Today, we meet a reluctant explorer. 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.
In 1842, John Fremont, then a young army
lieutenant, prepared an expedition out of St. Louis
to map the Pacific Northwest. There he took on a
German mapmaker named Charles Preuss. Preuss was 39
years old, red-faced, and by the sound of his own
diaries, ill-humored as well. They were a badly
matched pair. Science writer John Noble Wilford
calls Fremont the archetypical Western
hero-explorer -- and Preuss the grumbling
tenderfoot.
Fremont also added a young guide named Kit Carson to his troop. Then he
set off on the first of two journeys that would
establish Fremont's and Carson's fame and tell
America the shape and reach of its huge forbidding
West.
When they came to Wyoming's Wind River Mountains,
Fremont dragged his party up the highest peak to
make a speech and plant an American flag. That
piece of theater was duly recorded in two places.
The Eastern newspapers thought it was just grand.
In his diary, Preuss grumbled about Fremont's
childishness and wished he could be back home with
his wife.
Preuss' diary goes on: "... eternal prairie and
grass ... I wish I were in Washington ..." he says.
Or "I [haven't] formed a very high opinion of
Fremont's astronomical manipulations ... I wish I
had a drink." Preuss seemed to be as wrong for the
job as one could be. But he played perfect
counterpoint on Fremont's stage. If Fremont saw the
poetry in the unfolding landscapes about him,
Preuss saw precise longitudes and latitudes.
Preuss's accuracy wasn't going to be jiggled by
dreams.
In an odd way, Fremont seemed to understand their
relationship better than Preuss did. By some trick
of charisma, he dragged Preuss off on a second trip
in 1843. This time Preuss gave Congress the
definitive maps of the American West. And he did it
on the eve of the great American westward
expansion. His maps led Brigham Young to Great Salt
Lake. They led my great grandfather to California
before the gold rush, and thousands more just
after.
The Preuss/Fremont collaboration continued through
several more expeditions. Finally, in 1853, Preuss
reached 50, and his constitution simply couldn't
take it any more. He had to quit these adventures.
Then it all went bad. Preuss committed suicide a
year later. Fremont went on into high politics and
was soon seen by the American public as a showman
and a fake.
Together, Fremont's dreams and Preuss's technical
ability gave us the first real view of Western
America. Apart, neither could survive. And so it is
with technology. Neither our dreams nor our
execution can stand by themselves. We need them
both -- we go nowhere if we don't have them both.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
