Summary of Jon Gertner's The Idea Factory

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Mervin Kelly, the boy who would become the author’s grandfather, was a striver. He was both class president and valedictorian in high school, and people in Gallatin noticed that he was intent on being in charge.

#2 In the early 1900s, when Kelly was going to school, few Americans recognized the differences between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor. The public was far more impressed by new technology than the knowledge that created the technology.

#3 Edison was a genius in making new inventions work, but he was not a genius in theory. He scorned talk about scientific theory, and he knew little about electricity. He relied on assistants trained in math and science to investigate the principles of his inventions.

#4 The idea that scientists trained in subjects like physics could do interesting and important work was gaining legitimacy. Americans still knew very little about the sciences, but they were beginning to hear about a stream of revelations, all European in origin, regarding the hidden but fundamental structure of the visible world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Jul 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822543690

IRB Media

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Insights on Jon Gertner's The Idea Factory

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Mervin Kelly, the boy who would become the author’s grandfather, was a striver. He was both class president and valedictorian in high school, and people in Gallatin noticed that he was intent on being in charge.

#2

In the early 1900s, when Kelly was going to school, few Americans recognized the differences between a scientist, an engineer, and an inventor. The public was far more impressed by new technology than the knowledge that created the technology.

#3

Edison was a genius in making new inventions work, but he was not a genius in theory. He scorned talk about scientific theory, and he knew little about electricity. He relied on assistants trained in math and science to investigate the principles of his inventions.

#4

The idea that scientists trained in subjects like physics could do interesting and important work was gaining legitimacy. Americans still knew very little about the sciences, but they were beginning to hear about a stream of revelations, all European in origin, regarding the hidden but fundamental structure of the visible world.

#5

In the early twentieth century, American schools began turning out graduates in physics and chemistry. Robert Millikan, a professor at the University of Chicago, was a leading physicist and teacher of the subject.

#6

The oil-drop experiment was conducted to put an exact value on e, which is the charge of the electron. It was a painstaking process that took hours for each measurement. It was difficult for someone with a slow metabolism like Harvey Fletcher to do the experiment.

#7

Robert Millikan was married in 1902, and his best man was a physicist named Frank Baldwin Jewett. Jewett had grown up in the lap of privilege, but he wasn’t a snob. He was agile-minded and glib, and he could talk with and befriend almost anyone.

#8

Theodore Vail, the president of ATT, saw the value of working with smaller phone companies rather than trying to crush them. He decided it was in the long-term interests of ATT to buy independent phone companies whenever possible.

#9

Vail’s strategy was to convince the government that telephone service had become essential to life, and that a single company should be in charge of it. He saw this as the only way to achieve a monopoly.

#10

The telephone’s first few decades were filled with attempts to extend the distance of phone calls. The engineers found that different methods could move a phone call farther, but they were unable to extend it any farther.

#11

In 1909, ATT decided to build a transcontinental phone system. They hired John J. Carty, the company’s chief engineer, to oversee the project. Carty and Jewett began discussing how to repair the local phone system, but they also began discussing the possibility of providing transcontinental phone service.

#12

The transcontinental line was finished in time for the Pacific exposition, which was pushed back to 1915. It consisted of four copper wires that were strung coast-to-coast by ATT linemen over 130,000 wooden poles.

#13

The cross-country link proved that Jewett’s cadre of young scientists could be trusted to achieve things that seemed technologically impossible. This led Jewett to hire more men like Harold Arnold.

#14

ATT was a phone company on its own, but it also contained within it many other large companies. The local operating companies did not manufacture the equipment to make phone service work, but Western Electric did.

#15

At Western Electric, the engineers worked in expansive open rooms floored with maple planks and interrupted every few dozen feet by square stone pillars that supported the building’s massive bulk. The elevators were hand-operated.

#16

At the Western Electric Company, Kelly was introduced to the ways of the phone company, which involved climbing telephone poles, installing telephones, and operating switchboards. He was impressed by the company’s commitment to basic research.

#17

When the war ended, Davisson was allowed to keep his position as a scientist who rejected any sort of management role, and instead worked as a lone researcher. He seemed to