Lesson #2 – FIRST ISNT ALWAYS BEST.

John Fitch was the first to operate a steamboat service, not the commonly presumed Robert Fulton. But Fulton learned from Fitchs mistakes and triumphed on a different river at a more propitious time. Similarly with Henry Ford, who was late to automobile production, Charles Goodyear with vulcanized rubber and Isaac Singer and his sewing machine. Mark Gumz at Olympus has the point: Understanding comes from failure; success comes from understanding failure and acting upon this knowledge. The path beaten to somebodys door will reveal the potholes.

From the book THEY MADE AMERICA by Harold Evans, with Gail Buckland and David Lefer. (c) 2004 Little, Brown & Co.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. Jonathan Swift

Lesson #1 – MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS.

Edwin Armstrong was constantly trying to do things in radio circuitry he was told by the experts were impossible. He kept reminding them of one of the sayings of Henry Wheeler Shaw (181885), the Lanesboro, Massachusetts, lecturer and humorist known as Josh Billings: It aint ignorance that causes all the trouble in this world. Its the things people know that aint so. Time and again in this study we find that breakthroughs come from the discarding of assumptions. Ignorance that ignites curiosity is a better starting point than half-knowledge. No man becomes a fool, said the immigrant electrical engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz, until he stops asking questions.

From the book THEY MADE AMERICA by Harold Evans, with Gail Buckland and David Lefer. (c) 2004 Little, Brown & Co.

They Made America
by Harold Evans
Little, Brown – October 2004
496 Pages – ISBN 0316277665

Summary:

Developed in tandem with a four-part PBS series to air in November, Evans’s profusely illustrated and elegantly written book offers the same breadth and scope as his previous bestseller, The American Century. Evans, former president and publisher of Random House, profiles 70 of America’s leading inventors, entrepreneurs and innovators, some better known than others. Along with such obvious choices as Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, Evans profiles Lewis Tappan (an abolitionist who dreamed up the idea of credit ratings), Gen. Georges Doriot (pioneer of venture capital) and Joan Ganz Cooney, of the Children’s Television Workshop. From A.P. Giannini (father of consumer banking) to Ida Rosenthal (the Maidenform Bra tycoon), Evans shows innovation as both a product of and a contributor to the grand apparatus of American society. And his spotlight is on the true American elite: the aristocracy of strategic visionaries, creative risk takers and entrepreneurial adventurers thriving in their natural environment, the free-market democracy of the United States. Evans doesn’t neglect the latest generation of innovators, among them Google’s Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He concludes with a note of caution, pointing out the nation’s recent loss of dominance in the hard sciences. But just as Edison was inspired by popular biographies of innovators before him, so might the next generation of scientific and commercial explorers find guidance in Evans’s exciting survey.

While critical discussion has surfaced in recent years about the erosion of the IDFs mission in light of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and its long-term characterization as the peoples army, undeniably the military continues to play a crucial and central role in the life of the country. Its influence is an enduring one in ways both obvious as well as latent. From amplifying and refining national character traits such as risk-taking, creativity, and ingenuity to instructing the problemsolving skills of generations of thinkers to creating the backbone of technological innovation, an entire world-class industry is built around the military.

Rafael Eitans one-year directive has stretched into nearly a quarter of a century. By 2003, nearly 21 classes of more than 440 soldiers have called themselves elite Talpiot alumni. In recent years, the IDF has expanded the Talpiot initiative, creating similarly conceived programs. Although Talpiot remains at the pinnacle, some of the other spinoffs include Psgot, which focuses on physics and electronics, and Atidim , which finds recruits with strong potential who come from disadvantaged or overlooked schools and neighborhoods across the country, and who havent been deeply exposed to science and engineering but have the aptitude for it.

Only a handful of Talpiot soldiers have become military careerists. There are 2 colonels, 14 lieutenant colonels, and 1 brigadier general (as of 2003). Id like to have more brigadier generals or plane squadron commanders coming out of Talpiot, said Colonel Nagel. However, Talpiot has served as an important graduation to prosperity. During their years of service, recruits have all been involved intimately in some of the military and defenses most important systems. Although, for the most part, their achievements are left unpublicized, their fingerprints can be lifted off of Israels UAV program, the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system, and scores of communications, wireless technology, and weapons systems.

Upon entering the civilian world, Talpiot alumni have made equally important contributions. Many have continued to develop technology in the commercial realm, and the programs graduates include a significant list of players in Israels high-tech world. Marius Nacht, one of the co-founders of Check Point Software Technologies, the company that virtually created the commercial Internet security firewall, came out of Talpiot, as did Jonathan Silverberg, who took his Talpiot background in developing locations systems in the Israeli Air Force to Decell Technologies, a mobile traffic information company. Before co-founding Provigent, a maker of chip systems for fixed wireless broadband, Dan Charash developed digital signal processing telecommunications applications in elite Ministry of Defense and IDF units following his graduation from Talpiot.

Talpiot is like a military Mensa. The soldiers of Talpiot begin their military service at Hebrew University. They are housed apart from the main student population, living instead in specially built barracks on the Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem. During the academic portion of the program, they study for their bachelors of science in physics, mathematics, and computer science, and they take technological courses at an accelerated rate, covering about 40 percent more material than they would in a regular BS degree program . These soldiers are also trained in military strategy and complete an officers training course. We expect them all to become officers, said Colonel Yaacov Nagel, the acting head of research and development. If after three years they fail the officers class, they wont be Talpiot graduates. In the last class we almost lost one, he said. It would be very shameful if we lost one after three years. However, until now theyve all become officers.

They spend their summers doing 12 weeks of basic training. It is the same tough, no-holds-barred program given to the paratroopers. They train in the desert, hiking with 10 to 20 kilos and rifles on their backs, and they learn to jump out of planes. We put them through a tough course, the same as paratroopers, because we want them to be strong and brave too, explained Zadik.

Talpiot soldiers take special courses rotating with each force of the army: intelligence, navy, and air force. They learn about the weapon systems from the inside. They sit in cockpits of fighter jets and shoot off weaponry to gain a real understanding of its operational and technological needs. Its not just theoretical, explained Zadik. They know what it means to spend cold nights for one month in the Negev in a tank. During the second year, they devise a project of their own choosing for three months. After all, Lieutenant Colonel Poleg reiterated, The idea of Talpiot is to raise the next generation of R&D. The last six years of the program are divided between two years in field units and four as an R&D officer.

The idea behind Talpiot was to create a unique group of men and women with extremely high IQs and aptitude for performance, and provide this group with an equally unique environment. Talpiot members are exposed to multidisciplinary studies in military strategy, the sciences, computers, math, and physics, and they receive instruction from the nations elite such as Nobel prize-winning economists. They participate in top-flight security systems both in the field and in the lab establishing fields of inquiry. There are many brilliant ideas, said Major Barak Ben-Eliezar, Talpiots commander. Most of them have ideas, but not just ideasthey bring about change.