from it. He used it Saratoga very strategically to
(06:16):
cut down all of the first all of the British
Indian guides, which left them kind of at sea in
this in this foreign landscape, and then to shoot down
their officers. And this was considered, you know, very improper
for warfare at the time, but it was incredibly effective
and it you know, helped win the Battle of Saratoga,
and that helps, you know, bring the French into the war,
(06:37):
and really, you know, it plays a great role in
deciding the war in our favor.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I guess a question I would ask throughout the course
of the categories we're going to go through today.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You know, the entirety of the world was.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
Engaged in in the need to find better weapons of warfare.
How did this happen on American soil? What was it
uniquely about out the American that was inventive.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Enough to do this?
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Well, it was you know, it was again one of
these things because people needed guns going west for various things,
so they needed them for shooting game. Americans, unlike people
and a lot of europe were using guns from a
very young age on the frontier you know, you had
you know, basically, you had boys shooting these Pennsylvania rifles.
They had to know how to use them, so it
became a necessity. And then the Civil War was a
(07:26):
huge step forward two. You know, the Civil War was
something that in a way took military took military tactics
and strategies from almost Napoleonic wars to World War One.
So you had to adjust to this as this, you know,
as this war went on, and that's when we came
up with the repeating rifle. And it's a fascinating story
(07:47):
which I had no idea. Apparently Lincoln was a terrific
shot and liked to look at weapons himself, encourage people
to send in ideas for weapons. He loved to look
at them and uh, you know, and see how they worked.
And he, you know, he had this idiot quartermaster general
who had turned down the you know, the e repeating rifle,
(08:13):
even after the Navy had bought it. You know, the
Navy had taken it, buried in sand, dug it up,
and its still fired two hundred and fifty out of
two hundred and fifty one times, and they said, no,
they didn't want people firing too rapidly, so you know.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Like some idiots to that, Kevin, hold with me for
a moment. The book is called America the Ingenious. The
author is Kevin Baker. We'll talk more with him coming up.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
No Michael Berry's show.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
The book is called America the Ingenious. The author is
Kevin Baker, and make a great gift, make a great
read for a number of you. If, as I am,
you are fascinated by the tinkering spirit. I'm not a tinkerer,
I'm not an inventor. I could have never been an engineer.
I'm not a person with the patients of Thomas Alva
(09:04):
Edison or a George Westinghouse or any of the number
of great inventors in American or world history. But I
am fascinated by the types of individuals who do and
I'm fascinated by why so many of those happened to
do what they did on American soil in such a
brief period of time, and what factors came together. So, Kevin,
(09:30):
before we go to the next category, what is it
about this soil, this place, this particular You know, in
the compressed period of time that so many inventions came out.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
Well, I think it's a number of things. I think
it's you know, I listen them in the beginning here.
I think it's freedom, you know, the freedom that people
had to go and invent things. You know, I think
it's immigration. It's a tremendous contribution. You know, there is
we were a doctor Isidore rob who was the founder
(10:05):
of this. He found discovered the theories that made the
MRI possible and won the Nobel Prize for it. And
he was an immigrant from Galicia, where he said that,
if you know, my family had stayed in Galicia, we
probably would have been you know, I probably would have
been a tailor. And in fact, he probably would have
been dead. You know what happened in not that many
years after his family immigrated to the United States. But
(10:26):
instead he comes up with the theory for the MRI.
And that's carried on by you know, three other people
who have fled Europe because of you know, because of
the war and the Holocaust and come to the United States.
They all win Nobel Prizes to furthering this this theory.
And then finally the MRI is invented by doctor Raymond Demodian,
(10:49):
whose family had fled the Armenian genocide years before. So
this is a tremendous contribution, you know, throughout And that's
a tremendous asset we have getting all of these people,
and not just you know geniuses, no, but bringing in
say the you know, the Chinese laborers who did an
incredible job, you know, working their way down the mountains
(11:11):
of the Sierra and the Rockies and putting in these
you know, little nitroglycerin tubes and then you know, blowing
the holes that became you know, the Transcontinental Railroad.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Right, the Chinese American laborers.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, this is you know, tremendous all the way around.
I think immigration is in many ways the lifeblood. So
that's part of it.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I think let me stop you there, Kevin, because there's
an interesting point a note in the in the book notes,
it says of the seventy six inventions that your profile
in the book, at least sixty five were created by immigrants,
and fifteen involved children of immigrants. And I'm just finishing
Charles Murray's book Coming Apart, and it's it's talking about
(11:54):
how white America slid backward from sixty to twenty ten,
or at least the working class, and one of the
things he talks about is what made America distinct was
industry or industriousness. And he goes back to Tolkville and
Tokeville talking about these Americans. All they want to do
is work. They outwork anyone. So it's as if you
create this this piece of dirt and you bring people
(12:17):
from all over the world, it really doesn't matter where
they're from, encourage hard work and give them the freedom
to do so, and a marketplace to sell the product
and just let it go.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Sure, No, that is a key thing also something you know,
we don't like to acknowledge all that much, but government
plays a key role and has again and again and
it has, you know, and in democracy, a government, you know,
should be us. But government does pick winners, and government
does subsidize a lot of things. Nobody was going to
(12:48):
lay a rail, you know, a single rail of the
Transcontinental Railroad until they got big government guarantees and you know,
and subsidies a tremendous amount of money. And even though
that became very corrupted, even though it led to the
credit mobiler scandal, which is a huge government scandal involving
(13:09):
everybody from both parties. Nonetheless, the Transcontinental Railroad got built,
and that was a tremendous asset to us and led
to US building you know, which still the greatest freight
rail system in the world.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Well, and I noticed you focused on some big governmental
projects that were that assisted industry, one of them being
you call New York's Governor DeWitt Clinton the most famous
person no one's ever heard of because of the Erie Canal.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
Yeah, he's the greatest American you've never heard of. And
he had you know, and this is this is a
great example of how it all works together. You know,
you had this guy, Jesse Hawley, had a you know,
one room schoolhouse education in upstate New York, became a
flower merchant, and he ends up in debtors prison in Geneva,
New York because he could not get his products to
(13:57):
market on time due to all these terrible privately owned
toll roads that existed at the time. This is a
huge problem, you know, for getting anything across to New
York's harbor, which is one of the great natural harbors
in the world. So, you know, he comes up with
this idea for the Erie Canal, and DeWitt Clinton, who's
(14:19):
Mayor of New York, and the Governor seizes upon it.
He's all for it. Everybody's telling him it can't be done.
Jefferson says, you know, maybe in a hundred years. Madison
veto's the idea of any federal aid for it. But
he gets these government bonds pushed through on the basis
of the money the canal is going to make. And
you know, he gets the canal dug and it's the
biggest public works project since the Pyramids. You know, it's
(14:43):
just this tremendous, you know, big thing for the time
in a country that barely had an engineer then. But
it's dug out as I got, mostly by these four
Irish immigrants who are given, among other things, twelve to
twenty shots of whiskey a day, you know, and they're
dealing with stuff that's so dangerous, this black power, that
when they blow, you know, then they have an explosion.
(15:03):
They just put their shovels over their heads to hit
a big rock or kill them anyway, but a small
one will bounce.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Off, right.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
But this puts New York and therefore America right at
the cockpit of the Western world at the height of
the industrial revolution. So it brings all this amazing produce
from all these riches, from the heartland, from the Midwest
to New York Harbor, and then they can take it
over to Europe and bring in all these bringing all
(15:31):
these other goods coming back. So it's you know, it's
a tremendously strategic, you know, use of public funds to
really just you know, reinvent the country.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
From the very large to the very small. But something
we've all had at some point or another, there was
I'm looking at my notes and I can't find the
exact way you described it, But you were talking about
the copper riveting on Levi Strauss Genes.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Why is that important? Oh?
Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, that was, you know, because that made they were
looking for. They wanted a pair of pants that would
stand up to the sort of work you did out west,
you know, taking ditches, digging mines, you know, building fences.
And this uh, this woman who seems to have had
a particularly lazy and particularly obese husband, uh wanted to
(16:22):
wanted to get a pair of pants so he wouldn't
have the excuse of not working so he uh you know,
so she's she writes in too, uh this again is
immigrant Jewish merchant about this and he takes basically what
are kind of like, you know, canvas flaps and kind
of copper rivets them together and boom you have. You
have what becomes blue jeans or dungarees or Levi's.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
And still today, I mean and and one of those
things you can you can you can go to not
just third world countries, but particularly third world countries around
the world and see them marked up for higher than
they are here.
Speaker 1 (16:58):
It's unbelieve believable.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, yeah, no, they're there. You know. They're like a
collector's item. If you have any if you found any
old you know, Levi's anywhere, contact the company because they
may pay considerable amount of money to find, like, you know,
a hundred and fifty year old pairs of pants.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
It really is amazing to think of all the advancements
in a peril over the years, and to think that
that product, you know, you talk about counterfeiting or improving
upon and textiles and everything, and to think what they've
done and how timeless it's been. And there have been changes,
but how really timeless that particular product has been and
(17:40):
still be so successful. We're talking to Kevin Baker. The
book is America the Ingenious. We'll talk with him about
inventions large and small in American history.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Coming up next, the Michael Berry Show book is called
America the Ingenious.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
You can find it in bookstores, probably make for a
great gift, or for those of you who are just inquisitive,
a good read. They sent me an advanced copy and
I promptly took mine home. The good news about it
is that it's broken up into bite sized pieces, so
I can sit down with my nine and ten year old.
And there are some things that are beyond their comprehension,
(18:25):
but there are some other things that are pretty interesting,
one of which is liquid paper.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
Kevin Watch choose that, Oh yeah, liquid paper, because it
was a tremendously kind of a small invention, but beautifully
aimed at the market at a certain time. And it
was again by this one Barbara Nesmith, who also enjoyed
a certain fame later on by becoming the mother of
(18:52):
Michael Nedsmith, who some of you of my age may
remember as a lead member of the Monkeys back in
the sixties. But she came up with this. You know,
she was a sort of an artist on the side
and worked as a secretary, and you know she was
in typing all these things and having to you know,
when you made a mistake and you had to erase
(19:13):
it and go over it. Really was it was a
terrible choice. So she managed to mix together some painting
materials and came up with the white out and she,
you know, she got this for for typewriters and it's
you know, an electric typewriters and it's still around today.
But basically too she was smart enough to kind of
sell out when she saw that, you know, that the
(19:37):
age of a typewriter was was drawing toward an end.
And she, you know, she got out just in time
and set up anice philanthropy and everything else. But she
you know, because now with computers, of course, that's sort
of you know, that's sort of a past thing. But
you still see it in some offices where people have
you know, whiteout or liquid paper.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Oh, when I'm forty six and I can remember member
probably the eighties, well you know when you were, when
you were when you were writing papers, so you know,
we were still handwriting papers and submitting them.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
It was a lifesaver.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You didn't want you didn't want to, you know, if
you couldn't mark through, they wouldn't let you mark through.
You could wipe out, and it was since we're on,
since we're on small items that changed the world or
that were critically important. It's been in the news in
a negative way. But the lowly safety pin.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Yes, yeah, the safety pin is quite something. And that's
one of my favorite characters in the book. This gentleman
Walter Hunt, who invented all kinds of things, and often
before anybody else did, or better than they did, and
would continually give them away or not exploit the patent
or in the case of the safety pin, he invented
(20:46):
it because he was very concerned about a fifteen dollars
debt so he which was nobody was pressing him to pay.
But nonetheless he invented the safety pin, sold the patent
for four hundred dollars, and was very relieved to be
able to set off, uh, you know, to to settle
his debt. I mean this, this gentleman, he would come
up with all kinds of things. He invented basically castor wheels,
(21:07):
you know, the little wheels on your rolling suitcases. He
invented circus equipment. He invented a really good repeating rifle
before other people did. Uh. He invented an early sewing machine.
But his daughter convinced him that this would put all
kinds of seamstresses out of work, so he never, you know,
(21:28):
did try to do anything with that. Of course, it
was exactly the opposite. The sewing machine created work for
or for so many women at the time. But he just,
you know, he never seemed that interested. He just seemed
to like to invent stuff. He never seemed all that
interested in trying to make a fortune for it. He
preferred to kind of, you know, dabble in New York
real estate and paint some and then go into his
workshop and something. Yes, the true true tinkerer.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
God bless the tinkers, think how they've made our lives better.
Kevin Baker is the author of America the ng Yes,
the running Shoe.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Why don't you put the running shoe in there?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Oh, the running shoe, because that was something else too
that really changes how we you know, how we dress
all the time. You know, I mean, nobody wore running
shoes really until the twentieth century or very rarely, you know,
and then they sort of come in and then for
years it's just the Chuck Taylors, who was another fun
character it's kind of apostle of of athletic shoes and
(22:25):
basketball everybody, you know, NBA All Star Games, everybody used
to be wearing a pair of Chucks. But then you know,
people started to take this apart scientifically, particularly Phil Knight
and his old coach, and they, you know, they look
at what was done with the moon landing and these
kind of moon tread shoes and they you know, the
(22:46):
coaching basically events the first Nike shoes in his kitchen
using a waffle using his wife's wafffle iron. So she
wasn't too pleased about the results, but you know worked out.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Okay, why is dry cleaning one of the major in oh?
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Dry cleaning is in there because again it's something that
you know, really transforms the way we live in many ways,
and it's again something you know in this in this
book too. We don't claim that Americans necessarily invented all
these things by themselves, but they were the you know,
we were the first people to make them viable. We
were the first people to add the special you know,
(23:23):
added thing that made them indispensable. And so dry cleaning
is fascinating process and it was also the first dry
cleaning process we know of in this country was patented
by a black man who got the first you know,
Thomas Jennings, who got the first patent for an African American.
And there were many objections a slave couldn't have a patent. Well,
(23:44):
he wasn't a slave. He was born free, you know,
he was.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
He is that the first patent by a black man
in America.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
I did not know that, yep. And you know, and
the record is the loss of just what it was.
But he but he used it to buy That's an
interesting thing too, what American inventure have done with their money.
He used it to buy his wife and daughter out
of slavery, and his daughter later went on to you know,
she was a teacher and a church organist and went
(24:12):
our way to church. One day she hopped a street
horse drawn streetcar in New York which were which was
forbidden to blacks. They were segregated. She was hauled off
by a cop and she fought it in court and
became kind of the Rosa parks of the North, you know,
getting the New York street cars desegregated in the eighteen fifties.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Where are you located right now, I'm.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
On the Upper West side of Manhattan in New York City?
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Is that is? Are those the local church bells?
Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yes, that's same, Michael.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
That's that's a nice thing to, uh, to listen to
in the background.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
I like that.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, it's very nice. It's kind of a kind of
an old world feel to it.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
I'm going to make you give an answer here. You
got sure?
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Uh, well, you know what, you don't have to answer
this segment because we're up against a break. Kevin Baker
is the author the book is America the Ingenious. But
I'm going to require coming up in the next segment,
you tell me your favorite of the seventy six inventions
and you have to pick one.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Oh you can't him in hall and.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
Your favorite of the American inventors and why the book
is called America the Ingenious?
Speaker 1 (25:18):
How a nation? Where did I put this?
Speaker 2 (25:21):
How a nation of dreamers, immigrants and tinkerers changed the world?
Coming up next, unfortunately, our last segment with Kevin Baker.
He's the author of America the Ingenious, How a nation
(25:45):
of dreamers, immigrants and tinkerers changed the world. And I
want to know in this book of your seventy six inventions,
which of which one of them is your favorite?
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Gosh, that's that's extremely hard to say, you know. I
just I love the beauty of the early Lincoln Zephyr cars,
and I love how cars and trains and planes of
that time were designed often by some of the same
people and were extraordinarily beautiful, the d C three and
the Lincoln Zephyr and the Zephyr trains. But I guess
(26:20):
my favorite has to be the the old movie palaces
and the amazing designs of that, and the fact that
you even had these machines that would simulate the the
end of the day, simulate the sunset over some beautiful
Mediterranean garden that the whole movie palace was made out
to be. Like this guy named a Meel Breerson, really
(26:45):
Emil Everson was really the guy who came up with
a lot of these things, including this Brenograph machine for
doing that, which he advertised for sale with fleecy cloud effects.
So I kind of love that.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
But in addition to American ingenuity, there is the American
ability to turn a phrase in selling a product.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
We're great promoters, oh absolutely, And all these people in
this were terrific at it.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
It was amazing what kind of madmen chops they all
had for selling their stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
You know.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Ford and a woman named called Madame Demarest who invented
dress patterns. You know, she came up with them back
popular magazines to put them in, you know, promoted it
all over the country.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well, I mean, look, this is a nation that made
Billy Mays famous for hawking products for nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
He ain't the only one. So oh yeah, we like
our hype.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
All right, you are one favorite inventor.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Pick one.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Gosh the guy I you know, I like. I like
mister doctor Rob There a great deal. I mean, he's
somebody who came to America. He loved being an American.
He kind of refused to be a hyphenated American. You know.
He went to college, worked his way through. At one
point he was so poor up at Cornell that his
(28:02):
teeth were falling out of his head from malnutrition. But he,
you know, he went there. He you know, came back
to Columbia. He founded one of the great physics departments
of all time, and he invented the MRI and did
the theory. You know, he found the theories behind the
MRI and did theoretical work on all kinds of things
that led to you know, the Internet, the microwave, oven,
(28:25):
the space telescope, you know, tremendous person, tremendous view of
the future. And you know that's that's such a great example.
I think of what an immigrant can do in this country.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
Well, and how many have over over the over the centuries.
You put Les Paul in there in his electric guitar,
and I did not know how he died.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Could you tell that story?
Speaker 4 (28:49):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Well, you know, he didn't die from this, but he
managed to electrocute himself while inventing this.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
I thought I had read that he did, but he
nearly died right right.
Speaker 3 (28:58):
Well, when you read electric, you think dead, and he
nearly was, but he was. He was pounding out of,
you know, a key part of the electric guitar, which
weirdly enough came from Hawaii, you know, but he was
pounding out a key part of this, basically banging a
you know, electrical transistors do a board in his queen's apartment.
(29:20):
And he you know, nearly electrocuted himself and couldn't couldn't
play for a couple of years. So but he know
went on to be this, you know, went on to
give us the electric guitar, which.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Is he credited with the actual with the invention of
the electric guitar.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
No, there were, There were a bunch of different people,
and the first kind of you know, progenitor of it
really came from Hawaii and Hawaiian music, where they originally
they were kind of like you lay him on your
lap and play, uh, you know, play an iron instrument
across the across the chords, you know so, but which
(29:56):
which I had no idea of, you know so. But
it's interesting how the things feed into it, Like it's
possible guitars came to Hawaii in the first place, regular guitar,
acoustic guitars because the King of Hawaii brought in some
you know, Mexican cowboys to tend to the cattle he
had imported. So these things loop around generally to everyone's benefit.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Kevin Baker is the author of America the Ingenious. Let
me ask you for folks out there who want to
encourage their children to be inquisitive about matters scientific and
engineering and aerospace and logistics. Did you notice a trend
as to how adult inventors were raised or different things,
(30:45):
different factors in their lives that encourage this sort of behavior.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Huh, that's a good question. Nia not particularly, not any
one thing. They usually had a certain curiosity. I know
with Rob his he used to say that when he
came home, all, you know, all the other mothers would
ask their kids like, what did you learn in school today?
And his mother would ask him what questions did you
(31:09):
ask in school today? She was really encouraging that kind
of you know, that kind of inquisitive scientific bent. So
I think that that helped tremendously, you know. And I
was told that too by a chemistry teacher in high
school that like, you know, he didn't think most of
us would become chemists, that we certainly didn't show the
facility for it. But what he was really trying to
(31:32):
do was teach us how to think. And I think
that's a you know, I think that's the key thing
in any endeavor. You can always gather data more easily
than ever on the internet.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Was there a golden age of American ingenuity?
Speaker 1 (31:45):
And have we passed it?
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Gosh, I don't know, and I don't think so. I
think this is kind of like, you know, punctuated equal
you know, is what do they call it? Punctuated equilibrium?
And in evolution. You know, like I think we have
periods where nothing seems to be going on. And I
was out talking at Microsoft and people there were saying, like,
you know, this is Jesus is so boring. People are
just inventing apps. But I think when certain things kind
(32:09):
of click through, then all kinds of things can change.
So I think, you know, we've always been incredibly in genious.
It's amazing the amount of inventors we had. In the
nineteenth century, there was incredible design changes and you know,
technical pushes forward. In the thirties, you know, of course,
the space race and the Cold War helped spur all
(32:31):
kinds of you know, help spur really the electronic revolution.
And I think there's tremendous stuff yet to come. You know,
the space elevator, you knowin a thin line up to
space in which we'll be able to put you know,
tremendous payloads. You know, self driving cars and trucks. We're
really transformed the way we live, huge health benefits potentially
(32:53):
from things like gene therapy and maybe microchips in the head.
You know, it's this will be uh, this can you know,
And there's always a challenge of how to do it,
you know, because things like self driving trucks will put
a lot of you know, will end a lot of
good jobs, put a lot of good people out of work.
But you know, we have to be able to know
how to move forward and deal with these disruptions that
(33:16):
this will cause.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, but it's also interesting that necessity is a mother
of invention, but the ability to make above the profit
motive also drives a lot of this ingenuity that I know,
and I think as long as we preserve, you know,
this country as a place for capital and ideas to flow,
I like our future.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Kevin Baker, America, the ingenious. Thanks for being with us,
Thanks for having me here.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
You go pick it up at local bookstores. There's an
ebook version you can find online. How a nation of dreamers,
immigrants and tinkerers change the world.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
That's your nation, and we should be very proud of it.
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