Features on world-changing breakthroughs by Malcolm Gladwell, Walter Isaacson, and others (from Byliner.com).
"An invention has to make sense in the world it finishes in," Tim O'Reilly once mused, "not in the world it started." That's certainly true of television, which Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in 2002, and why the man who invented it is long lost to history. "Philo T. Farnsworth was the inventor of television," Gladwell wrote. "Through the nineteen-thirties and forties, he engaged in a heroic battle to perfect and commercialize his discovery, fending off creditors and predators, and working himself to the point of emotional and physical exhaustion. His nemesis was David Sarnoff, the head of RCA, then one of the most powerful American electronics companies."
In 2003, Walter Isaacson surveyed the inventions of Benjamin Franklin. "He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it," Isaacson wrote of the founding father. "He devised bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He was a pioneer of do-it-yourself civic improvement, launching such schemes as a lending library, volunteer fire corps, insurance association and matching-grant fund raiser. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism."
On its fortieth birthday, Oliver Burkeman described the Internet's beginnings. "It's impossible to say for certain when the Internet began, mainly because nobody can agree on what, precisely, the internet is," he wrote. "But 29 October 1969 – 40 years ago next week – has a strong claim for being, as [Leonard] Kleinrock puts it today, 'the day the infant internet uttered its first words'. At 10.30pm, as Kleinrock's fellow professors and students crowded around, a computer was connected to the IMP, which made contact with a second IMP, attached to a second computer, several hundred miles away at the Stanford Research Institute, and an undergraduate named Charley Kline tapped out a message. Samuel Morse, sending the first telegraph message 125 years previously, chose the portentous phrase: 'What hath God wrought?' But Kline's task was to log in remotely from LA to the Stanford machine, and there was no opportunity for portentousness: his instructions were to type the command LOGIN."
And Carol Hoffman reported on a man intent on celebrating the invention of flight. "Rick Young—restaurateur, technophile, obsessed basement hobbyist—is about to pilot the first perfect replica of the 1903 Wright flyer, the rickety, wood-and-fabric biplane that kick started aviation history," she wrote. "At least four other teams are poised to launch flyers of their own, but Young is rushing to make it into the record books first—or become the race's first casualty."
Spotlighted Stories:
No. 1 The Televisionary by Malcolm Gladwell
The New Yorker | May 2002
No. 2 Citizen Ben's Great Virtues by Walter Isaacson
Time | June 2003
No. 3 One Hundred Years of Altitude by Carol Hoffman
Outside | June 2002
No. 4 Forty Years of the Internet by Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian | October 2009
In 2003, Walter Isaacson surveyed the inventions of Benjamin Franklin. "He proved by flying a kite that lightning was electricity, and he invented a rod to tame it," Isaacson wrote of the founding father. "He devised bifocal glasses and clean-burning stoves, charts of the Gulf Stream and theories about the contagious nature of the common cold. He was a pioneer of do-it-yourself civic improvement, launching such schemes as a lending library, volunteer fire corps, insurance association and matching-grant fund raiser. He helped invent America's unique style of homespun humor and philosophical pragmatism."
On its fortieth birthday, Oliver Burkeman described the Internet's beginnings. "It's impossible to say for certain when the Internet began, mainly because nobody can agree on what, precisely, the internet is," he wrote. "But 29 October 1969 – 40 years ago next week – has a strong claim for being, as [Leonard] Kleinrock puts it today, 'the day the infant internet uttered its first words'. At 10.30pm, as Kleinrock's fellow professors and students crowded around, a computer was connected to the IMP, which made contact with a second IMP, attached to a second computer, several hundred miles away at the Stanford Research Institute, and an undergraduate named Charley Kline tapped out a message. Samuel Morse, sending the first telegraph message 125 years previously, chose the portentous phrase: 'What hath God wrought?' But Kline's task was to log in remotely from LA to the Stanford machine, and there was no opportunity for portentousness: his instructions were to type the command LOGIN."
And Carol Hoffman reported on a man intent on celebrating the invention of flight. "Rick Young—restaurateur, technophile, obsessed basement hobbyist—is about to pilot the first perfect replica of the 1903 Wright flyer, the rickety, wood-and-fabric biplane that kick started aviation history," she wrote. "At least four other teams are poised to launch flyers of their own, but Young is rushing to make it into the record books first—or become the race's first casualty."
Spotlighted Stories:
No. 1 The Televisionary by Malcolm Gladwell
The New Yorker | May 2002
No. 2 Citizen Ben's Great Virtues by Walter Isaacson
Time | June 2003
No. 3 One Hundred Years of Altitude by Carol Hoffman
Outside | June 2002
No. 4 Forty Years of the Internet by Oliver Burkeman
The Guardian | October 2009
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