In his famous Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs—the great garage innovator of our time—told several stories about the creative power of stumbling into new experiences: dropping out of college and sitting in on a calligraphy class that would ultimately shape the graphic interface of the Macintosh; being forced out of Apple at the age of thirty, which enabled him to launch Pixar into animated movies and create the NeXT computer. “The heaviness of being successful,” Jobs explained, “was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”
Yet there is a strange irony at the end of Jobs’s speech. After documenting the ways that unlikely collisions and explorations can liberate the mind, he ended with a more sentimental appeal to be “true to yourself”:
Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
If there’s anything we know from the history of innovation—and particularly from the history of the time travelers—it is that being true to yourself is not enough. Certainly, you don’t want to be trapped by orthodoxy and conventional wisdom. Certainly, the innovators profiled in this book had the tenacity to stick with their hunches for long periods of time. But there is comparable risk in being true to your own sense of identity, your own roots. Better to challenge those intuitions, explore uncharted terrain, both literal and figurative. Better to make new connections than remain comfortably situated in the same routine. If you want to improve the world slightly, you need focus and determination; you need to stay within the confines of a field and open the new doors in the adjacent possible one at a time. But if you want to be like Ada, if you want to have an “intuitive perception of hidden things”—well, in that case, you need to get a little lost.
Acknowledgments
There is a predictable social rhythm to writing books, in my experience at least: they begin very close to solitude, the writer alone with his or her ideas, and they stay in that intimate space for months, sometimes years, interrupted only by the occasional interview or conversation with an editor. And then, as publication nears, the circle widens: suddenly a dozen people are reading and helping usher a rough, unformed manuscript into life as a polished final product. And then the book hits the shelves, and all that work becomes almost terrifyingly public, with thousands of bookstore employees, reviewers, radio interviewers, and readers interacting with words that began their life in such a private embrace. And then the whole cycle starts all over again.
But this book followed a completely different pattern. It was a social, collaborative process from the very beginning, thanks to the simultaneous development of our PBS/BBC television series. The stories and observations—not to mention the overarching structure of the book—evolved out of hundreds of conversations: in California and London and New York and Washington, via e-mail and Skype, with dozens of people. Making the series and book was the hardest work I have ever done in my life—and not just when they forced me to descend into the sewers of San Francisco. But it was also the most rewarding work I’ve ever done, in large part because my collaborators were such inventive and entertaining people. This book has benefited from their intelligence and support in a thousand different ways.
My gratitude begins with the irrepressible Jane Root, who persuaded me to try my hand at television, and remained a tireless champion of this project throughout its life. (Thanks to Michael Jackson for introducing us so many years ago.) As producers, Peter Lovering, Phil Craig, and Diene Petterle shaped the ideas and narratives in this book with great skill and creativity, as did the directors Julian Jones, Paul Olding, and Nic Stacey. A project this complex, with so many potential narrative threads, would have been almost impossible to complete without the help of our researchers and story producers, Jemila Twinch, Simon Willgoss, Rowan Greenaway, Robert MacAndrew, Gemma Hagen, Jack Chapman, Jez Bradshaw, and Miriam Reeves. I’d also like to thank Helena Tait, Kirsty Urquhart-Davies, Jenny Wolf, and the rest of the team at Nutopia. (Not to mention the brilliant illustrators at Peepshow Collective.) At PBS I’m indebted to the extraordinary vote of confidence from Beth Hoppe and Bill Gardner, as well as from Jennifer Lawson at CPB, Dave Davis from OPB, and Martin Davidson at the BBC.
A book that covers so many different fields can only succeed by drawing on the expertise of others. I’m grateful to the many talented people we interviewed for this project, some of whom were kind enough to read portions of the manuscript in draft: Terri Adams, Katherine Ashenburg, Rosa Barovier, Stewart Brand, Jason Brown, Dr. Ray Briggs, Stan Bunger, Kevin Connor, Gene Chruszcs, John DeGenova, Jason Deichler, Jacques Desbois, Dr. Mike Dunne, Caterina Fake, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Gai Gherardi, David Giovannoni, Peggi Godwin, Thomas Goetz, Alvin Hall, Grant Hill, Sharon Hudgens, Kevin Kelly, Craig Koslofsky, Alan MacFarlane, David Marshall, Demetrios Matsakis, Alexis McCrossen, Holley Muraco, Lyndon Murray, Bernard Nagengast, Max Nova, Mark Osterman, Blair Perkins, Lawrence Pettinelli, Dr. Rachel Rampy, Iegor Reznikoff, Eamon Ryan, Jennifer Ryan, Michael D. Ryan, Steven Ruzin, Davide Salvatore, Tom Scheffer, Eric B. Schultz, Emily Thompson, Jerri Thrasher, Bill Wasik, Jeff Young, Ed Yong, and Carl Zimmer.
At Riverhead, my editor and publisher Geoffrey Kloske’s usual astute sense of what the book needed editorially was accompanied by an artful vision of the book’s design that shaped the project from the very beginning. Thanks also to Casey Blue James, Hal Fessenden, and Kate Stark at Riverhead, and my UK publishers, Stefan McGrath and Josephine Greywoode. As always, thanks to my agent, Lydia Wills, for keeping faith in this project for almost half a decade.
Finally, my love and gratitude to my wife, Alexa, and my sons, Clay, Rowan, and Dean. Writing books for a living has generally meant that I spend more time with them, procrastinating by puttering around the house and chatting with Alexa, picking the kids up from school. But this project took me away from home more than it kept me there. So thanks to all four of you for tolerating my absences. Hopefully they made the heart grow fonder. I know they did mine.
Notes
Introduction
“We could imagine” … “system of cogs and wheels”: De Landa, p. 3.
“I have a friend who’s an artist”: From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, a 1981 documentary.
Chapter 1. Glass
A small community of glassmakers from Turkey: Willach, p. 30.
In 1291, in an effort: Toso, p. 34.
After years of trial and error … Angelo Barovier: Verità, p. 63.
For several generations, these ingenious new devices: Dreyfus, pp. 93–106.
Within a hundred years of Gutenberg’s invention: http://faao.org/what/heritage/exhibits/online/spectacles/.
Legend has it that one of them: Pendergrast, p. 86.
“one of the worst teachers”: Quoted in Hecht, p. 30.
“If I had been promised”: Quoted ibid., p. 31.
Some of the most revered works of art: Woods-Marsden, p. 31.
Back in Murano, the glassmakers had figured out: Pendergrast, pp. 119–120.
“When you wish to see”: Quoted ibid., p. 138.
“It is as if all humans”: Macfarlane and Martin, p. 69.
“The most powerful prince in the world”: Mumford, p. 129.
“How from these ashes”: Quoted ibid., p. 131.
Chapter 2. Cold
“Ice is an interesting subject”: Thoreau, p. 192.
“Plan etc for transporting Ice to Tropical Climates”: Quoted in Weightman, loc. 274–276.
“In a country where at some seasons”: Quoted ibid., loc. 289–290.
“fortunes larger than we shall know what to do with”: Quoted ibid., loc. 330.
“No joke. A vessel”: Quoted ibid., loc. 462–463.
“On Monday the 9th instant”: Quoted ibid., loc. 684–688.
“This day I sailed
from Boston”: Quoted ibid., loc. 1911–1913.
“Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants”: Thoreau, p. 193.
“In workshops, composing rooms, counting houses”: Quoted in Weightman, loc. 2620–2621.
“cooling rooms packed with natural ice”: Miller, p. 205.
“It was this application of elementary physics”: Ibid., p. 208.
“a city-country [food] system that was the most powerful”: Ibid.
“the greatest aggregation of labor”: Sinclair.
“a direct sloping path”: Dreiser, p. 620.
A string of shipwrecks delayed ice shipments: Wright, p. 12.
“might better serve mankind”: Quoted in Gladstone, p. 34.
By 1870, the southern states: Shachtman, p. 75.
Any meat or produce that had been frozen: Kurlansky, pp. 39–40.
“The inefficiency and lack of sanitation”: Quoted ibid., p. 129.
His first great test came: http://www.filmjournal.com/filmjournal/content_display/news-and-features/features/technology/e3iad1c03f082a43aa277a9bb65d3d561b5.
“It takes time to pull down”: Ingels, p. 67.
Swelling populations in Florida, Texas: Polsby, pp. 80–88.
Millions of human beings around the world: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/jul/12/story-ivf-five-million-babies.
Chapter 3. Sound
Reznikoff’s theory is that Neanderthal communities: http://www.musicandmeaning.net/issues/showArticle.php?artID=3.2.
In the annals of invention … Phonautograph: Klooster, p. 263.
Just a few years ago, a team of sound historians: http://www.firstsounds.org.
His name was Alexander Graham Bell: Mercer, pp. 31–32.
“It may sound ridiculous to say”: Quoted in Gleick 2012, loc. 3251–3257.
Eventually, the antitrust lawyers: Gertner, pp. 270–271.
Effectively, they were taking snapshots: http://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/center_crypt_history/publications/sigsaly_start_digital.shtml.
“We are assembled today”: Quoted ibid.
Working out of his home lab: Hijiya, p. 58.
As a transmission device for the spoken word: Thompson, p. 92.
“I look forward to the day”: Quoted in Fang, p. 93.
“The ether wave passing over the tallest towers”: Quoted in Adams, p. 106.
But somehow, lurking behind all of De Forest’s accumulation: Hilja, p. 77.
Almost overnight, radio made jazz: Carney, pp. 36–37.
“It is no wonder that so much of the search for”: Quoted in Brown, p. 176.
“Sympathetic to the society’s mission”: Thompson, pp. 148–158.
“No one could figure out the sound”: Quoted in Diekman, p. 75.
Just a few days before the sinking: Frost, p. 466.
The German U-boats roaming the North Atlantic: Ibid., p. 476–477.
“I pleaded with them”: Quoted ibid., p. 478.
China was almost 110 boys: Yi, p. 294.
Chapter 4. Clean
In December 1856, a middle-aged Chicago engineer: Cain, p. 355.
During the Pleistocene era, vast ice fields: Miller, p. 68.
“You have been guilty”: Quoted ibid., p. 70.
“green and black slime”: Miller, p. 75.
That rate of growth … a lot of excrement: Chesbrough, 1871.
“The gutters are running”: Quoted in Miller, p. 123.
“The river is positively red”: Quoted ibid., p. 123.
Many of them subscribed … “death fogs”: Miller, p. 123.
“the most competent engineer”: Cain, p. 356.
Building by building, Chicago was lifted: Ibid., p. 357.
“The people were in [the hotel]”: Cohn, p. 16.
“Never a day passed”: Macrae, p. 191.
Within three decades, more than twenty cities: Burian, Nix, Pitt, and Durrans.
“came out cooked”: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/chicago/peopleevents/e_canal.html.
“The grease and chemicals”: Sinclair, p. 110.
Working in Vienna’s General Hospital: Goetz, loc. 612–615.
“Bathing fills the head”: Quoted in Ashenburg, p. 100.
As a child, Louis XIII: Ashenburg, p. 105.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and her sister: Ibid., p. 221.
“By the last decades”: Ibid., p. 201.
“A large part of my success”: http://www.zeiss.com/microscopy/en_us/about-us/nobel-prize-winners.html.
Koch established a unit of measure: McGuire, p. 50.
It was an interest born: Ibid., pp. 112–113.
“Leal did not have time”: Ibid., p. 200.
“I do there find and report”: Quoted in ibid., p. 248.
“And if the experiment turned out”: Quoted ibid., p. 228.
About a decade ago, two Harvard professors: Cutler and Miller, pp. 1–22.
“In total, a woman’s thighs”: Wiltse, p. 112.
Annie Murray had created America’s first commercial bleach: The Clorox Company: 100 Years, 1,000 Reasons (The Clorox Company, 2013), pp. 18–22.
In 2011, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Reinvent-the-Toilet-Challenge.
Chapter 5. Time
In October 1967, a group of scientists from around the world … But the General Conference on Weights and Measures: Blair, p. 246.
To confirm his observations: Kreitzman, p. 33.
“The marvelous property of the pendulum”: Drake, loc. 1639.
His astronomical observations had suggested: http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/instruments/pendulum.html.
The watchmakers were the advance guard: Mumford, p. 134.
“On a rainy day”: Thompson, pp. 71–72.
“the employer must use the time of his labour”: Ibid., p. 61.
“deadly statistical clock”: Dickens, p. 130.
Dennison had a vision of machines: Priestley, p. 5.
Dennison’s “Wm. Ellery” watch … cost just $3.50: Ibid., p. 21.
“It is simply preposterous”: http://srnteach.us/HIST1700/assets/projects/unit3/docs/railroads.pdf.
The United States remained temporally challenged … William F. Allen: McCrossen, p. 92.
“the day of two noons”: Bartky, pp. 41–42.
Instead, pulses of electricity traveling: McCrossen, p. 107.
In the 1890s … Marie Curie proposed: Senior, pp. 244–245.
“a clock that ticks once a year”: http://longnow.org/clock/.
“If you have a Clock ticking”: Ibid.
Chapter 6. Light
In a diary entry from 1743: Irwin, p. 47.
When darkness fell, they would drift: Ekirch, p. 306.
In the deep waters of the North Atlantic: Dolin, loc. 1272.
In a 1751 letter, Ben Franklin: Quoted ibid., loc. 1969–1971.
The candle business became so lucrative: Dolin, loc. 1992.
It’s remarkable to think: Irwin, p. 50.
Somewhere on the order of three hundred thousand: Ibid., pp. 51–52.
“During periods of major technological change”: Nordhaus, p. 29.
Today, you can buy three hundred days of artificial light: Ibid., p. 37.
The problem with this story: Friedel, Israel, and Finn, loc. 1475.
“celluloid, wood shavings”: Ibid., loc. 1317–1320.
“I cannot help laughing”: Quoted in Stross, loc. 1614.
What Edison and the muckers created: Friedel, Israel, and Finn, loc. 2637.
Smyth interpreted this correspondence: Bruck, p. 104.
In October 1887, a New York paper … Blitzlicht: Riis, loc. 2228.
“We used to go in the small hours”: Ibid., loc. 2226.
“The spectacle of half a dozen”: Ibid., loc. 2238.
Within a decade of their publication: Yochelson, p. 148.
Even though neon appears: Ribbat, pp. 31–33.
In the early 1920s, the electri
c glow: Ibid., pp. 82–83.
“Las Vegas is the only city”: Wolfe, p. 7.
“Allusion and comment, on the past or present”: Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour, p. 21.
“In some way … they are able to generate”: Wells, p. 28.
“it was the result of a storm of inventions”: Gertner, p. 256.
“The laser is to ordinary light”: Ibid., p. 255.
Big stores did much better: Basker, pp. 21–23.
Conclusion: The Time Travelers
A world of numbers: Toole, p. 20.
“Owing to some peculiarity”: Quoted in Swade, p. 158.
“I am very anxious to talk to you”: Quoted ibid., p. 159.
“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental”: Quoted ibid., p. 170.
Bibliography
Adams, Mike. Lee de Forest: King of Radio, Television and Film. Springer/ Copernicus Books, 2012.
Allen, William F. “Report on the subject of National Standard Time Made to the General and Southern Railway Time Convention held in St. Louis, April 11, 1883, and in New York City, April 18, 1883.” New York Public Library. http://archives.nypl.org/uploads/collection/pdf_finding_aid/allenwf.pdf.
Ashenburg, Katherine. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History. North Point, 2007.
Baldry, P. E. The Battle Against Bacteria. Cambridge University Press, 1965.
Barnett, JoEllen. Time’s Pendulum: The Quest to Capture Time—From Sundials to Atomic Clock. Thomson Learning, 1999.
Bartky, I. R. “The Adoption of Standard Time,” Technology and Culture 30 (1989): 48–49.
Basker, Emek. “Raising the Barcode Scanner: Technology and Productivity in the Retail Sector,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 4, no. 3 (2012): 1–27.
Berger, Harold. The Mystery of a New Kind of Rays: The Story of Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen and His Discovery of X-Rays. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012.
Blair, B. E. “Precision Measurement and Calibration: Frequency and Time,” NBS Special Publication 30, no. 5, selected NBS Papers on Frequency and Time.
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World Page 19
