expects to live another century, we shouldn’t be afraid to start on a few long-term projects of our own. Our great- grandchildren will thank us.”
So far, my audience was as attentive as I could have hoped. But I hadn’t yet gotten to my main point, which was that we shouldn’t underestimate what can be achieved by our present population, right now and in the near- term future.
“Remember,” I continued, “at the time of the American Revolution, Boston contained no more than twenty thousand people and New York City between twenty-five and thirty thousand. The states of Rhode Island and New Jersey each had populations of only sixty thousand persons, while mighty New York and industrious Connecticut were barely at the two hundred thousand level. If we then consider what was achieved in the years immediately following the Revolution—Fulton’s steamboat in 1807; dozens of textile mills along New England’s rivers by the 1820s; the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad chartered in 1827—well, we should be bursting with optimism.
“Also, we tend to forget that the early American factories turned out substantial quantities of manufactured goods with surprisingly small numbers of workers. The blast furnaces of prerevolutionary days were run by about a dozen men. The average cotton factory employed thirty-five people, a paper mill fifteen, a flour mill only three. In 1807, a sizable shop in the Pennsylvania countryside manufactured steam engines and a variety of mechanical devices for many different industries, while employing on average no more than thirty-five workmen.”
I was now ready for the
“In the mid-1800s, the Norris Locomotive Works of Philadelphia built locomotives, each of which contained some five thousand separate parts, each part designed, then cast or forged or pressed on site”—now it was Dr. Wilson Hardy, Sr., my dear old dad, who was glaring at me, so I hastily summarized—“sixty-four of these monsters were manufactured in a year with a workforce of only six hundred. Imagine: sixty-four locomotives built from scratch in a year by six hundred men!”
“Thanks, Wil,” my father said firmly, but with a slight smile to indicate that he was pleased I had done my homework and learned so much interesting history. Yet I could tell that I had said more than enough to make my point.
Captain Nordstrom most kindly wrapped up my remarks with a concession: “I guess that young Wilson here—a chip off the old block—has mustered enough facts to shoot me out of the water. So, if we need not be discouraged by the size of our population, let us go on to other matters.”
Later that night, I told Sarah about my brave entry into the great debate and described what I considered my creditable showing. She grew pensive.
Finally, very quietly, she said, “If your predictions about population growth are going to prove accurate, we will have to do our share, won’t we?”
My response, half in yearning and half in panic, was, “Of course, but shouldn’t we see the general situation organized a little better before we rush ahead with our own plans?”
Sarah had the final word on the subject: “Balzac said it was easier to be a lover than a husband, and I guess he was right.”
I assumed she was smiling, but in the darkness it was impossible to tell.
9
On the second day set aside for feedback sessions, the electrical engineers took a turn at venting their displeasure. “Uh-oh,” Herb Green quipped under his breath to Wil Hardy, “it’s the ‘Charge of the Electric Light Brigade.’ “
The leader of the onslaught was Donald Ruffin, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He was the inscrutable fiber-optics specialist who had said he didn’t know what to expect in Africa other than a bunch of angry elephants. On this occasion, he skipped the sarcasm and got right to the point.
“What we want to know, Wilson,” he said, poking a finger at Dr. Hardy, “is how you civil engineers have managed to take over this operation. Yesterday, my good friend John Hertzler raised some valid questions about centralized planning; but he didn’t get to the problem that our group thinks is most serious. You, along with your sidekick Alf Richards, want to keep us busy with bricks and concrete and then slowly, deliberately, reenact the Industrial Revolution.”
Ruffin pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, referred to some scribbled notes, and continued in stentorian voice: “I haven’t heard a blessed word about solar energy, wind turbines, or atomic power, not to mention nuclear fusion. You’re going to busy us with digging in coal mines when we should be thinking about new so lutions for a new age. Why aren’t you planning to make photovoltaic cells, which could be used to recharge our batteries and get our computers up and running? And how about superconductivity? You’re proposing to bring copper from hundreds of miles away without considering the marvelous work that’s been done on getting more electricity to flow through special cables made of various new materials.”
“Please, Donald,” responded Dr. Hardy, who seemed to grow more resolutely calm with each new tempest, “to make photovoltaic cells, first we need metals and carefully prepared semiconductor materials. And, in the last superconductive line I saw, the cable had to be cooled to minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit by running liquid nitrogen alongside it. Is that what you want us to do? We’re trying to crawl in order to walk, while you’re asking that we start out by flying. We’re saying that the people have no bread, and you’re suggesting that they can eat cake.”
Hardy hesitated, as if uncertain about how to phrase his next thought. Then he continued: “And, Donald, let’s not begin to pit electrical engineers against civils or any other discipline. That’s not what we’re about here.”
“I’m not just talking about electricity,” Ruffin grumbled. “What are you doing about biotechnology? Not a damned thing. And robotics? And how about materials science? We can make almost any magical stuff you can imagine just by mixing some complicated molecules together—polymers, industrial ceramics, fiber composites, semiconductors, specialty metals… We’re capable of miracles, and you’re sitting down to play with iron. We’re not a primitive tribe here. Damn it, Wilson, we’ve got some brilliant men and women aboard, and we ought to let them loose—not try to relive history. I’m surprised you haven’t appointed a committee to reinvent the wheel.”
At this, a tall, determined-looking woman stepped forward. Elsa Bryson was head of the Materials Science Department at Ohio State University, and as she straightened her black-rimmed glasses, she could hardly conceal her disdain for the last speaker’s presentation.
“Dr. Ruffin,” she began, “nobody here could possibly be more anxious to work with new substances than those of us whose field is materials science. But let’s just reason together for a moment. How are we going to mix these wondrous materials, work with them, store them, heat them, mold them, compress them, extrude them—do anything with them—unless we have basic implements and containers? And the basic implements and containers we need—we crave!—are mostly made out of steel and glass. So please; let these folks get on with the work that needs to be done. There’s plenty of thinking and planning we can do as we wait for our laboratories to take shape, and I’m sure that goes for you and your electronics colleagues as well.”
“Besides,” and here Tom Swift spoke up, “let’s not forget that two hundred people have been assigned to an R and D operation. So it’s not as if the future is being ignored. I’m one of the directors of the enterprise, Donald, and I promise you that we’ll be agitating on behalf of innovation. If you can figure out how to make electricity by sticking bamboo into sand and then transmitting the current through grapevines, we’ll help you work out the details starting tomorrow. And by the way, if we do reinvent the wheel, it will be the best damned wheel that the world has ever seen.”
Wilson Hardy, Sr., had one more volley to discharge. “When we sailed from New York,” he said sternly, “we might have been in what some people liked to call the post-industrial age, the era of wireless communications and the Internet. But, damn it, Donald, we’re not there anymore—if we ever were to the extent that was advertised. Anyhow, before you guys can return to making the world go round with fiber optics and computers, we’re going to have to forge a lot of steel and pour a lot of concrete.” In spite of his protestations about harmony between the engineering specialties, it was apparent that this rugged civil engineer enjoyed telling his high-tech colleague a thing or two about priorities.
In due course, the “Charge of the Electric Light Brigade” flickered away into mumbles and grudging
