The original Pratt & Whitney Company was created before the American Civil War by Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney. These “Yankee mechanics” learned their trade as inside contractors at Samuel Colt’s armoury, opened in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1855. They produced the individual parts needed for Colt pistols and rifles, hiring their own workforce but using … Read more
The type of activities which people all over the world consistent report most rewarding—that is, whit make them feel best – involve a clear objective, a need for concentration so intense that no attention is left over, lack of interruptions and distractions clear and immediate feedback on progress toward the objective, and a sense of … Read more
To get continuous-flow systems to flow for more than a minute or two at a time, every machine and every worker must be completely “capable.” That is, they must always be in proper condition to run precisely when needed and every part made must be exactly right. By design, flow systems have an everything-works-or-nothing-works quality … Read more
[…] the first step is to mine bauxite in Australia. Although the ore could in principle be mined in small amounts and sent along to the next step within a few minutes of the receipt of an order, the mining machinery is truly massive and the actual process involves scooping out millions of tons of … Read more
Itay Talgam did not mean to address this question when he appeared at Google’s 2008 Zeitgeist Conference, but he inadvertently offered an answer. Talgam, a renowned Israeli orchestra conductor, stood on a small semicircular stage wearing a wrinkled cotton polo shirt with a sweater draped over his shoulders, his sparse hair shooting in several directions. For a … Read more
This began a long and intense period of brainstorming. The team liked the idea of charging by the click, thinking it was a way they could farm out not just search, as they had done with Netscape and Yahoo, but also advertising. “We knew we needed a lot of ads, and to have a lot … Read more
The new search engine, at first called BackRub, was an object of some secrecy. Spurred by Page’s obsession with Tesla, who unwittingly gave away his inventions by sharing them with others, Page and Brin zealously guarded the algorithms that created Page Rank. But as PhD. Candidates, they were expected to present their work, so to … Read more
Shannon summarized his war work on secret communications in a 114-page opus, “A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography,” which he finished in 1945. The paper was immediately deemed classified and too sensitive for publication, but those who read it found a long treatise exploring the histories and methodologies of various secrecy systems. Moreover, he had offered … Read more
Semiconductors—as their name implies, neither conductors nor insulators—are a curious case. In their outer band, atoms that comprise these substances have somewhere between three and five electrons, and they seem to exhibit qualities that are different from those of either a conductor or an insulator. Early in the twentieth century, physicists noted that these materials … Read more
Contrary to its gentle image of later years, created largely through one of the great public relations machines in corporate history, Ma Bell in its first few decades was close to a public menace—a ruthless, rapacious, grasping “Bell Octopus,” as its enemies would describe it to the press. “The Bell Company has had a monopoly … Read more
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