on his death in 1974 the New York Times honored bush with a front page obituary calling him the engineer who marshaled American Technology for World War II and ushered in the atomic age Jerome Weisner science adviser to President Kennedy judged Bush's influence on American Science and Technology so great that the 20th century may not yet produce his equal acts of importance were the measure of his life and they are the
reason that his life deserves study today he was a contrarian skeptical of easy solutions yet willing to tackle tough problems without a compass he was a pragmatist who thought that knowledge arose from a physical encounter with a
stubborn reality suspicious of big institutions Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for Mass mediocrity long before such complaints became conventional wisdom he
beli believed the individual was still of Paramount importance the individual to me is everything he wrote I would restrict him as little as possible he never lost his faith in the power of one that was an excerpt from the book that I'm going to talk to you about today which is endless Frontier vanever Bush engineer of the American Century and it was written by G Pascal Zachary okay so this is the second podcast I'm doing on vanie Bush
last week I covered his autobiography pieces of the action that was episode 270 and this is actually the second time that I've read the book that I'm holding in my hand the first time I read it I did not feel I understood van ever Bush enough to make a podcast on him after reading his autobiography last week I have a better understanding of him but it's still not perfect in my Minds vanever Bush and D Hawk the founder of
Visa are actually very similar in the sense that I don't quite grasp how they were able to accomplish what they did and I still feel that way even though I've read de Hawk's autobiography twice I just most recently did another podcast on his autobiography it's number 260 but I just think there's too many ideas that are in this book that are going to be helpful to you and I for me to not do a podcast on it and even that introduction
on the second page of that introduction a lot of the way that bush speaks and a lot of his beliefs are very much in line with his friend Edwin Lan and discovering and studying Edwin L was such an important part of my life that I've done six podcasts on them I think I've read five or six books multiple of uh I think two or three of those books I've read twice so I just want to go through a couple of these things uh just
on one page to just give you an idea because I guess the important part here is like studying Edwin Lan and studying Bush one of the main themes is they they both had a profound belief in the individual capacity for greatness so the note I left myself on this page was this is more on Bush's philosophy a lot of this sounds like Edwin land and so it says he was a contrarian skeptical of easy solutions yet willing to tackle
tough problems without a compass he was a pragmatist who thought that knowledge arose from a physical encounter with a stubborn reality he was suspicious of big institutions every single thing I'm saying is Bush's what Bush believed but
also Edwin L believed the exact same thing uh they objected to the pernicious effects of an increasing increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for Mass mediocrity and that's not hyperbolic Edwin Lan is a two-time
Harvard Dropout he winds up going and MIT asks him to give a speech this I think happened in the 1950s and Lan was worried that our education institutions at that time at that time got so bureaucratic he said that a student would get a message this he's talking about MIT for God's sake he said a student would get a message that a secret dream of greatness is a pip tram and then he made the point that there's little connection between the way
they're being taught and how the world actually works and he says he asked with passion this is Edwin L speaking if this is preparation for life where in the world will a person ever encounter this curious sequence of prepared talks and prepared questions questions to which the answers are known and so Lan's point is if they are able to survive this educational indoctrination they may be good but they'll never be great and so
you see in Bush's the way Bush would think about that is like we have we're essentially mass-producing mediocrity and finally a belief that they both share that's related to what you and I are talking about right now uh he believed that the IND individual was still of Paramount importance the individual is everything to me I would restrict him as little as possible he never lost his faith in the power of one and to me that's why I think it's
important to read books on Bush and to do podcasts about him because he wants to inspire other people to Greatness so the prologue of the book gives a absolutely fantastic overview of bush I want to quote from there right now says he was the most politically powerful inventor in America since Benjamin Franklin it says Bush came from an American line of can do engineers and tinkerers a line beginning with Franklin
and including Eli Whitney Alexander granbell Thomas Edison and the W Brothers bush tinkered with gadgets as a boy co-founded a radio tube company as a young Professor and designed designed the world's most powerful mechanical
calculators in the 1930s laying the groundwork for the Advent of the digital computer and the information revolution made possible by this machine during World War II he advised President Roosevelt on science and technology and
organized his successful effort to build the first atomic bomb popularly known as the Manhattan Project in 1945 he published two Landmark essays that Express a stunning vision of a future in which technology would serve Humanity's highest intellectual and political needs the first essay as we may think predicted that new techn IES would somehow deliver an unprecedented ability to receive and manage information he's
describing the world that you and I are living in right thus improving the quality of life in Untold ways his words contain the germ of what would become the internet the second essay science the endless Frontier skillfully equated scientific and Technical progress with national health and convincingly made the argument that government must Finance independent researchers at levels far above those seen before the
war in fact as I was looking for another book on Bush This author G Pascal Zachary actually just published it's it's another book I'll leave the link in the show notes it's called the essential writings of vaniver bush it's a
collection of 50 of Bush's most important essays so I'm going to get the book but I think it's important because a lot the reason I started studying him and I told you this before in other podcasts is like if you study there's
this gigantic economic explosion in American history that happens uh during and after World War II right and when you're reading books about these Founders and you know I probably read I don't know 30 40 50 of them bush is in
every single one his writings and his ideas were influential to generations of technology company Founders and then this book goes into more of how he viewed the world Bush saw the engineer as a pragmatic polymath and he's going
to describe here what that means the engineer he once wrote was not a physicist a businessman or an inventor but someone who would acquire some of the skills and knowledge of each of these and be capable of successfully developing and applying new devices on the grand scale and that's important to you and I because he saw entrepreneurs as the people to organize these inputs and to convert the inputs into an actual
P practical product that could be used by other people this realization that the engineer was the engine of the 20th century capitalism qualified Bush as the Godfather of high technology and a leading proponent of industrial Vitality through Innovation he co-founded one company and inspired many others that formed the nucleus of the Route 128 high-tech cluster near Boston at this time in American history Bush's Keen appreciation on the value of
entrepreneurs made him a lonely advocate for economic dynamism when most economists welcome the concurrent rise of big business and big government that's an important point to pause on he's having these views these views are completely oppos he's having these views in 1950 it's completely opposite to the world that he's living in and it's why the author at the very beginning called him a contrarian he was among the few
who realized the Curative power of new Ventures the best way to limit Monopoly economic power he insisted was through the Advent of small new industrial units what we call startups today for if these latter have half a chance they can cut rings around the great sty businesses and so not only did he have opinions but he forcefully argued those opinions in writing in speeches in actions so this is what I mentioned last week where when
you read Bush's words it's clear that he's smart he knows that he's smart and he likes to fight his philosopher king or smacked of arrogance he struck his critics as imperious intimidating and at times even a bully who harbored a Relentless perhaps insatiable drive for power his intelligence vitality and cander impressed many he enjoyed a good tussle meaning a good fight refused to back down from anyone and when opposed could explode in
Anger he rubbed people in Authority the wrong way and he never shied away from a fight he took as much ground as his opponent seated my whole philosophy is very simple he told a few generals during the war if I have any this is actually a good idea if I have any doubt as to whether I'm supposed to do a job or not I do it and if someone socks me I lay off so I want to pull a couple things from Bush's early life his father
Perry was uh his hero in his autobiography Bush calls him the best teacher he ever had and so this is an example of a lesson that he his father taught him when he was 5 years old Perry expected his children to be grateful for what they had and not to dwell on what they lacked he had a kind of fearlessness in the conflicts of the world which made him seem stoic at times when his son was five he joined his father at a funeral only to break down
in tears during the service on the way home Perry stopped his son his son's Crying by saying we've paid our respects to our dear friend and we'll have happy memories of him there's nothing more to be done the younger Bush never forgot the lesson the stiff upper lip suited van he grew self-reliant confident and pugnacious there was more more to his combativeness than mere bravado he was fiercely independent and a budding
Maverick all these personality traits are appearing when he's a kid and they're much more pronounced as he gets to be an adult he did not like to be told what to do he credited his ship captain forbears for instilling in him
quote some inclination to run a show Once I was in it so he's growing up in New England this part actually reminded me all the way back on Founders Number 103 I read the biography of Hedy green who was the richest woman in America at
the time and she came from a family of Whalers she actually grew up in New Bedford Massachusetts and in that book the author makes the argument that New Bedford Massachusetts was the richest city per capita in the world at the time and that was a direct result of the fact that the Wailing industry was so large at that time so here we see this is actually absolutely incredible when Bush is growing up in in New England as well
he's in Cape Cod and for entertainment as a boy he would read old whaling logs over and over and this is why it said the logs taught him about leadership and group dynamics the relations between the captain and the mate during voyages that lasted for years strained human nature to the utmost he wrote he learned that successful captains were autocratic let me actually pause in the middle of this paragraph So he says he learned the
successful captains were autocratic it doesn't say how old bush is when he's doing this but let's say he's you know maybe 10 or 15 years old that would mean since he was born in 1890 he's all this reading let's say 1900 1905 somewhere in there about 110 120 years later I'm doing all these all this reading too instead of reading old whaling logs over and over and reading biographies of entrepreneurs over and over I have come
across like that's the same conclusion that I've come to he learned that successful captains were autocratic and so let's define that word a ruler who has absolute power you and I I've talked about that before the best Founders they run their companies they're dictatorships they're not democracies hopefully they're benevolent dictatorship but I think what he what he picked up on here the fact that successful cap
captains were autocratic is dead on that they were met that they met all kinds of people and did so on their terms that they could lose everything on a gamble but were richly rewarded for Success somebody sent me a book they want me to read called the power law venture capital in the making of the new future and is written by Sebastian malib I actually have another book of malib that I haven't got to yet but I will it's
called more money than God but there's a lot of crossover between the early whaling industry and then the Venture Capital startup industry today in fact I think some of the terms if I'm not mistaken come from there but I guess
I'll read the book and I'll find out more uh that just popped my mind when when I'm reading this they could lose everything on a gamble but were richly rewarded for success and they demanded loyalty even deference from subordinates
he's still talking about the most successful captains okay they demanded loyalty even deference from subordinates but they were fiercely loyal and protective of those who stood by them and then here's the punch line bush had captain and SE in his blood and then he brings up how important his father was in fact I think this exact line is in his autobiography that's probably where the author is quoting from he's talking about his
father the the teacher when I think of teachers who have molded my own patterns of thought I think at once of my father I acquired much from him although I hardly realized it at the time so his father's a clergymen they don't have a lot of money Bush sees entrepreneurship he's going to call it in uh inventing but we think about it in terms of Entrepreneurship as the path to change his financial situation well aware of
his family's modest means and the absolute require requirement for him to turn an education into a good livelihood Bush realized that the path of the inventor offered him perhaps the only means of achieving conventional success
without sacrificing sacrificing his Maverick leanings so he's in his late teens early 20s he's going to college at this point and we see that he's got this founder mentality he relieved his anxiety through endless activity he
admired men of action despise rules and felt that Merit meant everything I don't have the Kindle version of this book but I would have to guess if you could search it the word maverick or stubborn would come up dozens of times he was like that way as a kid he was like that later on in his career even when dealing with the highest forms of the US government but you also see that in college when he's trying to actually get
to graduate school the no myself on this page was stubborn independent and in a hurry Bush next tried to gain admission to MIT as a doctoral student in electrical engineering but when the professor handling his admission refused to give him credit for his tough that's the school he was at before uh his tough course in thermodynamics Bush fought back the professor said the man who taught Bush thermodynamics didn't know
any thermodynamics that's correct he didn't Bush retorted but he isn't trying to enter MIT I am Bush's arguments carry the day he wanted a promise from MIT that he would be awarded his Doctorate within a year so long as he produced The Thesis impatient as always he now had a specific reason for haste he planned to marry his college sweetheart as soon as he finished at MIT he had bar he he in a rush cuz he's got no money so he can't
take the a lot of time if if the course is going to be two years he's like I got to figure out how to do it in six months or a year this is kind of the mentality he applied to everything and it was extremely helpful in World War II uh he had barely enough money for one year of study and he wished to avoid dragging his new wife into a life of pery so he didn't have enough money so he wind up working two jobs to get by one job he's
on the faculty at toughs and then he's also working at this company called amrad which is American radio and research Corporation and mentioned this last week but the reason that's important is because this is out of amrad comes the invention of these radio tubes that's the foundation for this gigantic company that's going to make Bush wealthy called rathon and this is an example of being at the right place at the right time with the right set of
skills they timed their move well in 1924 the number of homes with radios tripled within 2 years the first Nationwide Radio Networks were in place Ron's radio tubes were destined for Success they brought down the price of
home radios and made them easier to use they took away the sense that mastering a radio required a Zeal for gadgetry the ability to plug a radio into a wall socket rather than rely on unwielding batteries domesticated the radio it was
now no more threatening than an electric lamp it will never cease to amaze me how all of these ideas fit together so this jumped out at me I had just recently reread becoming Steve Jobs which to me is the best uh single biography on the life of Steve Jobs that I've read so far that uh I read it for the second time made another podcast on it that's episode 265 in that book there is this like 200w Min speech that Steve gives
off the cup cuff I think he's like 22 years old the reporter writing this article finds him at a computer show and he uses that exact terminology so they say hey this is what rathon did it gave it brought down the price of home radios made it easier to use took away the sense that mastering a radio required a Zeal for gadgetry very similar to what Steve Jobs thought he's like hey why are we building computers for hobbyists for
every one hobbyist there's a thousand people that just want to buy a computer from the store plug it in and use it the ability to plug a a radio into a wall socket it's the same idea rather than rely on unwielding batteries domesticated the radio it was now no more threatening than an electric lamp this is incredible so let's go I'm going to read the whole 224 word because it was included in the book because it says
it gives you an idea of Steve's fully formed verbal Mastery and the fact that he was had this verbal Mastery and and magnetic Charisma even when he was young and so the magazine reporter comes up to a young Steve Jobs at the computer fair at the Apple computer Booth right and this is what Steve says I wish we had these personal machines when I was growing up jobs talism that's hilarious considering that he's still in the
process of growing up when he's talking about this right it's just hilarious uh jobs tells him before continuing on for a total of 224 words people have been hearing all sorts of things about computers during the past 10 years
through the media supposedly computers have been controlling various aspects of their lives yet in spite of that most idea most adults have no idea what a computer really does or excuse me computer computer really is what it can
or can't do now for the first time people can actually buy a computer for the price of a good stereo interact with it and find out all about it it's analogist to the camera there are thousands of people across the country taking photography courses they'll never be professional photographers they just want to understand what the photographic process is all about same with computers we started a little personal computer
manufacturing company in a garage in Los Altos in 1976 now we're the largest personal computer company in the world we make what we think of as the rollsroyce of personal computers here's the punchline the reason I'm reading
this to you his next sentence it is a domesticated computer that is so wild to me I love how these ideas all connect and the crazy thing is this is what speaks to the importance of rereading books I reread I read this book for the
first time I don't know maybe a year ago year and a half I can't actually remember just like I read the becoming Steve Jobs probably two or three years ago the fact that then I pick up the book The Becoming Steve Jobs book years later or two or three years later whatever it is reread it reminded of this fantastic excerpt that's in that book of a 22 or 21y old Steve Jobs then a few weeks later or a month later or two months later I don't actually
remember when it was I picked this book up again reread it I'm like oh wow where have I heard the word domesticated it's a domesticated radio what the hell why is my brain going crazy when I read that and I'm like I'm pretty sure somebody said that about they domesticated the computer so who the hell said it then I go to readwise where I have 20,000 highlights from all these books and all my notes and this crazy database on the
history of Entrepreneurship that I'm not sure anybody else in the world has I type in the word domesticated computer and boom I immediately see the ideas the philosophy and the communication skills of one of History's Greatest entrepreneurs that is wild that is how you know it is a good idea if you could take something complex and a little bit scary and domesticate it make it easier for the customer to immediately get a benefit out of when
you do that you explode the Market the size of the radio Market before this invention was Tiny compared to what it is now what is the size of the computer Market in 1976 the personal computer Market in 1976 compared to now that is an incredibly powerful idea domestication and I would have never ever ever come up with that on my own and these two separate experiences are separated by 50 years this is happening in 1924
and that Steve Jobs quote is from 1977 that gets me fired up okay I want to switch to the next page um this goes back to I just love uh Bush's personality I like the fact that he likes to fight that he won't back down and he knows that it's important because you're going to have throughout your entire life you're going to have people that try to bully or or try to enforce their will on you and those kind of people tend to only respect people that
actually push back so this guy Jackson runs the electrical engineering department at MIT Tech technically Bush works for him and so the main theme of this paragraph is that you have to stand up to bullies he says I remember one day Jackson told me that he didn't like the way I was running a research lab Bush said I told him if you don't like it you can stick it up your rear end we parted on those kind words and I came home and
told my wife well I guess we're all through at MIT where would you like to go next maybe I can go out to Caltech do you want to go out to California I asked her the next day I went in and met Jackson and you'd never know anything had happened we walk down the corridor together and you'd think that we were old buddies but if you took it lying down you'd get it in the neck so actually maybe that's a better punchline
of that that paragraph don't take it line down and then this is Bush on his father's death so it says with Perry's death Bush lost his only hero he had revered his father in a way that can only be defined as hero worship while
bush had followed a vastly different path in life than his father they had shared an Outlook and a personality they had never drifted apart either in the last years of his life this gives me goosebumps because I think about like
even if you have imperfect relationships with your family like you can fix that you can change that so I hope my kids describe me this way and I hope we have a relationship as they go off and become adults and and live their own world where bush is an adult but he's still talking to his dad all the time and still having look at they have family dinners every week so it says well bush had followed a vastly different path
than his father they had shared an Outlook and a personality they had never drifted apart either in the last years of his life Perry joined Bush for an evening meal every Sunday so the phrase ceaseless activity is repeated over and over again in descriptions of bush this is another example of this idea where Mark andreon says that in a startup you only experience ever experience two emotions Euphoria and Terror that you're prone to
flip rapidly from a day in which you're going to own the world that you think you're going to own the world and then to the next day you'll feel that your business is doomed and so we see Bush going through that now Bush found that all his striving for knowledge status and wealth had taken a tollen him though he generally succeeded in taming his nervous energies through ceaseless activity it wasn't always POS possible
to exercise the demon of anxiety he remained susceptible to bounce bouts of nervous tension throughout his prime years these eruptions of anxiety were hard to predict but undeniable all the same I can't think of one person I read
a biography about that did not experience that and I think the lesson there is everybody's got to figure out for themselves like how anxiety Terror discomfort emotional pain all this stuff it's inevitable so what can I do to
lessen its effects so I can work my way through it and not give up something that that bush used was he was a believer in hobbies and so it says as hard as Bush worked he seemed equally intent on relaxing and he did so by pursuing Myriad a myriad of hobbies he was a great believer in the tonic of effect of hobbies and took his private Pursuits seriously whenever he fancied something he did not go halfway that's for sure
this guy is incapable of doing anything by halves and then there's just this random line that I think is fantastic advice is advice that he gave his sons my father used this is his son's talking my father used the phrase justify the
space you occupy which graphically conveys a message justif the space you occupy throughout the book from the very first page almost to the very end is this theme that rears over over again the fact that the world that we live in
is going to be dominated by science and technology and if you don't learn how to utilize these tools you're going to be run over and he applies us to all kinds of different domains from education to war to building a company and so I pulled out this one specific paragraph and this one specific quote from Bush because I love it you can reduce it down to a maximum which is due do not emulate the ostrich For Better or Worse we are
destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering if the road we are on is slippery we cannot avoid a catastrophe by putting on the brakes closing our eyes or taking our hand off the wheel what is the same attitude of a scientist or Layman absence of wishful thinking no emulation of the ostrich as you can imagine for somebody like Bush learning was a lifelong Pursuit and one way to express the value
of that is this maximum it says his success and his pleasure in his success lent Credence to this assertion brains are wealth and wealth is the chief end of man a few pages later goes back to this idea for better or worse we're destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering and the increasing effect of technology on the world that we live in Bush disagreed that America had overdose on technology
that's hilarious because this is happening in the this is before the 1940s Bush disagreed that America had it over overdose on technology snapping at critics would we go back to an earlier time with less sophisticated technology he asked of course not because the standard of living has gone up not down due to technological Advance besides Humanity cannot separate itself from technology it is us for better or worse
he warned we are destined to live in a world devoted to modern science and engineering and then we get an overview of his entire life philosophy you could even say this was Van's religion he insisted that discipline must be self-applied or will be externally imposed Bush's own personal religion stood in sharp contrast to the collectivist ideal shunning organized denominations he raised his faith in individuality into a secular Spirit
spirituality a capacity for joy and self-mastery a sense of tradition and the courage to meet difficulties with a smile or a joke these were the Hallmarks in Bush view of a life worth living the greatest thing he told his MIT students is to play an effective part in a complete scheme of things he found romance in adversity and solace in hard work sheer activity was it was his antidote for doubt and the Avenue leading to existential
satisfaction and then he goes back to this point that universities are just mass-producing mediocrity but Bush bemoaned the failure of teachers to show students how to tackle a comprehensive engineering problem in its entirety
drawing his tools from various sources ranging across mathematics physics chemistry and even economics instead students were usually taught by a narrow specialist with an interest in the minutia of a very limited field that's a
direct quote from Bush they're taught by a narrow specialist remember this part because he's going to contrast the way people are being taught with what the education the self-education from Leonard D Vinci and Ben Franklin so he says he students are being taught by a narrow specialist with an interest in the minutia of a very limited field as a result the student is hounded Bush insisted his hours are crowded and
closely scheduled he has little time for reading or reflection and he does little such all but the exceptional students become automatons for Bush you this is a really good punchline here actually for Bush using Freedom wisely was the whole point of life and so must be the entire thrust of education and I would compare what he's saying there with what Edwin L said that former schooling destroys the capacity for individual
greatness and so he goes into more detail why he thinks this is dangerous and unnecessary in these days when there is a tendency to specialize so closely it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of being at once Broad
and deep did not pass with Leonardo da Vinci or Ben Franklin men of our profession we teachers are bound to be impressed with the tendency of youths of strikingly capable Minds to become interested in one small corner of
Science and unin interested in the rest of the world it is unfortunate when a brilliant and creative mind insists upon living in a modern monastic cell we feel the results of this tendency keenly as we find men of Affairs wholly Untouched by the culture of modern science and scientists without the leavening of humanities I'm going to pause right there think about what his friend edwiin L said that he wanted to build a company
at the intersection of Science and the humanities or technology and the humanities one most unfortunate product is the type of engineer who does not realize that in order to apply the fruits of science for the benefit of mankind he must not only grasp the principles of science but also know the needs and aspirations the possibilities and the frailties of Those whom he would serve in other words he's got to know the nature of
humans another way to think about bush is the fact that he's an evangelist for entrepreneurship for inventing for Learning and that he couldn't help himself he would invent for fun Bush was an irrepressible inventor while an
astute manager of research teams he often pursued his grandest intuitions alone for him inventing was a calling a way of life inventing was a game he was good at it and it relaxed and amused him no matter how tight a schedule Bush
never stayed away for long from his own experiments he would find sheer pleasure in tinkering and then out of his own experience he realizes the need to develop some kind of tool for thought and what he's going to describe here so he what about to R to here he's thinking about this in the 1930s he's going to describe the way you and I use personal computers today he mused about ways to automate the activity of thinking itself people
trying to think strength straight in the midst of complexity as he often did needed more than a device that just crunched numbers they needed help in disciplining their random ideas more important they needed a way to manage the rapid rapidly growing amount of documents and data that threatened to overwhelm The Specialist and render whole Fields incomprehensible to even the intellig Layman Bush wondered if
some sort of thinking machine might forall what looked to be an in an an inevitable information glut and so not only did he have these thoughts but he put them out he wrote them he shared them with other people he spoke about them in fact I I came across this paragraph a couple Pages later after he's talking about hey I need a tool for thought like what what could we do here what he's about to describe here he's describing the Kindle right in
1936 so he publishes an article in technology Review magazine and he says he envisioned paper books being replaced by microfilm readers he outlined a device that would store and reproduce on a screen thousands of books okay so now I got to fast forward in the timeline because I got to get to why Bush the most important thing he ever did and what he was most well known for is this idea of being the lion between government and Industry and
researchers so I'm going to read this whole part because I just think it's fantastic and it gives you an overview of why he was so important uh then he tackled a crucial topic that had that so far had been ignored this was the possibility of quote a leon between government and Industry and researchers arising in a time of stress so I guess I should pause here I just said I was going to read the whole thing and then I immediately interrupt
myself what we've already discovered is like how he he was like so farseeing he's constantly finding himself at the right place at the right time with the right set of skills and being able to see on the horizon a need for Change and so this he's describing something before World War II before I don't actually it might be it's uh before America is in World War II I should say so he's he's got this idea is
like hey in a time of stress we're going to need to coordinate and no there has to be somebody coordinating between government and Industry uh and researchers right he soon made it clear that the stress he worried about was another world war he hoped that the US would not be drawn into another conflict but if that happened an organization that United government academic and Industry researchers could prove of Great Value to the nation's military
establishment that was the idea he had before it actually occurred and he was dead right and this is why I feel quite quite strongly he said that it that if this organization of corporate research directors gets into healthy operative
condition it would also be an important factor an important Link in the chain between government and the industries of the country in times of stress for the purpose of the National Defense so this is happening in 1938 the
looming International crisis ended Bush's day days as a worldclass inventor and then he does something unbelievably intelligent here he moves to DC to Washington DC's in anticipation before he's asked to do this and this is why Bush could not tell if the US would be drawn into the war but he considered moving to the nation's capital in CA in case it was Washington is a central point he thought and I might be useful
there in time of War he did and this is crazy he didn't want to do this he just thought it was the right thing to do he did not relish the prospect of living so far from his cherished New England Washington struck him as alien ground and even visiting the city was an irritation to him and then we see this repetition he's repeating this idea that's said throughout the entire book it applies to war education company
building this is happening this chapter is on 1939 to 1940 so I think this is when he said it it is being realized with a thud that the world is probably going to be ruled by those who know how in the fullest sense to apply science and so in the early days of World War II before America jumps in Charles Lindberg the famous Aviator gives this speech you probably know his name because he actually was the first one to make that first non-stop flight
over the Atlantic I think he flew from like New York to Paris but anyways he gives his speech saying hey the Germans are just so much the German air force is just so F much further ahead there's no way we can compete with them I've read
in a bunch of different books that people thought he was like a Nazi sympathizer I have no idea I haven't looked into it but the reason I'm bringing this to your attention is because I just love van Bush's response
this his response to an enemy with Superior technology all right cool we're just going to have to get smarter I absolutely love this guy uh Lindberg left mark on Bush who did not easily easily accept influences Lindberg showed such respect for German air power that he usually uh convinced listeners that the Nazis should be granted a wide birth but Bush reacted differently to lindberg's scare tactics he was impelled
to action by the very threat which Lindberg so forcefully presented this is I know repeated this over and over again but this is a main trait of of bush that we have to get in he likes to fight not one to retreat from a fight Bush felt the country could keep its peace only by showing its strength he wisely asserted that every innovation in war could be styed by a counter Innovation he glimpsed around the curve of knowledge
exuding a Poise and confidence and that tomorrow's inventions would erase the advantage of today's dominant weapons this is way before the invention of atomic bomb how crazy is this he was all he was not unnerved by Germany's lead in milit Hardware neither did he accept American weakness this is a little bit about Bush coming to respect FDR even though he did not agree with his policies he says Roosevelt wanted an inventive government
rather than an orderly government that's a really interesting idea to apply to to two companies we want an inventive company rather than an orderly company I think big bureaucratic companies right they optimized for order over invention where startups or smaller little groups of small smart people actually want the the opposite I like that idea Roosevelt wanted an inventive government rather than an orderly government not a team of
reliable workhorses but a but a team of high-spirited and sensitive thorough breads even if that meant he must spend time handholding his primadana that just made me think of something let me grab it actually I have uh a couple quotes
when I got to this section it's about how uh it says FDR and Bush brevity is the soul of wit David ogy has really influenced my thinking on the importance of brevity but then I'm just sitting here thinking he's like oh like he wants
an inventive government rather than an orderly government and he's willing even if he has to spend time handholding his padas I'm like where have I heard that before I just put in the term lay golden eggs this comes from confessions of an advertising man which is David OG's autobiography I did this all the way back on Founders number 89 I got to reread that book soon it's been when did I put that podcast out September 15th
2019 yeah I got ogab is like a hero of mine now I got to reread his autobiography but he says something fascinating it's very similar to what FDR the conclusion FDR is arriving at here and David ory says tolerate genius Conan Doyle wrote that mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself my observation has been that mediocre men recognize genius resent it and feel compelled to destroy it there are very few Men of Genius in advertising
agencies or in any company anywhere but we what we need all we can find almost without exception they are disagreeable do not destroy them they lay go golden eggs so let me repeat that in even smaller tolerate genius there are very few Men of Genius but we need all that we can find almost without exception they are disagreeable do not destroy them they lay golden eggs absolutely fantastic go back to this book Bush was
a high-spirited thoroughbred and no doubt a primadonna he pulled out a single sheet of paper that contained a crisp description of his plan for mobilizing military technology remember brevity is the soul of wit that's what we're talking about here he pulls out a single sheet of paper that contained a crisp description of his plan for mobilizing military technology Bush then stealed himself to answer tough questions and he does it in like this uh
6 point it's like six it's number one through six like basically bullet points of what's like what he has in mind so it says he stealed himself to answer tough questions from the president but Roosevelt had already made up his mind after a few casual comments he wrote okay- FDR this is what he would do throughout the war like you sent him in information like you you need authorization to do something whatever
the case is this communication the way he the FDR would communicate think about all the stuff he's managing at this time it's got to be insane right and that that's what you were looking for you wanted okay- FDR on the uh like on the paperb to you okay D- FDR on the single sheet of paper Bush was elated he had his endorsement and it had come in less than 15 minutes and so OG's religion David OG's religion was brevity I'm going to quote
from a couple different I have all these highlights saved from his books this is from ogan advertising he says I ask you to forgive me for oversimplifying some complicated subjects and for the dogmatism of my style the dogmatism of brevity we are both in a hurry and this is also why his love of brevity is why I think David ogy may be the the single best writer that I've ever read any books from uh it says ogy believed in a
model of clarity and brevity his ideas gain powered gain power rather from a tur compact writing style I believe in the dogmatism of brevity all of the books and I'll leave a link uh in the show notes and available at F
podcast.com to list all the different um books I've read and podcasts I've made about ogy but what I try to convince people is like listen just right now go go on Amazon go wherever you buy your books order the unpublished David Oggy
it's like a collection of memos and writings he did these were internal things these were not meant for external Publications it's you don't have to read the book and it's like a collection of just ideas put on your nightstand put it
somewhere out on your desk whatever pick it up read it for 2 or 3 minutes 5 minutes a day whatever it is it's going to prompt thinking and ideas in just a few minutes it's absolutely fantastic but it it's a great description of his
like tur compact uh you know writing style more quotes from Bush here I'm going to read his quote first and then I'm going to read what my thinking like how can we apply it to what you and I are doing if we had been on our toes in war technology 10 years ago we would probably not have had this damn War Bush said and so my thinking is how do we not fall behind with technology inside of our companies something that appears over
and over again in these biographies is that uh these people have personal mottos uh Teddy Roosevelt's personal motto get action uh Ernest Shackleton the F the famous polar Explorer by endurance we conquer Stan Lee the creator of Marvel had a personal motto he says ever upward and this is Bush's personal motto he actually kept this on his desk it say say if the person was especially sharp he might even understand the Latin phrase that push
took that bush took for a personal motto it translate transl when translated into English it meant don't let the bastards get you down don't let the bastards get you down with his personal motto that's hilarious this is Bush's advice on how to have meetings he punctuated his meetings with precise declarations which lent an aura of certainty to his off-the-cuff decisions he would outline the situation up to that date using his
precise precisely accurate recol Recollections then he would say what's new what are our Alternatives what are the pros and cons of each then we'd kick those around then he'd say well it looks like we should do so and so but if we do that what are the pros and cons from this winnowing process a decision would arise he'd then say we'll do that we'll move he would not dilly dally and then it goes into using technology to develop
these unprecedented weapons of war but I found one paragraph in this section jump jumped out at me because it's describing what role Bush played and it really sounds like the role of a great founder right so it says uh Bush's role
would not be to build more powerful bombs but to organize the experts who would he would not immerse himself in the making of any special weapon but become the father in a sense to all weapons that would spring from his lab
he would sustain his far-flung researchers financially and organizationally protect them from arbitrary demands of others in government and in the end Shepherd the fruits of their labors onto the field of battle and then this is just an amazing description because with with FDR General Groves Oppenheimer and Bush they're really operating in a hidden world that very few people know exists I went there's some detail I I read this
fantastic book um about the partnership between Groves and Oppenheimer it's episode 250 215 rather if you haven't listened to it it's called The General and the genius Groves and Oppenheimer the unlikely partnership that built the Adam Bomb and of course bushes in that book as well but this was just one paragraph which is fantastic writing I wanted to share with you because it's a way to think about the Manhattan Project
throughout the war Bush shared in a secret world this secret world was like a box within a box a hidden room behind behind the wall of War it had its own rules or rather no rules it mocked all of Bush's other War workor looming in the background like a ghoulish Shadow with the passing of each day the shadow grew larger and larger until it engulfed everything in sight this was the new world of the atomic bomb and then a few pages later just two
sentences here that I think are very important because bush has got a giant ego but he's got to subjugate his own ego in service of the country and so this is how Bush saw his role in this project Bush saw his role as the relayer of reliable opinions from scientists in the trenches to Roosevelt and his AIDS he did not mind serving as a messenger provided he believed in the intelligence and Judgment of those who had written
his script so something bush has mentioned multiple times he mentioned his autobiography mentions in this book he talks about how rough and tough it's like we live in a tough world the direct line is we are living in a real and tough world and I think that statement is informed by all the things that he had to live through and just saw that you have to do when your survival your literal life and death survival was on
the line that you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary to actually win and so throughout the book there's some examples of how far they're willing to go and even like a cursory study of history is like in a time of War there is no limit to how far humans would go this is an example of that throughout the war the state of Germany's bomb project was the great unknown so they had to ponder ways to reduce this threat
one of those actions that this is this is an idea that Oppenheimer Groves and Bush are discussing one of those actions might be the kidnapping of the top Nazi physicist Werner Heisenberg who at the time was considered the key to Germany's hope for an atomic bomb this idea was taken seriously Enough by Robert omim Oppenheimer that he discussed the possibility of of kidna kidnapping Heisenberg with bush and Groves Bush
doubted the value of the Heisenberg scheme but this is the reason I'm saying I'm reading this point to you he had no moral qualms but thought the kidnapping would be hard to carry off and then he goes into the amount of Stress and Anxiety he's under he's really there's only like one other person maybe he might be the only person having his set of experiences in the world Bush felt isolated and he knew he had few people to lean on he was well
aware of the extraordinary loneliness of his own situation the anxiety was intense yet Bush refused to trouble the president president simply in order to calm his nerves he later said of his situation no one who has not been placed in in a post of heavy responsibility can realize what a lonesome feeling it is the best antidote for Bush's anxiety was action and then there's a great description of like the tangible effects
of Bush's work along with thousands maybe tens of thousands of other people but really the lesson here what I'm about to read to you and this is just a paragraph is for our purposes the more resourceful entrepreneur is the one
who's going to win the material output of the Allies was extraordinary all the more striking when cont contrasted with the inability of their enemies to make the most of the resources they had it took expertise in other words for the
Allies to outproduce the axis Germany and Japan were handicapped by an inadequate level of conversion to Munitions production and utterly halfhazard planning procedures by contrast Allied administrators proved astonishingly competent at churning out useful equipment while the axis began the war with a huge lead in weaponry by 1943 the material balance had reversed in that year the Allies outproduced the axis in aircraft by a factor of nearly 4
to one the more resourceful entrepreneurs are the ones that will win and then after the war there's an entire chapter on his essay called as we may think this is important because it it inspired generations of computer scientists and Founders and inventors the Atlantic published an essay by Bush entitled as we may think in it Bush describes a futuristic machine called the memic that produced or excuse me that promised to
give man access to and command the inherited knowledge of his ages he imagined the memic as a work desk with a with viewing screens a keyboard and a set of buttons and levers printed and written material even personal notes would be stored on microfilm and retrieved rapidly and displayed on the screen this device would be more than a private Library it would be a personalized Aid to memory that would remove the drudgery from Human thinking
Bush presumed that the human memory organized information by association so he imagined a process by which any two pieces of information could be linked together he considered this an aid to memory hence its name by mechanizing the process of Association the memic would extend the powers of the human mind and this is a great summary on the impact of this essay that he wrote he put into plain English a set of problems that
techn ologist must satisfy if they were to claim victory in the drive to meagn cognition that he had barely a clue how to actually achieve this in no way detracts from the value of his vision he gave a generation of inventors a Target to shoot at and then I just want to include this one line for completely selfish reasons because I feel that uh an apostle of the individual is a main theme of Founders podcast an apostle of the individual
Bush imagin a machine that could examplify the consciousness of a single person I love the fact that they described him as an apostle of the individual and then I'm going to get to what Bush said after the test he was at the first successful test of the atomic bomb it says it was July 16 1945 and the Manhattan Project was a success the atomic age had begun after things settled down Bush heard that Oppenheimer the Project's scientific Chief was
leaving by car for a day or two of rest Bush walked down to the base gate and waited for Oppenheimer to pass when Oppenheimer arrived at the gate his car slowed he could see Bush standing at attention at the moment of
recognition Bush took off his hat to Oppenheimer then the car sped off for Bush there was little left to do in New Mexico that afternoon he hopped a plane back to Washington Bush remembered only feeling tremendous relief what he later
described as quote about as great a release of tension as a man could possibly have and this is a hell of a sentence and great writing to put everything into perspective perhaps no inventor since Benjamin Franklin had exerted such a direct effect on American political life Bush expressed no guilt over the nature of his achievement he had married science and the state invention and destruction and then I want to end where
his autobiography leaves off his autobiography is published in 1970 the one I did last week he dies in 1974 and to me this is a reminder no matter how formidable you are and Van bush is one of the most formidable people I've ever ever studied we all share the same fate so this serves as a reminder our time here is limited Bush recovered slowly at home from a prostate operation but at 83 years old he was worn down and he knew
it his eyes were failing and his hands were no longer steady he could not work in his shop even worse he apparently had lost his fierceness he missed his wife Phoebe who had died 5 years earlier and often just stayed in bed maybe his age is against him now he just wants to lie there his housekeeper said we are all in hopes that he will get mad enough someday and get up and get the show on the road again but Bush felt his
Melancholy compared to his illustrious past his present life meant almost nothing and that is where I'll leave it if you want the full story this is a giant book there is so much more in the book if you want to read a fantastic
biography of Van Bush I will leave a link in the show notes and it's available at Founders podcast.com if you buy the book using that link you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time if you want to remember more of what you
read and you want to use the app that I use when I was pulling up all the stuff I was mentioning earlier about the domesticated computer and how it relates to the domesticated radio in this book I was using this app called readwise it's the best app I pay for you can get you can try it for free for 60 days 60-day free trial you go to read wise. Founders that is 271 books down 1,000 to go and I'll talk to you again soon