A Library of Treasures in American History with Josh Levy

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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In our ongoing discussion of 250 years of American innovation, I knew

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we needed to explore the rich collections of the Library of Congress.

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However, those collections are so vast, I wasn’t

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quite sure how to start that conversation.

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So, I was very pleased thanks to help from Dr. Michelle [Krowl]

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to connect with Dr. Josh Levy, the historian of science and

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technology in the manuscript division at the Library of Congress.

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Then I was especially thrilled when Josh offered to help by selecting

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a few items pertaining to American innovation that will introduce

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us to their collections and shed light on some amazing innovators.

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I should note that Josh brings to this discussion years of

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experience with a PhD in History from the University of Illinois.

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Josh taught at high school and college levels, including stints at the

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University of South Florida, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign,

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and the College of Micronesia in the Federated States of Micronesia.

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He joined the Library of Congress in 2020.

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Josh, thanks so much for joining us on AMSEcast.

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Happy to be here.

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Now, someday, I want to talk to you about Micronesia, not our

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topic today, but that sounds really fascinating [laugh] . So,

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the first item you sent—and again, thank you so much.

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You went above and beyond, really, to show us these phenomenal

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selections from your collections—the first item I’d like to discuss

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comes from the Samuel Morse papers at the Library of Congress.

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So, to kind of start and give us some groundwork on that,

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can you tell us what led Morse, who was a very accomplished

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painter, to work with a telegraph to help invent the telegraph?

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Well, he was an accomplished painter.

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He was a wonderful portrait painter, in fact, and one of his portraits of James

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Monroe hangs in the White House today, and tourists can see it when they visit.

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Now, here’s Morse’s story of how he came to invent the telegraph.

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He was on a ship called the Sully, crossing

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the Atlantic Ocean in October of 1832.

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He’s returning to the United States from France, following three

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years of painting, and visiting artists' studios, and talking

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to important folks, and making notes, and traveling all over.

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You know, those voyages back then were long, and during the voyage,

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he says he happened to think up an idea for the electric telegraph.

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And then he was chatting about it with other passengers, and there’s some

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evidence that a version of this did happen because Morse drew a diagram of

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a telegraph-like device in the sketchbook that he kept during that voyage.

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But we have to be a little bit skeptical of everybody’s version of

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that story because by the time Morse starts to spread it around,

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there’s a lot of money involved now, and there’s patents involved.

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And one of the passengers, for example, who he had written to

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ask for support for his version of the story, starts to push back

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and say that actually they had come up with the idea together.

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But Morse’s version is that it came to him like a

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bolt out of the blue while he was bored on this ship.

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So, did he have any technical background like that?

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Had he been engaged in that whatsoever, in that world

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of science, engineering, technology before this?

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He had played around with some inventions.

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He really was involved in a lot of different

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kinds of projects over the course of his life.

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He was a pretty important figure in the

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early history of photography, for example.

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He was also involved in politics as a nativist politician, he ran

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two times for the mayoral position in New York, and lost both times.

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But no, his main focus was as an artist.

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He was very focused on trying to make it as an artist,

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and very frustrated that he was not as recognized or as

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celebrated or as well paid as he thought he should be.

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I think a lot of artists would say that, understandably

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[laugh] . So, can you describe for our listeners the document

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you selected from the Morse collection for today’s conversation?

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Sure, there’s a document and there’s kind of a sub-document here.

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The main one is Morse’s draft letter to Henry Ellsworth.

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Ellsworth was the United States Commissioner

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of Patents at the time this letter was written.

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It was in 1837.

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It’s not actually a patent application.

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It’s an application for a caveat.

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That’s something that you would request if you wanted

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statutory protection for your claim of priority before

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your invention had matured enough to secure a patent.

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There was some urgency here because, in spite of Morse's description of his

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invention on the Sully, in fact, there were other folks that were working on

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telegraph systems, including one that had already been patented in England.

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So, he had to rush to get out his version of this system.

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So, despite Morse’s story about creating this invention by himself, out

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of the blue, on the Sully, there were other folks that had been working

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on telegraph systems at the same time, including one called the Cooke

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and Wheatstone telegraph that had already been patented in England.

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So, he’s writing to try to get some promise of future

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financial returns from this work that he had done.

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And the document is interesting, both because he is inserting

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himself into this patent fight even before the invention is

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really usable, and because he’s not just seeking to patent the

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device, the physical machinery, he’s also describing the code.

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So, we have this very early, interesting version

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of Morse code that is represented in this document.

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If you saw Morse’s telegraph in 1837 at the time this

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document was written, you would not recognize it.

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It was a machine that was built into the frame of a canvas stretcher.

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Remember, he’s an artist, a portrait painter, and it has

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a printer’s composing stick and a receiver attached to it.

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And his idea, initially, is that you would send a

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series of numbers, and this machine would record those

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numbers in a sort of zigzag pattern on a piece of paper.

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And so, you would send, for example, number

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375, and then number 12, and then number 17.

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And then a telegraph operator would get a big, hulking

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dictionary, and they would look up what is number 375, and

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it would be a word, like ‘mechanics’ or something like that.

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It was a cumbersome system.

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Morse knew it wasn’t great.

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He called his telegraphic dictionary,

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quote, “A most tedious, never-ending work.”

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But, you know, the code improved over time, and

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it really was an integral part of that invention.

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And over Morse lifetime, you know, that invention of the code,

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it starts to foreshadow things like modern data compression.

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The dot-dash system, it was already a binary

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code like we recognize from computers today.

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But once that system became widespread, you know, people

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started to find ways to express the same ideas with fewer

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characters, maybe just to save money at the telegraph office.

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Or, you know, people, maybe in business, started to use ciphers

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as a code to communicate secrets over what was a public channel.

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We have this patent—this attempt at an early patent—for

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both the physical technology and really what’s the software.

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And even once that physical technology is sort of set and standardized,

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the code, the software of it, can continue to involve and innovate.

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Am I correct in that some element of this went to the Supreme

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Court in terms of the breadth of his claim with the patent?

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It did.

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There was a Supreme Court case.

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He was partly happy and partly unhappy.

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It went most of the way that he wanted.

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Samuel Morse had a kind of bottomless desire for recognition, so no amount of

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victory or recognition or financial reward seemed to completely satisfy him.

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I know the feeling sometimes [laugh] . So, let’s turn to a couple

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of other really important figures in American innovation through the

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years, and that’s Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.

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We spoke with Curtis Gregory recently on AMSEcast, who’s

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a ranger at the George Washington Carver site in Missouri.

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Both those men loom large in education, American education, American innovation.

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Could you perhaps just remind us of their

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stories and how those two became connected?

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Sure.

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Booker T. Washington, of course, is running the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

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George Washington Carver was a young agricultural scientist trained in

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Iowa, so really a kind of Midwestern background, Midwestern training.

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In 1896 we see in our Booker T. Washington papers here at the

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library, some early correspondence between the two figures.

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Carver is, of course, looking for a job, and he’s hired to do

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agricultural teaching and experiments by Washington in Tuskegee.

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So, he moves down to Alabama, and he stays there for decades.

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The two have a close working relationship

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that’s also quite contentious at times.

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But Carver is one of the you know, better known

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figures by the time his career there ends at Tuskegee.

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Internationally known.

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That’s something I learned more about.

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You Provided, for our conversation today, a letter from

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Carver that goes to John Washington, who was Washington’s

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brother, about how to fertilize crops and improve soil.

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So, what did that letter say to you about Carver’s work and

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about that relationship, perhaps, with the Washington family?

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Yeah, this letter is written in 1911, so it’s after

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Carver has already been at Tuskegee for quite a while,

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and it is part of an ongoing negotiation with Washington.

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Carver was arguing with him about a lot of different things.

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And just to kind of quote a little bit from the letter here, we see Carver

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writing that his agricultural experiment station at Tuskegee, for the entire

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year, they had not used any commercial fertilizer at all—of course, these

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inputs are very important for an agriculture experiment station—and instead,

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he says they’ve been using, quote, “Barnyard manure and swamp muck.” He writes,

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quote, “I mentioned this to you simply to confirm what you tried to impress

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so thoroughly upon your brother some time ago, that our soils need barnyard

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manure, muck, et cetera, upon them more than they do commercial fertilizers.

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We cannot lay too much stress upon the getting in of leaves,

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hauling of muck, and the saving of our barnyard manure, as

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it is the only real way to permanently build up our soils.”

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So, about the relationship between Carver and Washington, of course

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we see here not only Carver arguing with Washington, but actually

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enlisting his brother as part of his arguments, and apparently they’re

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both leaning on him about this fertilizer question at the same time.

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But we also see that Carver is well known—increasingly well known, after

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this letter—it was written for his work in scientific agriculture, and

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farmers education, and experiments on the peanut, but this is a moment

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where he also is an important antecedent to modern ecological agriculture.

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Commercial fertilizer was the big thing at the time, and it was such a big

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thing that in order to, you know, be part of the mainstream of scientific

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agriculture, you really had to engage with commercial fertilizer and promote

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it, and he’s going against the mainstream in a pretty serious way here.

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He’s turning his back on it in favor of local materials,

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after some extensive experiments and using it at Tuskegee.

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Carver is concerned that cotton is exhausting the soil in Alabama.

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He’s concerned that commercial fertilizer can have short-term

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impacts on improving the soil, but eventually the soil will become

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exhausted again, and the farmers will actually be worse off.

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And he’s concerned that, you know, using these local materials,

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it’s practical, it’s sustainable, it’s cost effective.

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He primarily is speaking to an audience of, you know, he thinks,

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not very well-resourced small-holding African American farmers.

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And this is a solution that makes sense to that group.

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An impressive man all around.

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And I also love to see that human factor of how many of us have

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tried to use the sibling to get something we want, [laugh] so it’s

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fascinating that he reached out to the brother to make that point.

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Now, of course, I knew some about George Washington Carver and

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Booker T. Washington before this conversation, but you introduced

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me to someone I didn’t know at all, and that was Lieutenant Thomas

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Selfridge—if I’m saying that correctly—who was an early aviation pioneer.

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And also you introduced me to the flight of the Cygnet.

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Am I saying that correctly?

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Cygnet—

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I think so.

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—designed by none other than Alexander Graham Bell.

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So, we all know Bell, the creator of the telephone.

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What led to his interest in flight, and what exactly was the Cygnet?

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Yeah, the Alexander Graham Bell papers, it’s

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a wonderful collection that we have here.

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You can see, because he writes so much, everything

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that goes on in his head, it feels like.

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And of course, Bell is known for the telephone, but you know, to return

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to the patent dispute question, just as important as his invention of

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the telephone is his defense of that invention in the patent system.

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It’s a landmark case, and it’s one that nets

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Bell an almost unlimited amount of money.

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So, with that huge amount of money, he can do whatever he wants.

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Now, he already came to the telephone from a kind of sideways direction.

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He was interested in telephone technology because

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he was concerned with the education of deaf people.

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That was his primary interest at the time.

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And he was an important figure in that arena, and actually one that’s still

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controversial because of his advocacy of spoken language over sign language.

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But you know, the telephone was never Bell’s only project;

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he never saw himself as only a telephone inventor.

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So, after he becomes freed financially, he

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starts experimenting in all sorts of areas.

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He does play around with aviation.

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He also engages in these studies of animal and human genetics that

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put him in contact with leading figures in the eugenics movement.

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He and his wife engage in this kind of odd

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project to breed sheep that have extra nipples.

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Quite a range of activities.

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And Bell and his wife start this group called the Aerial Experiment

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Association, and it’s mostly centered around Bell’s property up in Nova Scotia.

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But the idea, of course, is to create devices that will advance aviation.

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And a lot of those early experiments up at Nova Scotia involve these kites.

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Bell is really interested, as everybody is really in aviation

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at the time, in basic problems of just stability and control.

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Keep the plane in the air, don’t crash, don’t hurt anybody.

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And that’s, you know, at a moment when the Wright brothers are building

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these planes that are successful, but they still are very dangerous.

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I mean, they are essentially building these airplanes

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in the sky as they’re also learning to fly them.

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One of Bell’s kites is this kite called the Cygnet I. And the Cygnet I gets

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built on a principle that Bell really became an advocate for in those years, and

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the idea was to create a stable kite by building it out of tetrahedral cells.

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A tetrahedron is a triangular pyramid.

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He believed, and did successfully, create these

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flights that could carry a human in a kite.

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So, the image that I sent over to you that listeners can see on your

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website, is an image of the Cygnet I. It’s a huge kite with a span of

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over 40 feet with 3000 tetrahedral cells in it, and in the middle you

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see Thomas Selfridge lying down piloting this on December 6th, 1907.

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In this case, it’s actually being pulled over 100 feet below, by

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a boat, but there were powered versions of these kites as well.

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Very brave to do that, Thomas Selfridge.

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Can you tell us a bit about him?

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Yeah.

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Selfridge was a US Army Lieutenant.

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He was a graduate of West Point.

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He was a member of the Aeronautical Division at the US Army Signal Corps base

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in Fort Myers, which is just right next to Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.

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He was interested in aviation.

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The US Army also trained Selfridge as a dirigible

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pilot, and he ended up becoming kind of the Army’s

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representative within the aerial experiment Association.

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Selfridge was a pilot.

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He was also, you know, kind of an aviation pioneer.

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He designed a couple of flyers himself with Bell, not based on

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kites because after Bell did a couple of kite experiments, he ended

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up being the only one that was enthusiastic about them, so he was

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pursuing them on his own while the other members did things that are

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a little bit more familiar to people that have been in airplanes now.

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But Selfridge ends up working with Bell, and then he also ends up working

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with the Wright Brothers because the Wright brothers have this, kind

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of, ongoing project to try to get militaries—hopefully the US military,

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although they offer their planes to European militaries as well—to give

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00:16:05,880 --> 00:16:08,980
them a government contract, let them build planes for military use.

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And so, part of their contract, their deal with the US military, is that there

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will be a military official that is involved in these test flights that’s

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allowed to look around and see what they have, and that ends up being Selfridge.

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The Wrights are a little bit skeptical of Selfridge.

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They see him as kind of a spy.

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They don’t love that he’s asking all these questions, and poking

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00:16:28,860 --> 00:16:32,410
around, and touching everything, but they fulfill the terms of the deal.

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They let Selfridge fly around with them, and in one flight at Fort Myers,

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00:16:36,980 --> 00:16:40,550
in a day that has been pretty successful so far, there’s a group that’s

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00:16:40,559 --> 00:16:44,309
gathered, and people are starting to watch these Wright flyers go over the

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cemetery, and it’s majestic and it’s beautiful, but there’s a problem with

305
00:16:48,750 --> 00:16:52,530
the 1908 Wright Flyer that Orville Wright is piloting—Selfridge is in the

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00:16:52,530 --> 00:16:56,780
other seat—and it goes into a nose dive, and it crashes in front of everyone.

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And Orville Wright breaks his leg, breaks his ribs, who gets pretty injured.

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00:17:02,049 --> 00:17:05,199
Selfridge smacks his head into part of the plane, and it

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fractures a skull, and Selfridge later dies, which makes him

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the first person to die in the crash of a powered airplane.

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00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:18,499
So really, a story looking at the Cygnet of attempts at innovation that

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00:17:18,500 --> 00:17:22,429
weren’t always successful as part of the process, with the Selfridge, the

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00:17:22,430 --> 00:17:26,819
sacrifice that often comes with it, as well, being on that cutting edge.

314
00:17:26,970 --> 00:17:29,629
So, there’s someone I’m starting to learn a bit more about, and

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00:17:29,630 --> 00:17:32,260
you’ve inspired me to learn more, and that’s Claude Shannon.

316
00:17:32,420 --> 00:17:34,839
Can you tell us a bit about who Claude Shannon was, and

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00:17:34,849 --> 00:17:38,590
why he’s often called the Father of the Information Age?

318
00:17:38,940 --> 00:17:39,460
Sure, yeah.

319
00:17:39,460 --> 00:17:41,370
And this is jumping forward in time again, right?

320
00:17:41,600 --> 00:17:43,750
Claude Shannon was… he was a lot of things.

321
00:17:43,750 --> 00:17:46,409
He was a mathematician, he was a computer scientist, he

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was an inventor, he was an engineer, he was with Bell Labs.

323
00:17:49,500 --> 00:17:51,820
He was at MIT for a long time as a professor.

324
00:17:51,990 --> 00:17:56,029
He was a lover of games and of jokes, and not someone—someone

325
00:17:56,030 --> 00:17:59,210
that was really brilliant, but not necessarily as self-promoting

326
00:17:59,210 --> 00:18:03,250
and careerist as other folks with his talent might have been.

327
00:18:03,420 --> 00:18:06,270
He’s an important figure in the history of machine learning

328
00:18:06,270 --> 00:18:09,280
and of artificial intelligence, and a lot of people say

329
00:18:09,690 --> 00:18:13,370
is a founder of this entire field of information theory.

330
00:18:13,460 --> 00:18:17,969
Bell had a number of innovations, but you could possibly boil

331
00:18:17,969 --> 00:18:21,770
some of them down to the idea that he is the first or one of the

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00:18:21,770 --> 00:18:26,799
first people that is able to abstract information into something

333
00:18:26,809 --> 00:18:31,720
that is sort of separate from the contents of information.

334
00:18:31,720 --> 00:18:35,089
So, after Shannon, people start referring to information in bits.

335
00:18:35,230 --> 00:18:39,840
There have been binary code before, there has been pieces of information,

336
00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:42,640
of course, but the idea that information is something that we think

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00:18:42,640 --> 00:18:45,620
of in the abstract, separately, that really comes from Shannon.

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00:18:46,000 --> 00:18:49,490
And you provide it today, from the Library of Congress collection, from

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00:18:49,490 --> 00:18:54,010
the Shannon Collection at Library of Congress, something called Theseus.

340
00:18:54,059 --> 00:18:55,260
What is Theseus?

341
00:18:56,390 --> 00:18:59,720
Yeah, this is a schematic diagram of Theseus.

342
00:18:59,770 --> 00:19:03,460
And Theseus is a maze solving robot mouse.

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00:19:03,889 --> 00:19:07,980
Shannon playfully named him after the Greek hero who goes into the

344
00:19:07,980 --> 00:19:11,490
labyrinth to slay the Minotaur because Theseus is also in a maze.

345
00:19:11,529 --> 00:19:16,100
And if you had seen Shannon demonstrate this device, what you would have seen is

346
00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:20,560
a kind of tabletop maze with a little wooden mouse inside with copper whiskers.

347
00:19:20,700 --> 00:19:23,990
The mouse bounces around in the maze, and then solves it.

348
00:19:24,020 --> 00:19:27,810
But the real drama of Theseus is the table itself.

349
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So, all of that is a kind of distraction.

350
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The magic is kind of going on under the table.

351
00:19:32,510 --> 00:19:36,060
Shannon had filled it full of electromechanical relays and wired them

352
00:19:36,060 --> 00:19:40,299
together, and those relays would push the mouse along the surface.

353
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You would see the mouse bump into walls,

354
00:19:42,389 --> 00:19:43,759
and then finally, it would solve the maze.

355
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And then if you started the mouse again, it would remember what it had learned.

356
00:19:47,750 --> 00:19:51,730
So, it was the first, kind of, physical version of what people had

357
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been talking about theoretically before, that you could have such a

358
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thing as machine learning or as kind of early artificial intelligence.

359
00:19:59,010 --> 00:20:02,220
And not—relatively, at least—not that long ago.

360
00:20:02,220 --> 00:20:05,920
So, I think sometimes we lose sight of how quickly these innovations have

361
00:20:05,920 --> 00:20:10,110
happened, in our lifetimes, at least in my lifetime, and goodness knows

362
00:20:10,110 --> 00:20:14,130
what’s next [laugh] . Gladys West, another person you introduced me to.

363
00:20:14,160 --> 00:20:16,900
Who was Gladys West, and where did she work?

364
00:20:17,990 --> 00:20:20,130
Yeah, Gladys West is still with us, in fact.

365
00:20:20,130 --> 00:20:23,509
She is a mathematician, and she was one of the first African

366
00:20:23,510 --> 00:20:26,580
American mathematicians to be hired at what is now known

367
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as the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division.

368
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:30,790
That’s in Dahlgren, Virginia.

369
00:20:31,370 --> 00:20:35,160
It’s about 50 miles south of Washington, DC, right on the Potomac River.

370
00:20:35,270 --> 00:20:40,849
So, West was from a rural area of Virginia, just outside of Richmond,

371
00:20:41,190 --> 00:20:45,590
but really kind of not urban at all, just out in the middle of farms.

372
00:20:45,950 --> 00:20:50,610
And she was hired in 1956, a time when the job of computer

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00:20:50,610 --> 00:20:54,570
programmer was really just being invented and defined.

374
00:20:54,980 --> 00:20:57,839
And Dahlgren also happened to be this important site in

375
00:20:57,839 --> 00:21:00,820
the early history of naval computing in the United States.

376
00:21:01,270 --> 00:21:05,140
So, she did work as a mathematician there, but she also, like a lot of other

377
00:21:05,200 --> 00:21:08,670
folks in her field, other mathematicians with government agencies with access

378
00:21:08,670 --> 00:21:12,149
to huge, hulking mainframes, learned how to program those things as well.

379
00:21:12,210 --> 00:21:14,959
And she was at Dahlgren for over 40 years.

380
00:21:15,210 --> 00:21:19,630
She worked on a huge range of projects, from military weapons,

381
00:21:19,630 --> 00:21:24,440
to a project calculating the motion of Pluto, to her best known

382
00:21:24,440 --> 00:21:28,210
project, working on the, kind of, early version of the GPS system.

383
00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:31,620
You provided a workflow diagram today.

384
00:21:31,849 --> 00:21:33,649
What does that show about her work?

385
00:21:33,650 --> 00:21:37,230
And what kind of materials do you have from Gladys, I guess I should start with.

386
00:21:37,230 --> 00:21:38,930
And then, what does this workflow show us?

387
00:21:39,550 --> 00:21:40,620
Yeah, it’s a small collection.

388
00:21:40,620 --> 00:21:42,110
It’s relatively new.

389
00:21:42,120 --> 00:21:45,840
We might add to it later on because she is still with us.

390
00:21:45,889 --> 00:21:48,440
The collection has a variety of things.

391
00:21:48,679 --> 00:21:51,189
I think it’s three or four boxes, something like that.

392
00:21:51,280 --> 00:21:54,249
But it does have some documents from her time at Dahlgren.

393
00:21:54,330 --> 00:21:57,360
Of course, things that are classified end up there, obviously.

394
00:21:57,550 --> 00:22:02,170
Some professional material, some material from her personal life, some

395
00:22:02,170 --> 00:22:07,740
material about her, sort of, later rediscovery by the public of the innovative

396
00:22:07,740 --> 00:22:11,080
work that she had done that was really not widely known until just a few

397
00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:14,850
years ago, and some things that are fun, like her middle school diploma is

398
00:22:14,860 --> 00:22:17,940
in there, some things from Virginia State University, that sort of thing.

399
00:22:18,570 --> 00:22:20,260
So, you mentioned her connection with GPS.

400
00:22:20,270 --> 00:22:24,960
How did her work help prepare the ground for the GPS we all depend upon today?

401
00:22:25,190 --> 00:22:28,169
Yeah, it’s an interesting series of beats in

402
00:22:28,170 --> 00:22:30,040
the story because it doesn’t happen all at once.

403
00:22:30,129 --> 00:22:34,820
The GPS system is created through large collaborative

404
00:22:34,820 --> 00:22:37,030
initiatives across different parts of the government.

405
00:22:37,150 --> 00:22:41,170
So, in some ways, it kind of reaches back to those earlier stories

406
00:22:41,170 --> 00:22:45,679
about Morse and about Bell, about the idea that the 19th-century

407
00:22:45,690 --> 00:22:49,430
cult of the inventor, and then the patent system rewards people that

408
00:22:49,440 --> 00:22:52,370
can make a claim for having invented something all by themselves,

409
00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:55,520
out in the middle of nowhere, just from a bolt in the blue.

410
00:22:55,560 --> 00:22:58,020
But innovation often happens this way as well.

411
00:22:58,150 --> 00:23:02,170
So, West was involved in a couple of projects.

412
00:23:02,170 --> 00:23:07,120
She was project leader for Dahlgren’s use of data from the CSAT satellite.

413
00:23:07,180 --> 00:23:09,879
CSAT was a satellite that was launched in 1978.

414
00:23:10,330 --> 00:23:13,340
It was one of the earliest Earth-observing satellites, and it

415
00:23:13,340 --> 00:23:16,340
was the first one designed specifically to study Earth’s oceans.

416
00:23:16,469 --> 00:23:21,109
So, between the 1970s and the 1980s, West produces a couple of technical

417
00:23:21,110 --> 00:23:27,040
reports that define a mathematical version of what’s called the geoid.

418
00:23:27,450 --> 00:23:31,100
And the geoid is the hypothetical shape of the earth.

419
00:23:31,460 --> 00:23:35,200
The shape of the Earth changes actually because of gravitational movement

420
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:38,379
and because of the movement of the tides and that sort of thing, so

421
00:23:38,429 --> 00:23:41,720
there is no one shape of the earth because it’s always shifting around.

422
00:23:41,809 --> 00:23:45,120
But for the GPS system to operate, you have to have this,

423
00:23:45,150 --> 00:23:48,740
kind of, complex mathematical formula that shows you, kind

424
00:23:48,740 --> 00:23:51,400
of, what is the average, what is a general shape of the Earth

425
00:23:51,410 --> 00:23:55,499
that we can assume for just the purposes of practical use.

426
00:23:55,840 --> 00:23:57,320
West does her job.

427
00:23:57,339 --> 00:23:59,610
She’s satisfied with the work.

428
00:23:59,610 --> 00:24:02,909
She leads this project team, she is able to get one of the

429
00:24:02,910 --> 00:24:05,780
teams that she works on to cut their processing time in half.

430
00:24:05,780 --> 00:24:06,410
She gets a commendation.

431
00:24:07,130 --> 00:24:07,929
She retires.

432
00:24:08,170 --> 00:24:13,119
Then it’s not until just a few years ago that she’s at a sorority event.

433
00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:17,379
She’s with the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, and one of her sorority sisters asks

434
00:24:17,379 --> 00:24:20,400
her, you know, “Can you tell me about your career?” And she says, “I worked

435
00:24:20,400 --> 00:24:23,720
on the GPS system.” And the sorority sister says that’s really interesting.

436
00:24:23,720 --> 00:24:24,480
I’ve never heard of that.

437
00:24:24,480 --> 00:24:28,490
And so, she looks into it and finds out, not only that West has never

438
00:24:28,490 --> 00:24:31,840
been, sort of, formally recognized in a more public way for her work,

439
00:24:31,849 --> 00:24:35,610
which she knows, of course, but actually this calculation that West did

440
00:24:35,610 --> 00:24:39,200
in the ’70s and the ’80s of the shape of the Earth, they still use that.

441
00:24:39,310 --> 00:24:43,370
So, she was a hidden figure, not only to the public, but actually to herself.

442
00:24:43,730 --> 00:24:47,199
No one had ever told her that they hadn’t moved on to another calculation.

443
00:24:47,420 --> 00:24:52,070
Really impressive, and I’m so glad that you told us about Gladys West.

444
00:24:52,070 --> 00:24:55,939
And I want to make sure our listeners, we are indeed going to

445
00:24:55,940 --> 00:24:58,750
put some of these materials up on our website, and I will work

446
00:24:58,750 --> 00:25:02,140
with you on that, Josh, but how can they learn more about these

447
00:25:02,140 --> 00:25:05,549
materials and others we discussed today at the Library of Congress?

448
00:25:06,020 --> 00:25:06,320
Sure.

449
00:25:06,330 --> 00:25:09,080
They can always go to our website, that’s loc.gov.

450
00:25:09,179 --> 00:25:13,250
They can also look at the website for just the manuscript division.

451
00:25:13,250 --> 00:25:15,610
So, if you search ‘Manuscript Division Library of Congress,’

452
00:25:15,630 --> 00:25:18,290
we have a site that lists our manuscript collections.

453
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:20,909
We also have other special collections divisions, like the

454
00:25:20,910 --> 00:25:23,819
Prints & Photography Division, Geography & Maps, that will

455
00:25:23,830 --> 00:25:26,249
have other interesting special collections materials as well.

456
00:25:26,580 --> 00:25:29,100
And then if they have more specific questions, they can go to

457
00:25:29,109 --> 00:25:33,460
ask.loc.gov/manuscripts, and we can point them in the right direction.

458
00:25:33,590 --> 00:25:34,300
Wonderful.

459
00:25:34,530 --> 00:25:37,360
Such a rich collection of materials at the Library of Congress.

460
00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:42,780
I’m always overwhelmed by it every time I talk to Josh or others.

461
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:44,530
Thank you so much for joining us at AMSEcast.

462
00:25:45,759 --> 00:25:46,269
I’m happy to.

463
00:25:51,169 --> 00:25:53,930
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

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00:25:54,290 --> 00:25:58,630
For more information on this topic or any others, you can always visit us at

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AMSE.org or find, like, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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I invite you to visit the American Museum of Science

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and Energy and the K-25 History Center in person.

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You can also shop at our online store and become a member at AMSE.org.

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Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues

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at the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Environmental

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Management, and Office of Legacy Management, as well as Oak Ridge National

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Laboratory, the Y-12 National Security Complex, NNSA, and the AMSE Foundation.

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And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests

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today, and to all of you for listening.

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I hope you’ll join us for the next episode of AMSEcast.

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If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, I would like to ask that you consider

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becoming a member of the 117 Society, the newest membership opportunity

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offered by the American Museum of Science and Energy Foundation.

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By joining the 117 Society, you will help us continue

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00:26:57,900 --> 00:27:00,699
this podcast and our other innovative programming.

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You will support the expansion of our vitally important educational

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outreach, including virtual classes, and you will help ensure that both

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the American Museum of Science and Energy and the K-25 History Center can

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continue to provide world-class exhibits to our community and to the world.

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Benefits of membership includes special access to video

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and audio content, and 117 Society merchandise, as well

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as all the benefits of our Atom Splitter Membership Level.

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To learn more, go to AMSE.org.

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The 117 Society is vital to the future of AMSE and the K-25 History Center.

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I hope you will consider joining, and thank you very much.