Today, we'll visit colonial America. The University
of Houston's College of Engineering presents this
series about the machines that make our
civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity
created them.
The mood of colonial America
was one of confidence, self-assurance, and a
passionate belief in freedom. For me it's contained
in an image from the Summer of 1790 -- the sight of
John Fitch's steamboat moving earnestly up the
Delaware River propelled by an array of Indian
canoe paddles. Those paddles boldly proclaimed
Fitch's amateur-but-functional freedom from any
engineering tradition.
We have to understand the intensity of the colonial
impulse to be free to understand colonial
technology and innovation. The word freedom was
much used, and it swept in more than just political
independence from England. It also included
cultural freedom from Europe. The first significant
American poet, Barlow, who repeatedly asserted our
cultural independence, brashly called America a
theatre for the display of merit of every kind.
Sometimes this impulse toward freedom was downright
arrogant. A typical anonymous Revolutionary War
song -- set to the skirl of fife and drum -- ends
with the lines:
And we'll march up the Heav'nly streets,
And ground our arms at Jesus' feet.
Other times it resulted in simple
expressions of pleasure, as in Francis Hopkinson's
widely-sung lilting melody, My Days Have Been so
Wondrous Free. But in either case, the direct,
innocent, home-made, and somehow completely engaging
quality of it captures our imaginations. It's strong,
affecting, and completely amateur.
Revolutionary America does that to you again and
again. You see Jefferson's mansion at Monticello,
of which art historian Kenneth Clark says:
He had to invent a great deal of it himself ...
Doors that open as one approaches them, a clock
that tells the days of the week, a bed so placed
that one gets out of it into either of two rooms --
all this suggests the quirky ingenuity of a
creative man working alone outside any accepted
body of tradition.
You find self-taught Ben Franklin
providing the world with really important and
permanent insights into the nature of electricity.
You discover a small band of home-grown intellectuals
inventing a government of and by their people.
The engineering of this new land had the mind-set
of people who knew that they could do whatever they
wanted to do and do it better than -- and without
reference to -- what had been done before. Whether
it was designing the perfect capital city, building
the Erie canal, or marching their armies "right up
the heav'nly street" -- they knew that nothing was
beyond them.
The worm of self-doubt afflicts so much of our
technology today. But it was not to be found among
these people. With clear, childlike self-assurance,
they really did do the impossible.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
