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PROFESSOR: Welcome to
STS.050, History of MIT.

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I'm Professor Mindell.

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This is Professor Smith.

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And before we introduce
ourselves or say anything

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about the class, I just
want to do a little exercise

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about what do you know
about the history of MIT,

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either big picture stuff
or even random facts.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: Used to be in Boston.

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PROFESSOR: Sorry.

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Used to be in Boston.

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OK.

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That is correct.

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PROFESSOR: Used to be
called [INAUDIBLE] Boston.

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As sort of a nickname.

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AUDIENCE: Don't remember.

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AUDIENCE: Boston Tech.

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PROFESSOR: Boston Tech.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: I think it
was founded in 1861.

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PROFESSOR: That's correct.

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PROFESSOR: Jeez.

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You don't need this class.

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PROFESSOR: Yep.

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AUDIENCE: I think
because of the Civil War,

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it had to wait to open.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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That's correct, too.

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The American Civil War started
right after the founding.

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And there weren't any classes
taught for about four years.

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AUDIENCE: It was founded
by William Barton Rogers.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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That's also good.

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PROFESSOR: What
was his nickname?

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AUDIENCE: Barty?

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[LAUGHTER]

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AUDIENCE: William Rogers.

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PROFESSOR: I don't
think he had a nickname.

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AUDIENCE: William Bart Rogers.

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PROFESSOR: Cool.

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Bart.

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PROFESSOR: What was it?

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Do you know?

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PROFESSOR: No.

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PROFESSOR: Billy?

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PROFESSOR: We had a house
master over at Burton Conner.

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We had a reunion the
other day, and they

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had a big picture
William Barton Rogers.

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And one of the students
came up and put a ID clip on

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and it said Billy.

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So maybe it's Billy.

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PROFESSOR: Somebody
sent me-- there

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is one sentence in all
of his papers and letters

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and records which shows
any amount of cheerfulness

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or playfulness,
which is, I think

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it was after his brother
died, he wrote to someone

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about six months later
said, I'm finally

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starting to feel brisk again.

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He was a serious guy.

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What else do we know about MIT?

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AUDIENCE: They got one of
the federal land grants.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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Good.

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We'll certainly talk
about what that means.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: Me?

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PROFESSOR: Yep.

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AUDIENCE: I think at
least when it started out,

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there weren't any
female students.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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That's true.

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No women at first, but later on.

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We'll also talk
a lot about that.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: At some point
there was discussion

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about wanting to
merge with Harvard.

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PROFESSOR: Oh, OK.

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Many points as it turns out.

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PROFESSOR: Yeah.

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Five or six.

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We don't have to just
talk about the founding

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in the early years.

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There's a lot of
time in between.

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So.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: It got a lot
of money from Polaroid

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to build a new campus.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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MERRITT ROE SMITH: Polaroid?

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PROFESSOR: Polaroid?

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AUDIENCE: It was one of
the guys who started Kodak.

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PROFESSOR: Eastman Kodak.

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PROFESSOR: Kodak.

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Eastman Kodak.

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See, I knew he was gonna
jump on you because he's

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from Rochester, New York,
home of Eastman Kodak.

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PROFESSOR: That's right.

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Yeah.

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Polaroid is a Boston
company with ties to MIT,

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although not specifically
an MIT spin-off,

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starting in the
1930s, really getting

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going in the '50s and '60s.

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Whereas Eastman Kodak
started around the turn

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of the 20th century.

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Anybody know the
year that MIT moved

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across the river from
Boston to Cambridge?

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AUDIENCE: 1916.

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PROFESSOR: 1916.

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Right.

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So that's also a
pretty important date.

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Nobody's mentioned anything
that was invented here.

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Maybe nothing was.

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AUDIENCE: Radar.

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PROFESSOR: Sorry.

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AUDIENCE: There was a lot of
development for the radar--

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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Radar, certainly.

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Anybody know where
the radar development

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took place physically?

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AUDIENCE: W 20.

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Or not W 20, Building 20.

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PROFESSOR: Yeah.

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PROFESSOR: Anybody
know where that was?

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AUDIENCE: Where
Stata is right now.

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PROFESSOR: Yeah.

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Right there.

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PROFESSOR: To give you an
idea how long I've been here,

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my first office
was in Building 20.

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And, the offices
in that building,

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it was like a WWII barracks.

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It was all made of
wood, basically.

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It's a wonder it
didn't burn down,

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all this stuff that
went on in there.

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But my office was huge.

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But the problem was
that by the time

00:05:43.730 --> 00:05:46.030
I got there, it was
pretty well run down.

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And there was a hole in
the wall and squirrels used

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to run around inside
and then dash out.

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Our colleague, Leo Marks,
you'll hear about today,

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had an even bigger--
his office was

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like a one bedroom
apartment over there.

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It's really cool.

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A lot of stuff went on there.

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AUDIENCE: Which building
is better, 20 or Stata?

00:06:05.265 --> 00:06:07.390
PROFESSOR: I haven't had
enough experience in Stata

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to tell you.

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Stata visually, of course,
is far more interesting,

00:06:10.950 --> 00:06:12.350
but I hear it leaks.

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Building 20 didn't leak.

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AUDIENCE: Except
for the squirrels.

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PROFESSOR: Pardon?

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AUDIENCE: Except
for the squirrels.

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PROFESSOR: I still didn't hear.

00:06:18.350 --> 00:06:19.540
AUDIENCE: Except
for the squirrels.

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PROFESSOR: Except
for the squirrels.

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Yes.

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PROFESSOR: Building 20 was built
in, I think, under six months

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in 1940, 1941.

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PROFESSOR: Yeah.

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PROFESSOR: And it
lasted for 50 years.

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PROFESSOR: Well, it
was torn down what?

00:06:32.190 --> 00:06:33.135
10 years ago, maybe?

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PROFESSOR: Yeah,
not that long ago.

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PROFESSOR: Not so long ago.

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Long ago in your lifetimes.

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But in mine, a mere drop.

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PROFESSOR: Anything else?

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AUDIENCE: The
departments here have

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gone through a lot of changes.

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PROFESSOR: OK.

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The departments certainly have.

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Although a lot of them
are also quite similar.

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Yep.

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AUDIENCE: During the 1960s,
the basement of Building 10

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was excavated for
a super laser that

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was designed to
bounce off a orbiting

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satellite out to
the Soviet Union.

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That was one of our
weapons in the Cold War

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that no one ever knew of.

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PROFESSOR: Oh.

00:07:16.830 --> 00:07:17.580
That's news to me.

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I didn't know about that.

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Ah.

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AUDIENCE: That's awesome.

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PROFESSOR: Is it still there?

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AUDIENCE: Yeah.

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It's a secret sub-basement.

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[LAUGHTER]

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PROFESSOR: You got
to take us on a tour.

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Does anybody know how much
secret research goes on

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on this campus?

00:07:36.130 --> 00:07:37.948
Military secret research?

00:07:37.948 --> 00:07:39.620
AUDIENCE: None anymore?

00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:41.010
PROFESSOR: That's right, none.

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Does MIT do any secret research?

00:07:45.640 --> 00:07:47.891
PROFESSOR: Yeah.

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AUDIENCE: Not that we know of.

00:07:49.140 --> 00:07:49.806
PROFESSOR: Well.

00:07:49.806 --> 00:07:50.487
[LAUGHTER]

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PROFESSOR: No?

00:07:51.070 --> 00:07:51.790
PROFESSOR: No?

00:07:51.790 --> 00:07:54.300
PROFESSOR: Actually, MIT does
a lot of secret research.

00:07:54.300 --> 00:07:55.274
It's just not--

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PROFESSOR: Here.

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PROFESSOR: Here.

00:07:57.210 --> 00:07:57.772
Where is it?

00:07:57.772 --> 00:07:58.730
AUDIENCE: Lincoln Labs.

00:07:58.730 --> 00:08:00.040
PROFESSOR: Lincoln Labs
out in the suburbs.

00:08:00.040 --> 00:08:00.540
Yeah.

00:08:03.174 --> 00:08:05.090
So that's certainly a
thing we'll come across,

00:08:05.090 --> 00:08:11.561
too, is Cold War and
generally the relationships

00:08:11.561 --> 00:08:12.310
with the military.

00:08:19.470 --> 00:08:23.470
Anybody know what MIT's
budget is roughly?

00:08:28.210 --> 00:08:30.160
$100 billion?

00:08:30.160 --> 00:08:31.760
$100 million?

00:08:31.760 --> 00:08:33.344
AUDIENCE: Endowment's
like $8 billion.

00:08:33.344 --> 00:08:34.009
PROFESSOR: Yeah.

00:08:34.009 --> 00:08:36.039
Endowment's between $8
billion and $10 billion,

00:08:36.039 --> 00:08:37.314
depending on how you count.

00:08:39.784 --> 00:08:40.950
What do we spend every year?

00:08:44.080 --> 00:08:45.492
About $1 billion.

00:08:45.492 --> 00:08:46.258
PROFESSOR: Really?

00:08:46.258 --> 00:08:46.758
My god.

00:08:46.758 --> 00:08:48.820
I didn't know it was that much.

00:08:48.820 --> 00:08:52.040
PROFESSOR: A big part of that
is actually at Lincoln Labs.

00:08:52.040 --> 00:08:54.060
I forget exactly.

00:08:54.060 --> 00:08:54.580
10% or 20%.

00:08:56.880 --> 00:08:58.380
AUDIENCE: I wonder
how many people--

00:08:58.380 --> 00:08:59.434
PROFESSOR: Work.

00:08:59.434 --> 00:09:00.225
Including students?

00:09:04.811 --> 00:09:06.560
How many students are
there, first of all?

00:09:06.560 --> 00:09:08.702
Anybody know how
many undergrads?

00:09:08.702 --> 00:09:09.694
AUDIENCE: 4,000?

00:09:09.694 --> 00:09:10.610
PROFESSOR: What is it?

00:09:10.610 --> 00:09:12.165
It's like 4,100 today or--

00:09:12.165 --> 00:09:12.873
PROFESSOR: Is it?

00:09:12.873 --> 00:09:14.160
Really.

00:09:14.160 --> 00:09:15.720
PROFESSOR: Around.

00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:18.357
It's about to grow a
little bit to about 4,500.

00:09:18.357 --> 00:09:19.315
How many grad students?

00:09:19.315 --> 00:09:20.610
AUDIENCE: 6,000.

00:09:20.610 --> 00:09:23.280
PROFESSOR: About the
same, 5,000 to 6,000.

00:09:23.280 --> 00:09:28.680
Then another 5,000 or so
faculty and staff people

00:09:28.680 --> 00:09:30.254
and other kinds of researchers.

00:09:30.254 --> 00:09:31.920
Anybody know how many
faculty there are?

00:09:37.340 --> 00:09:38.830
Roughly about 1,000.

00:09:38.830 --> 00:09:41.500
About 960 maybe.

00:09:41.500 --> 00:09:43.280
PROFESSOR: Does that
include adjuncts?

00:09:43.280 --> 00:09:44.070
PROFESSOR: No.

00:09:44.070 --> 00:09:45.880
AUDIENCE: Just straight
regular faculty.

00:09:45.880 --> 00:09:49.030
PROFESSOR: There aren't very
many adjunct faculty, actually.

00:09:49.030 --> 00:09:51.530
So, about 1,000 faculty.

00:09:51.530 --> 00:09:54.600
Interestingly, that number
has not grown more than 10%

00:09:54.600 --> 00:09:56.980
in the last 20 years.

00:09:56.980 --> 00:09:59.670
Whereas the budget and
the general size of MIT

00:09:59.670 --> 00:10:02.690
has about tripled
in that time frame.

00:10:02.690 --> 00:10:06.150
So, if you ever wonder why
the professor seem overworked,

00:10:06.150 --> 00:10:08.150
that's why.

00:10:08.150 --> 00:10:09.890
Anything else about
the history of MIT?

00:10:13.740 --> 00:10:16.640
Big accomplishments.

00:10:16.640 --> 00:10:17.890
AUDIENCE: Nobel Prize winners.

00:10:17.890 --> 00:10:20.865
PROFESSOR: Lots of Nobel
Prize winners for sure.

00:10:20.865 --> 00:10:25.510
AUDIENCE: Instrumentations
Lab during the Apollo program.

00:10:25.510 --> 00:10:28.230
And apparently like a
third of NASA's astronauts

00:10:28.230 --> 00:10:29.997
have been MIT educated
at some point.

00:10:29.997 --> 00:10:30.580
PROFESSOR: OK.

00:10:30.580 --> 00:10:32.120
Big connection to NASA.

00:10:32.120 --> 00:10:35.150
MIT built the computers
that landed on the Moon.

00:10:35.150 --> 00:10:39.530
I think about a third of the
people who walked on the Moon

00:10:39.530 --> 00:10:40.560
were MIT graduates.

00:10:40.560 --> 00:10:43.590
And about a third of the
total American astronauts

00:10:43.590 --> 00:10:47.790
had been MIT graduates,
which I think

00:10:47.790 --> 00:10:49.585
is more than anywhere else.

00:10:49.585 --> 00:10:51.834
And I think that also I
read a statistic where--

00:10:51.834 --> 00:10:53.500
AUDIENCE: Other than
military academies.

00:10:53.500 --> 00:10:54.150
PROFESSOR: Sorry.

00:10:54.150 --> 00:10:54.700
AUDIENCE: Other than military--

00:10:54.700 --> 00:10:56.491
PROFESSOR: Other than
the military academy.

00:10:58.950 --> 00:11:02.160
A third of all US
human space flights

00:11:02.160 --> 00:11:05.040
have had MIT graduates on them.

00:11:05.040 --> 00:11:08.160
We're gonna have a big astronaut
reunion this spring, actually,

00:11:08.160 --> 00:11:13.780
which you'll all be invited
to as part of the class.

00:11:13.780 --> 00:11:18.715
Not all of them but quite a good
number of them are coming back.

00:11:18.715 --> 00:11:20.590
So a lot of connections
to the space program.

00:11:20.590 --> 00:11:22.265
What else?

00:11:22.265 --> 00:11:24.765
PROFESSOR: Do you know who's
chairing the 150th anniversary?

00:11:28.790 --> 00:11:30.249
[LAUGHTER]

00:11:30.249 --> 00:11:32.290
PROFESSOR: So we'll talk
a little bit about that.

00:11:35.230 --> 00:11:36.370
Other facts about MIT?

00:11:38.822 --> 00:11:40.322
AUDIENCE: Was
high-speed photography

00:11:40.322 --> 00:11:42.800
developed by an MIT Professor?

00:11:42.800 --> 00:11:44.230
PROFESSOR: Not
exactly high-speed

00:11:44.230 --> 00:11:46.140
photography, but close.

00:11:46.140 --> 00:11:49.077
Anybody know what the actual
technical part of that is?

00:11:49.077 --> 00:11:50.480
AUDIENCE: He did the strobes.

00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:52.710
PROFESSOR: Electronic strobes.

00:11:52.710 --> 00:11:57.740
So up until not that long
ago, certainly in my lifetime,

00:11:57.740 --> 00:12:01.986
if you bought a camera,
it came with flashbulbs

00:12:01.986 --> 00:12:03.360
which were like
in a little cube.

00:12:03.360 --> 00:12:05.590
Anybody ever seen a flash cube?

00:12:05.590 --> 00:12:06.614
And they go pshh.

00:12:06.614 --> 00:12:07.280
And that was it.

00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:08.946
One picture and then
they'd turn around.

00:12:08.946 --> 00:12:11.640
And you'd get four per cube.

00:12:11.640 --> 00:12:15.610
And Edgerton invented what is
now on not only on your cameras

00:12:15.610 --> 00:12:19.319
but maybe even on your phones,
the actual electronic strobe.

00:12:19.319 --> 00:12:21.360
Which means that you could
fire it with a battery

00:12:21.360 --> 00:12:28.410
and it was basically usable
hundreds of thousands of times,

00:12:28.410 --> 00:12:30.670
which had made possible
high-speed photography.

00:12:30.670 --> 00:12:34.560
We'll talk about
that a little bit.

00:12:34.560 --> 00:12:36.130
Other interesting
facts about MIT?

00:12:39.640 --> 00:12:43.509
Anybody name a company that
was started by MIT graduates?

00:12:43.509 --> 00:12:44.550
AUDIENCE: Analog Devices.

00:12:44.550 --> 00:12:46.641
PROFESSOR: Analog
Devices is one.

00:12:46.641 --> 00:12:47.140
Sorry.

00:12:47.140 --> 00:12:47.820
AUDIENCE: Bose.

00:12:47.820 --> 00:12:49.650
PROFESSOR: Bose is one.

00:12:49.650 --> 00:12:50.540
AUDIENCE: iRobot?

00:12:50.540 --> 00:12:51.740
PROFESSOR: Sorry.

00:12:51.740 --> 00:12:52.550
AUDIENCE: iRobot.

00:12:52.550 --> 00:12:53.480
PROFESSOR: IRobot.

00:12:53.480 --> 00:12:54.710
AUDIENCE: A123 Systems.

00:12:54.710 --> 00:12:55.777
PROFESSOR: A123.

00:12:55.777 --> 00:12:56.610
AUDIENCE: Harmonics.

00:12:56.610 --> 00:12:57.692
PROFESSOR: Harmonics.

00:12:57.692 --> 00:12:58.900
AUDIENCE: TerraFusion.

00:12:58.900 --> 00:12:59.245
PROFESSOR: Sorry.

00:12:59.245 --> 00:12:59.910
AUDIENCE: TerraFusion.

00:12:59.910 --> 00:13:00.957
PROFESSOR: TerraFusion.

00:13:00.957 --> 00:13:01.849
AUDIENCE: Dropbox.

00:13:01.849 --> 00:13:02.640
PROFESSOR: Dropbox.

00:13:02.640 --> 00:13:03.345
That's right.

00:13:03.345 --> 00:13:04.665
I use Dropbox all the time.

00:13:08.160 --> 00:13:10.120
Not actually Polaroid.

00:13:10.120 --> 00:13:13.839
Raytheon was started
partly by MIT folks.

00:13:13.839 --> 00:13:14.880
MERRITT ROE SMITH: Miter.

00:13:14.880 --> 00:13:16.327
PROFESSOR: The
Miter Corporation.

00:13:16.327 --> 00:13:18.410
I'm just trying to think
a little bit further back

00:13:18.410 --> 00:13:19.420
into time.

00:13:19.420 --> 00:13:21.740
Anybody ever hear of the
Digital Equipment Corporation?

00:13:21.740 --> 00:13:24.970
That's kind of before this
generation a little bit.

00:13:24.970 --> 00:13:27.390
So obviously, nobody
said anything too much

00:13:27.390 --> 00:13:28.500
about computers.

00:13:28.500 --> 00:13:30.590
Lot of the work in
computing was done here,

00:13:30.590 --> 00:13:33.460
software, artificial
intelligence, robotics.

00:13:33.460 --> 00:13:34.620
Human Genome Project.

00:13:34.620 --> 00:13:37.330
Anybody ever hear of that?

00:13:37.330 --> 00:13:39.300
Significant fraction
of that was here.

00:13:41.880 --> 00:13:45.060
We'll come across 1,000
things that you didn't even

00:13:45.060 --> 00:13:48.110
think of were here.

00:13:48.110 --> 00:13:48.630
OK.

00:13:48.630 --> 00:13:51.290
PROFESSOR: I think one
of the great inventors

00:13:51.290 --> 00:13:55.259
is still living here-- I mean
of the fairly distant past--

00:13:55.259 --> 00:13:56.300
and that's Jay Forrester.

00:13:56.300 --> 00:13:57.484
Have you ever heard of him?

00:14:00.790 --> 00:14:01.957
What do you recollect, Eric?

00:14:01.957 --> 00:14:02.456
Pardon.

00:14:02.456 --> 00:14:03.970
AUDIENCE: The
Whirlwind computer.

00:14:03.970 --> 00:14:05.600
PROFESSOR: Whirlwind, yes.

00:14:05.600 --> 00:14:07.556
And why was that a
significant development?

00:14:07.556 --> 00:14:08.222
Do you remember?

00:14:10.958 --> 00:14:13.730
Well, you got the
Whirlwind all right.

00:14:13.730 --> 00:14:16.235
It's the first core memory.

00:14:16.235 --> 00:14:20.800
One of the first random-access
core memories, as I recollect.

00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:23.610
So it had great
significance to the building

00:14:23.610 --> 00:14:27.210
of the type of computers
that you're using

00:14:27.210 --> 00:14:30.010
and the desktops
and all of that.

00:14:30.010 --> 00:14:31.530
It was very, very basic.

00:14:31.530 --> 00:14:34.700
It's said that IBM
really made its money

00:14:34.700 --> 00:14:37.950
off the use of that development.

00:14:37.950 --> 00:14:41.520
And I was in conversations
many years ago

00:14:41.520 --> 00:14:44.310
in which President
Wiesner expressed

00:14:44.310 --> 00:14:48.450
some discontent about the fact
that IBM had not ponied up

00:14:48.450 --> 00:14:52.590
enough support money for
MIT because it had gotten so

00:14:52.590 --> 00:14:55.430
much from MIT in terms
of it's technical.

00:14:55.430 --> 00:14:56.700
I don't know how true that is.

00:14:56.700 --> 00:14:59.610
But Jerry Wiesner sure
was not happy about

00:14:59.610 --> 00:15:00.810
that, I know that much.

00:15:04.104 --> 00:15:06.520
PROFESSOR: Also, Whirlwind was
sort of the first real-time

00:15:06.520 --> 00:15:07.130
interactive--

00:15:07.130 --> 00:15:07.970
PROFESSOR: Yeah.

00:15:07.970 --> 00:15:09.530
PROFESSOR: --computer,
which was--

00:15:09.530 --> 00:15:12.520
PROFESSOR: Where did
the money come from it?

00:15:12.520 --> 00:15:15.785
Who supported that?

00:15:15.785 --> 00:15:16.980
AUDIENCE: Navy?

00:15:16.980 --> 00:15:17.730
PROFESSOR: Pardon.

00:15:17.730 --> 00:15:18.700
AUDIENCE: The navy?

00:15:18.700 --> 00:15:21.363
PROFESSOR: Well, partly
navy, partly air force.

00:15:21.363 --> 00:15:22.790
Yeah.

00:15:22.790 --> 00:15:27.100
A lot of military contracting
down here after World War II.

00:15:27.100 --> 00:15:27.940
We'll see that.

00:15:27.940 --> 00:15:30.479
I mean that's a big
part of the system.

00:15:30.479 --> 00:15:33.020
PROFESSOR: Anybody know where
the Whirlwind computer was back

00:15:33.020 --> 00:15:35.478
in the days when computers had
entire buildings themselves?

00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:43.590
It was on Mass Ave. in
the Barta Building, which

00:15:43.590 --> 00:15:45.016
is now where IS&T is.

00:15:45.016 --> 00:15:46.140
Anybody know where that is?

00:15:49.050 --> 00:15:51.300
PROFESSOR: Some people are
shaking their heads almost

00:15:51.300 --> 00:15:52.250
in disgust.

00:15:52.250 --> 00:15:53.837
[LAUGHTER]

00:15:53.837 --> 00:15:54.420
PROFESSOR: OK.

00:15:54.420 --> 00:15:57.561
So I just want to start with a
little brainstorming about some

00:15:57.561 --> 00:15:59.060
of the things that
are gonna come up

00:15:59.060 --> 00:16:02.307
over the course of the term.

00:16:02.307 --> 00:16:03.890
Maybe we'll introduce
ourselves first.

00:16:03.890 --> 00:16:06.274
I'll ask Professor Smith
to introduce himself,

00:16:06.274 --> 00:16:08.190
say a little bit about
his research and stuff.

00:16:08.190 --> 00:16:08.780
PROFESSOR: OK.

00:16:08.780 --> 00:16:09.940
Hi.

00:16:09.940 --> 00:16:12.020
My name full name is
Merritt Roe Smith,

00:16:12.020 --> 00:16:14.080
but I go by my middle name, Roe.

00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:16.180
And I'm a member
of two faculties

00:16:16.180 --> 00:16:20.390
here, the STS faculty that David
chairs and also the history

00:16:20.390 --> 00:16:21.690
faculty.

00:16:21.690 --> 00:16:24.440
And I've been here since 1979.

00:16:24.440 --> 00:16:26.780
So I've been here quite a while.

00:16:26.780 --> 00:16:30.240
And my research
interests are primarily

00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:36.280
in 19th century industrial
history and technology.

00:16:36.280 --> 00:16:38.200
And as I've said
to many friends,

00:16:38.200 --> 00:16:41.820
my expertise falls off
rapidly after World War I.

00:16:41.820 --> 00:16:46.240
But the good news is
that his picks up rapidly

00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:47.080
in that period.

00:16:47.080 --> 00:16:49.985
And so David is the
expert on the modern era

00:16:49.985 --> 00:16:52.690
of MIT's history.

00:16:52.690 --> 00:16:54.370
So we make a fairly good team.

00:16:54.370 --> 00:16:58.100
I will give the earlier
lectures on William Barton

00:16:58.100 --> 00:17:02.480
Rogers and things like that.

00:17:02.480 --> 00:17:05.329
I guess my main my
main research has

00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:07.569
been about machine tools
and the development

00:17:07.569 --> 00:17:10.040
of interchangeable
parts manufacturing.

00:17:10.040 --> 00:17:12.250
And I'm particularly
interested in that subject

00:17:12.250 --> 00:17:17.530
because that, too, was a
military-sponsored technology

00:17:17.530 --> 00:17:20.329
that had a tremendous
spin-off effect

00:17:20.329 --> 00:17:24.450
that once these new techniques
were developed for making guns,

00:17:24.450 --> 00:17:28.820
the machine tools and gauging
methods and things like that,

00:17:28.820 --> 00:17:32.690
were disseminated into all
sorts of manufacturing,

00:17:32.690 --> 00:17:35.710
one of the first
being sewing machines.

00:17:35.710 --> 00:17:38.170
So it was primarily
a technology used

00:17:38.170 --> 00:17:40.810
by women in which this gun
making technology found

00:17:40.810 --> 00:17:42.030
it's earliest applications.

00:17:42.030 --> 00:17:44.560
And then you can see it
spreading further out

00:17:44.560 --> 00:17:47.110
until you see the earliest
automobiles in the United

00:17:47.110 --> 00:17:50.920
States being made with very
similar methods that come right

00:17:50.920 --> 00:17:53.390
out of this old
gun-making industry.

00:17:53.390 --> 00:17:55.210
So those are the sorts
of things that I'm

00:17:55.210 --> 00:17:58.245
interested in basically is
how new technologies develop

00:17:58.245 --> 00:17:59.495
and how they get disseminated.

00:18:02.110 --> 00:18:04.960
PROFESSOR: So I'm David Mindell.

00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:07.545
As Roe mentioned, I'm in the
program in Science, Technology,

00:18:07.545 --> 00:18:09.740
and Society as an
historian of technology,

00:18:09.740 --> 00:18:12.450
which I'm the
director of, and also

00:18:12.450 --> 00:18:15.210
in aeronautics and astronautics.

00:18:15.210 --> 00:18:17.450
I'm actually an
electrical engineer

00:18:17.450 --> 00:18:19.700
interested in electronics
and control systems.

00:18:19.700 --> 00:18:21.700
But these days a lot
of my work in that area

00:18:21.700 --> 00:18:25.710
happens in the aerospace world
so I'm dual in AeroAstro.

00:18:28.440 --> 00:18:30.880
Most of my research is
focused, as Roe mentioned,

00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:35.380
on 20th century, some of
it military technology,

00:18:35.380 --> 00:18:38.240
particularly control
systems and feedback control

00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:40.510
and digital computers.

00:18:40.510 --> 00:18:43.672
And I wrote a book
about the Apollo program

00:18:43.672 --> 00:18:45.130
and the computers
that we mentioned

00:18:45.130 --> 00:18:47.400
before that were used
to land on the moon.

00:18:47.400 --> 00:18:51.970
And I'm generally interested
in human machine interaction

00:18:51.970 --> 00:18:55.180
and the ways the evolving
technology changes

00:18:55.180 --> 00:18:58.480
the rules of the users
and of the people who

00:18:58.480 --> 00:19:00.900
are operating systems.

00:19:00.900 --> 00:19:03.120
And that's still something
that I study today.

00:19:03.120 --> 00:19:05.980
Done a lot of work
in the undersea world

00:19:05.980 --> 00:19:08.611
doing exploration of the
deep ocean with robots.

00:19:08.611 --> 00:19:10.735
Anybody here ever participate
in the JASON project?

00:19:14.030 --> 00:19:15.100
In junior high?

00:19:15.100 --> 00:19:16.480
No.

00:19:16.480 --> 00:19:19.932
Did a lot of work with deep-sea
robots exploring shipwrecks

00:19:19.932 --> 00:19:20.640
around the world.

00:19:20.640 --> 00:19:22.420
And that still interests me.

00:19:22.420 --> 00:19:24.220
And now I work a
lot on space flight

00:19:24.220 --> 00:19:26.680
in aviation, too, and
what roles people have

00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:29.280
in technological systems
and how those roles change

00:19:29.280 --> 00:19:31.930
as technologies evolve
and how the engineers who

00:19:31.930 --> 00:19:33.780
build those technologies
think about people.

00:19:37.370 --> 00:19:39.660
There's really sort
of two or three things

00:19:39.660 --> 00:19:41.724
that led us to begin
teaching this class.

00:19:41.724 --> 00:19:43.390
This is the second
time we've taught it.

00:19:43.390 --> 00:19:45.370
We taught it last
spring as well.

00:19:45.370 --> 00:19:50.340
And one of them
is obvious, which

00:19:50.340 --> 00:19:52.030
is that, as you
probably all know,

00:19:52.030 --> 00:19:56.020
this semester is MIT's 150th
anniversary celebrations.

00:19:56.020 --> 00:19:58.600
And I've been chairing
the planning committee

00:19:58.600 --> 00:20:01.340
for those celebrations
for the last few years.

00:20:01.340 --> 00:20:04.624
And when I started doing that, I
didn't know anything about MIT.

00:20:04.624 --> 00:20:06.790
And in grand tradition,
when you don't know anything

00:20:06.790 --> 00:20:09.900
about a subject, you get a bunch
of students in a room and start

00:20:09.900 --> 00:20:13.400
teaching about it and you
all sort of learn together.

00:20:13.400 --> 00:20:17.070
And so that was part of
the idea for the class.

00:20:17.070 --> 00:20:19.220
And then another part of
the idea for the class

00:20:19.220 --> 00:20:24.390
was there's actually been only
in the last few years enough

00:20:24.390 --> 00:20:27.730
really professionally
written history about MIT.

00:20:27.730 --> 00:20:30.100
So that we won't spend
the whole term talking

00:20:30.100 --> 00:20:33.030
about just the
fraternities and sororities

00:20:33.030 --> 00:20:37.240
and the great inventions
and the sort of great man

00:20:37.240 --> 00:20:38.160
history of MIT.

00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:39.290
We'll do some of that.

00:20:39.290 --> 00:20:42.220
But there's also been
enough professional history

00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:45.120
where you can really
talk about what

00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:47.214
is the history of
science and technology?

00:20:47.214 --> 00:20:48.005
How does it evolve?

00:20:48.005 --> 00:20:50.080
How do technologies
and knowledge

00:20:50.080 --> 00:20:53.390
evolve-- which is really
what both Roe and I study

00:20:53.390 --> 00:20:56.690
in our different contexts--
and use MIT as a lens

00:20:56.690 --> 00:21:00.840
through which to look at that
issue over the last 150 years.

00:21:00.840 --> 00:21:07.170
So we will be looking at some
of those larger questions.

00:21:07.170 --> 00:21:08.520
What counts as knowledge?

00:21:08.520 --> 00:21:09.730
How do engineers work?

00:21:09.730 --> 00:21:11.250
How do scientists work?

00:21:11.250 --> 00:21:13.960
How do they interact with
the larger society, both

00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:18.097
the politics and the culture
and the social questions?

00:21:18.097 --> 00:21:20.430
And how do they actually carry
on their work day to day?

00:21:20.430 --> 00:21:24.140
And what does it mean to invent
something or create a new idea?

00:21:24.140 --> 00:21:27.710
And fortunately, there's enough
material out there on MIT

00:21:27.710 --> 00:21:30.260
that we can examine
those questions

00:21:30.260 --> 00:21:32.670
through the history of MIT.

00:21:32.670 --> 00:21:34.490
And then it happened
that because Roe

00:21:34.490 --> 00:21:37.770
is a 19th-century expert and I
work more on the 20th century,

00:21:37.770 --> 00:21:41.610
we kind of got together and
roughly split the material.

00:21:41.610 --> 00:21:43.170
We'll go back and
forth quite a bit

00:21:43.170 --> 00:21:45.270
as well, especially this term.

00:21:45.270 --> 00:21:47.572
This term is a
little bit special,

00:21:47.572 --> 00:21:48.530
more than a little bit.

00:21:48.530 --> 00:21:50.404
It's a lot special and
a little bit different

00:21:50.404 --> 00:21:53.780
from last term in that the
actual 150th celebrations are

00:21:53.780 --> 00:21:57.140
going on as we're taking the
class and teaching the class.

00:21:57.140 --> 00:22:00.760
And so you'll see a
little bit about that

00:22:00.760 --> 00:22:02.710
as we pass out the syllabus.

00:22:02.710 --> 00:22:05.650
So that's just sort of a rough
introduction to the class.

00:22:05.650 --> 00:22:09.060
I also wanted to ask Michaela
Thompson to introduce herself

00:22:09.060 --> 00:22:11.360
as our teaching assistant.

00:22:11.360 --> 00:22:12.276
MICHAELA THOMPSON: Hi.

00:22:12.276 --> 00:22:13.260
I'm Michaela Thompson.

00:22:13.260 --> 00:22:18.672
I'm a third-year PhD
student in the HASS program.

00:22:18.672 --> 00:22:20.476
And I study,
basically, the history

00:22:20.476 --> 00:22:23.600
of biology and
environmental history.

00:22:23.600 --> 00:22:26.295
PROFESSOR: And among many
other cool facts about Michaela

00:22:26.295 --> 00:22:28.527
is that if you go to
the Boston Aquarium

00:22:28.527 --> 00:22:30.110
and see the penguins
swimming around--

00:22:30.110 --> 00:22:32.068
MICHAELA THOMPSON: I'm
down in there with them.

00:22:32.068 --> 00:22:34.770
PROFESSOR: She's the lady in
the wetsuit feeding the penguins

00:22:34.770 --> 00:22:36.204
and swimming around with them.

00:22:36.204 --> 00:22:38.120
Maybe we'll take a field
trip and come see her

00:22:38.120 --> 00:22:39.566
when she's working one day.

00:22:39.566 --> 00:22:40.280
MICHAELA THOMPSON:
I will be there

00:22:40.280 --> 00:22:41.530
and I will wave at all of you.

00:22:46.005 --> 00:22:48.130
PROFESSOR: So maybe we
should pass out the syllabus

00:22:48.130 --> 00:22:49.463
and we can sort of walk through.

00:22:49.463 --> 00:22:51.639
Any questions on what
we've talked about so far?

00:22:51.639 --> 00:22:53.680
MICHAELA THOMPSON: Is
anybody missing a syllabus?

00:22:53.680 --> 00:22:54.510
PROFESSOR: Oh, we
already passed out.

00:22:54.510 --> 00:22:55.498
OK, good.

00:22:55.498 --> 00:22:56.486
I don't have one yet.

00:23:04.900 --> 00:23:07.220
So just to go through
the top, we really

00:23:07.220 --> 00:23:11.340
talked about this description.

00:23:11.340 --> 00:23:13.114
Again, there are
a number of themes

00:23:13.114 --> 00:23:14.780
that are in this sort
of first paragraph

00:23:14.780 --> 00:23:18.430
that will keep coming
up again and again.

00:23:18.430 --> 00:23:22.260
The relationship of MIT
to the surrounding city

00:23:22.260 --> 00:23:23.970
and the region and the country.

00:23:28.490 --> 00:23:31.540
Stories about MIT
students and professors.

00:23:31.540 --> 00:23:34.440
The student body and
who is an MIT student

00:23:34.440 --> 00:23:36.660
and how does that
person-- there is

00:23:36.660 --> 00:23:38.560
no typical profile,
or really at any time,

00:23:38.560 --> 00:23:40.820
but the student body
changes quite a bit

00:23:40.820 --> 00:23:42.420
over the course of
these 150 years.

00:23:42.420 --> 00:23:46.030
That's something
we'll be looking at.

00:23:46.030 --> 00:23:47.810
The physical development
of the campus.

00:23:47.810 --> 00:23:52.710
We talked about the move a
little bit across the river.

00:23:52.710 --> 00:23:55.150
MIT's relationship
with industry.

00:23:55.150 --> 00:23:57.630
That's a big one, which
is kind of a pendulum that

00:23:57.630 --> 00:24:00.390
swings every 10 years or so.

00:24:00.390 --> 00:24:02.636
Too much industrial involvement,
not enough relevance

00:24:02.636 --> 00:24:04.510
to industry, too much
industrial involvement,

00:24:04.510 --> 00:24:07.270
not enough-- practically
see-- maybe somebody

00:24:07.270 --> 00:24:09.930
can calculate the period
of that pendulum for us.

00:24:09.930 --> 00:24:12.150
It's pretty
predictable, actually.

00:24:12.150 --> 00:24:13.870
And then, also,
MIT's relationship

00:24:13.870 --> 00:24:16.449
to the government,
which you might guess

00:24:16.449 --> 00:24:18.990
moves almost exactly the same
as the relationship to industry

00:24:18.990 --> 00:24:20.240
but in the opposite direction.

00:24:23.650 --> 00:24:25.010
Where are we now in that swing?

00:24:25.010 --> 00:24:26.845
Does anybody want to
have a guess on that?

00:24:33.970 --> 00:24:37.050
I would say that we're probably
at the point of just beginning

00:24:37.050 --> 00:24:41.180
the swing beginning away from
government back toward industry

00:24:41.180 --> 00:24:42.040
for a while.

00:24:42.040 --> 00:24:45.420
Because the stimulus package
that Obama passed in 2008

00:24:45.420 --> 00:24:47.820
was very, very
supportive of MIT.

00:24:47.820 --> 00:24:49.431
And that's about to run out.

00:24:49.431 --> 00:24:51.430
And generally the government
is about to run out

00:24:51.430 --> 00:24:52.990
of money altogether.

00:24:52.990 --> 00:24:56.130
And that's gonna be a big issue
for MIT in the coming five

00:24:56.130 --> 00:24:56.770
years or so.

00:24:56.770 --> 00:25:00.070
And naturally that swings
back toward industry.

00:25:06.707 --> 00:25:08.040
A little bit about requirements.

00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:13.330
We do want you to come
to class every week.

00:25:13.330 --> 00:25:16.280
We do want you to participate
in the discussions.

00:25:16.280 --> 00:25:18.856
We will ask for you to close
your laptops when we're

00:25:18.856 --> 00:25:20.730
having a class discussion,
which is generally

00:25:20.730 --> 00:25:22.542
gonna be the second
half of the class.

00:25:22.542 --> 00:25:24.250
You can use them for
the notes and things

00:25:24.250 --> 00:25:25.541
in the first half of the class.

00:25:28.490 --> 00:25:31.580
And then there's a series
of reflection papers, which

00:25:31.580 --> 00:25:37.240
is a significant amount of the
work over the course the term.

00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:41.020
We want you to submit
them online to the TA.

00:25:41.020 --> 00:25:44.831
And, let's see what's
the actual number.

00:25:44.831 --> 00:25:48.180
There are 11 class sessions
where there is actually

00:25:48.180 --> 00:25:49.680
reading that's assigned.

00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:52.470
And so we're gonna ask you to
submit eight reflection papers.

00:25:52.470 --> 00:25:54.220
So you can opt out
of any three weeks

00:25:54.220 --> 00:25:56.400
over the course of the term.

00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:58.230
And when you do
submit the papers,

00:25:58.230 --> 00:26:01.540
we would like them to have them
the night before by 5 o'clock.

00:26:01.540 --> 00:26:04.980
And there's a reason
for that, which is then

00:26:04.980 --> 00:26:08.030
we'll compile all the questions
and the thoughts the people

00:26:08.030 --> 00:26:10.910
have from those
reflection papers

00:26:10.910 --> 00:26:13.500
and use them as the starting
point for the discussion

00:26:13.500 --> 00:26:15.040
the following day.

00:26:15.040 --> 00:26:17.260
So we need to have those then.

00:26:17.260 --> 00:26:20.750
We're not gonna grade
them A, B, C, or D,

00:26:20.750 --> 00:26:22.409
but we do want to
see people thinking

00:26:22.409 --> 00:26:23.825
through what's on
the reflections.

00:26:28.650 --> 00:26:32.850
One to two pages is
all that is required.

00:26:32.850 --> 00:26:35.400
Then of those eight
reflection papers--

00:26:35.400 --> 00:26:37.150
you'll notice when we
come to the syllabus

00:26:37.150 --> 00:26:40.370
that a number of the days
that we meet in class

00:26:40.370 --> 00:26:44.880
are concurrent with
the MIT 150th Symposia.

00:26:44.880 --> 00:26:47.590
And so if you like, you
can write reflection paper

00:26:47.590 --> 00:26:53.419
on the symposia instead of on
the readings for that week,

00:26:53.419 --> 00:26:54.960
with basically the
same requirements.

00:26:57.466 --> 00:27:00.090
And then they're going to be two
writing assignments, basically

00:27:00.090 --> 00:27:03.090
two papers, which we'll
send out the assignments

00:27:03.090 --> 00:27:06.276
for as the time goes closer.

00:27:06.276 --> 00:27:08.400
And one of the really nice
things about teaching it

00:27:08.400 --> 00:27:11.980
this term, even as
opposed to a year ago,

00:27:11.980 --> 00:27:13.480
is-- I'll show you
in a few minutes.

00:27:13.480 --> 00:27:17.020
There's a vast amount of
material, just raw material,

00:27:17.020 --> 00:27:20.410
on the web that's been made
available from which we can use

00:27:20.410 --> 00:27:24.110
as research materials
for these papers.

00:27:24.110 --> 00:27:27.850
So there's the breakdown of
the grading, 20% on the papers,

00:27:27.850 --> 00:27:29.790
big band on the
writing assignment,

00:27:29.790 --> 00:27:31.125
and then class participation.

00:27:35.623 --> 00:27:37.610
Although, somehow that
doesn't add up to 100.

00:27:37.610 --> 00:27:39.522
We must have missed a
line from last year.

00:27:39.522 --> 00:27:41.210
[LAUGHTER]

00:27:41.210 --> 00:27:43.700
PROFESSOR: We'll get
back to you on that one.

00:27:43.700 --> 00:27:46.330
Somehow we must have
edited something.

00:27:46.330 --> 00:27:48.730
Oh no, sorry, there's two
writing assignments, 70

00:27:48.730 --> 00:27:49.330
and then 30.

00:27:52.380 --> 00:27:55.310
There's the absence policy.

00:27:55.310 --> 00:27:57.100
There's really only
one required book.

00:27:57.100 --> 00:27:59.530
I see one person's picked
it up already, which

00:27:59.530 --> 00:28:02.480
is the book that David
Kaiser-- our colleague-- edited

00:28:02.480 --> 00:28:05.671
called Moments of
Decision, which they had

00:28:05.671 --> 00:28:07.920
no intention of this when
they put this book together.

00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.600
But it really comes
out almost perfectly

00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:11.772
as a textbook for the course.

00:28:11.772 --> 00:28:14.020
Do you want to say anything
more about the book, Roe?

00:28:14.020 --> 00:28:18.045
PROFESSOR: Well, the
essays in it are not long.

00:28:18.045 --> 00:28:19.720
I'll tell you that.

00:28:19.720 --> 00:28:24.110
Each essay's around 15 printed
pages, 17, somewhere in there.

00:28:24.110 --> 00:28:26.260
So they're easily read.

00:28:26.260 --> 00:28:28.950
I've read the entire
book twice now.

00:28:28.950 --> 00:28:31.310
And I contributed
an essay to it.

00:28:31.310 --> 00:28:33.770
But quite apart from
my essay, I actually

00:28:33.770 --> 00:28:36.390
think these essays
are pretty damn good.

00:28:36.390 --> 00:28:39.041
And it's the sort of book that
you can use in this class.

00:28:39.041 --> 00:28:40.790
And then you could
turn around and give it

00:28:40.790 --> 00:28:43.060
to your parents or somebody
like that because it

00:28:43.060 --> 00:28:48.210
does a good encapsulated
history of MIT at certain--

00:28:48.210 --> 00:28:50.670
it's not a complete
history of MIT.

00:28:50.670 --> 00:28:53.620
But it looks at the
critical moments.

00:28:53.620 --> 00:28:56.860
And I think it's a
good little book.

00:28:56.860 --> 00:28:58.380
I'll say that much.

00:28:58.380 --> 00:29:01.810
PROFESSOR: Good, I agree.

00:29:01.810 --> 00:29:05.950
I should say also next Tuesday,
February 15, from 4:00 to 6:00

00:29:05.950 --> 00:29:07.970
we're having an event as
part of the 150th that

00:29:07.970 --> 00:29:11.060
is more or less the authors from
these books getting together

00:29:11.060 --> 00:29:14.690
to talk about the
history of MIT.

00:29:14.690 --> 00:29:16.560
And so you'd be welcome
to join us for that.

00:29:19.950 --> 00:29:22.450
And then there are going to be
additional readings, a fairly

00:29:22.450 --> 00:29:28.400
significant amount of them,
available on the MIT site.

00:29:28.400 --> 00:29:31.710
I'm sure you've all taken
humanities classes at MIT

00:29:31.710 --> 00:29:33.270
before.

00:29:33.270 --> 00:29:36.370
There's a lot of reading
in the humanities.

00:29:36.370 --> 00:29:38.770
That's sort of the equivalent
of the problem sets

00:29:38.770 --> 00:29:42.870
is reading through a fairly
large amount of material

00:29:42.870 --> 00:29:44.830
and absorbing it
and then fitting it

00:29:44.830 --> 00:29:47.460
into the rest of the material.

00:29:47.460 --> 00:29:49.990
So that's a very important
part of the class.

00:29:49.990 --> 00:29:52.310
And we do expect you to
spend sort of the equivalent

00:29:52.310 --> 00:29:54.476
amount of time that you
would spend on a problem set

00:29:54.476 --> 00:29:59.184
in a science class
on the reading.

00:29:59.184 --> 00:30:00.600
So just to go
through a little bit

00:30:00.600 --> 00:30:02.829
week by week, what
we'll do today,

00:30:02.829 --> 00:30:04.620
when we're done going
through the syllabus,

00:30:04.620 --> 00:30:09.320
I want to show you a little
video about the founding of MIT

00:30:09.320 --> 00:30:13.772
and then a little bit
about web resources.

00:30:13.772 --> 00:30:15.730
And then we'll take a
break, which we'll always

00:30:15.730 --> 00:30:18.220
do about halfway through
the three hour period

00:30:18.220 --> 00:30:20.220
because it is a
long time period.

00:30:20.220 --> 00:30:24.590
And during the break,
we'll give you extra time

00:30:24.590 --> 00:30:27.160
to read an article
that we'll pass out

00:30:27.160 --> 00:30:31.850
which is about the birth and
the idea of technology, which

00:30:31.850 --> 00:30:34.900
turns out is not a very old
idea and is almost exactly

00:30:34.900 --> 00:30:36.600
the same age as MIT.

00:30:36.600 --> 00:30:39.800
The t in MIT was one of the
very significant first uses

00:30:39.800 --> 00:30:42.611
of the word technology.

00:30:42.611 --> 00:30:44.610
And then we'll come back
for a little discussion

00:30:44.610 --> 00:30:47.050
of the ideas in that article.

00:30:47.050 --> 00:30:48.910
And then toward the
end of the class,

00:30:48.910 --> 00:30:50.570
Karen Arenson will come in.

00:30:50.570 --> 00:30:53.760
And she actually
is past president

00:30:53.760 --> 00:30:56.300
of the MIT Alumni
Association and Brass

00:30:56.300 --> 00:30:57.820
member of the Corporation.

00:30:57.820 --> 00:31:01.360
But also is a
journalist who conducted

00:31:01.360 --> 00:31:04.380
100 or so oral history
interviews with people

00:31:04.380 --> 00:31:06.740
about the last 40 years of MIT.

00:31:06.740 --> 00:31:09.130
And she'll talk a little
bit about that process.

00:31:13.080 --> 00:31:16.749
Then next week, we go way
back before even the founding.

00:31:16.749 --> 00:31:18.790
Do you want to say anything
about that week, Roe?

00:31:18.790 --> 00:31:20.400
PROFESSOR: Well
yeah, the second week

00:31:20.400 --> 00:31:25.610
is basically trying to put
MIT in a larger context.

00:31:25.610 --> 00:31:30.100
So I'm going to give a lecture
about the United States

00:31:30.100 --> 00:31:34.370
circa 1850, 1860, the years
that William Barton Rogers was

00:31:34.370 --> 00:31:37.700
beginning to formulate
this plan for what

00:31:37.700 --> 00:31:40.270
he called a
"polytechnic institute."

00:31:40.270 --> 00:31:43.930
And so the readings here,
there are two readings.

00:31:43.930 --> 00:31:46.460
One of them is from
a textbook that I

00:31:46.460 --> 00:31:47.890
was one of the co-authors of.

00:31:47.890 --> 00:31:50.889
It's the one that's listed
under Pauline Maier's name.

00:31:50.889 --> 00:31:52.430
Actually, the pages
you'll be reading

00:31:52.430 --> 00:31:53.960
there are pages
that I've written

00:31:53.960 --> 00:31:56.960
in the text on the
1850's basically.

00:31:56.960 --> 00:32:00.300
So you'll get my take on that
period from the textbook,

00:32:00.300 --> 00:32:01.020
basically.

00:32:01.020 --> 00:32:05.880
And then the other
reading is, I would say,

00:32:05.880 --> 00:32:09.140
a broader cultural, political
look at the United States

00:32:09.140 --> 00:32:13.570
between 1820 and 1860 that
looks very broadly at society.

00:32:13.570 --> 00:32:19.010
So that's even a bigger
picture of the United States

00:32:19.010 --> 00:32:20.340
during this period.

00:32:20.340 --> 00:32:23.170
And the idea here is
just to kind of immerse

00:32:23.170 --> 00:32:25.110
you in that period
to get you thinking

00:32:25.110 --> 00:32:28.220
about why was a
technical institute

00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:30.550
necessary at this point in time?

00:32:30.550 --> 00:32:36.110
Why 1861 and not 1900
or sometime like that?

00:32:36.110 --> 00:32:38.990
It turns out that
MIT's founding,

00:32:38.990 --> 00:32:42.040
it occurs at a very
important moment in history.

00:32:42.040 --> 00:32:44.960
And one of the things I want
to talk about in my lecture

00:32:44.960 --> 00:32:49.560
is why 1861 basically.

00:32:49.560 --> 00:32:53.440
Why is this the
right moment to found

00:32:53.440 --> 00:32:55.540
an institute of technology?

00:32:55.540 --> 00:32:58.880
There's none other like
it prior to the Civil War.

00:32:58.880 --> 00:33:02.680
There were other engineering
schools, but not like MIT.

00:33:02.680 --> 00:33:03.740
MIT was different.

00:33:03.740 --> 00:33:06.870
And I'll say one thing
too about this place.

00:33:06.870 --> 00:33:09.920
The more I learn about MIT,
the more I'm amazed by it.

00:33:09.920 --> 00:33:12.930
It's really an
interesting place.

00:33:12.930 --> 00:33:15.120
And I didn't know much
about MIT's history

00:33:15.120 --> 00:33:17.010
until about two years
ago when I started

00:33:17.010 --> 00:33:19.730
preparing for this essay
on William Barton Rogers.

00:33:19.730 --> 00:33:22.560
But the more I learn about
it, the more captivated

00:33:22.560 --> 00:33:25.520
I've become by the history of
this place and all the things

00:33:25.520 --> 00:33:26.780
that it's done.

00:33:26.780 --> 00:33:29.030
I don't think there's another
educational institution,

00:33:29.030 --> 00:33:31.360
or surely a higher
educational institution,

00:33:31.360 --> 00:33:33.670
in the United
States that has had

00:33:33.670 --> 00:33:36.190
a more interesting history
than this place has.

00:33:36.190 --> 00:33:38.550
We're sure to get arguments
from people up the street.

00:33:38.550 --> 00:33:42.770
But that's just my own
personal perspective.

00:33:42.770 --> 00:33:44.625
It's quite a
remarkable institution.

00:33:44.625 --> 00:33:49.050
And it takes root in the
middle of the American Civil

00:33:49.050 --> 00:33:52.870
War of all times, one of
the worst possible moments

00:33:52.870 --> 00:33:55.810
to try to found a college.

00:33:55.810 --> 00:33:57.340
How did that happen?

00:33:57.340 --> 00:34:00.730
So that's what that second
week is basically about

00:34:00.730 --> 00:34:02.320
is how did this
place get started?

00:34:02.320 --> 00:34:05.320
And why?

00:34:05.320 --> 00:34:07.710
PROFESSOR: Because we'll
come across this then, too.

00:34:07.710 --> 00:34:11.719
The actual date of the
signing of the charter for MIT

00:34:11.719 --> 00:34:16.130
is April 10, 1861.

00:34:16.130 --> 00:34:20.380
April 12, 1861 is the
firing on Fort Sumter, which

00:34:20.380 --> 00:34:22.812
is the first combat
of the Civil War.

00:34:22.812 --> 00:34:24.020
So you'll see this next week.

00:34:24.020 --> 00:34:27.780
Poor William Barton Rogers
spends 30 years pursuing

00:34:27.780 --> 00:34:30.139
his dream and
finally achieves it.

00:34:30.139 --> 00:34:35.155
And then the whole country
blows up in his face basically.

00:34:35.155 --> 00:34:37.017
PROFESSOR: Not a good time.

00:34:37.017 --> 00:34:38.850
PROFESSOR: So the next
week too then we also

00:34:38.850 --> 00:34:42.457
focus on the founding
and the early years.

00:34:42.457 --> 00:34:44.790
You want to just walk through
this part of the syllabus?

00:34:44.790 --> 00:34:47.330
PROFESSOR: Yeah, the
third week will be mainly

00:34:47.330 --> 00:34:50.610
about William Barton Rogers and
his vision for the institute

00:34:50.610 --> 00:34:53.969
and how this place gets started.

00:34:53.969 --> 00:34:58.160
And in the essay you'll read
in this little book here,

00:34:58.160 --> 00:35:02.150
you'll see that I have some
things to say about the role

00:35:02.150 --> 00:35:06.540
the government played in
giving MIT the wherewithal

00:35:06.540 --> 00:35:08.040
to get started.

00:35:08.040 --> 00:35:11.120
The state of Massachusetts
grants it land over in Boston.

00:35:11.120 --> 00:35:14.690
And then it subvents it to the
tune of-- I don't know how many

00:35:14.690 --> 00:35:15.410
current dollars.

00:35:15.410 --> 00:35:17.410
But I think it's
around $300,000,

00:35:17.410 --> 00:35:19.930
a lot of money in those days.

00:35:19.930 --> 00:35:23.350
But without that money,
initial seed money

00:35:23.350 --> 00:35:27.540
basically, MIT would have had
an almost impossible time.

00:35:27.540 --> 00:35:30.870
Because once the
government of Massachusetts

00:35:30.870 --> 00:35:33.679
signed on to this place and
said, we'll give you a charter.

00:35:33.679 --> 00:35:34.720
We'll give you some land.

00:35:34.720 --> 00:35:36.860
And we'll give you some money.

00:35:36.860 --> 00:35:39.390
That gave a signal
to private donors

00:35:39.390 --> 00:35:42.790
that this place had a future.

00:35:42.790 --> 00:35:44.399
And that it was
worth investing in.

00:35:44.399 --> 00:35:46.440
And then, of course, there
were private donations

00:35:46.440 --> 00:35:47.870
that were very important too.

00:35:47.870 --> 00:35:50.410
But it's that sort of
story I want to talk about

00:35:50.410 --> 00:35:53.640
is how did Rogers get
the place started?

00:35:53.640 --> 00:35:57.430
And then who were the early
faculty that he recruited?

00:35:57.430 --> 00:36:00.160
Because it takes off in an
extremely interesting way

00:36:00.160 --> 00:36:01.700
and in a way that
really comports

00:36:01.700 --> 00:36:04.470
nicely with what MIT
is all about today.

00:36:04.470 --> 00:36:09.370
The original ideals of MIT
in 1865 and those today

00:36:09.370 --> 00:36:12.860
are not that different
in my opinion.

00:36:12.860 --> 00:36:14.150
There are differences.

00:36:14.150 --> 00:36:18.400
But the Mens et Manus
theme in the seal

00:36:18.400 --> 00:36:20.810
is a very interesting
and revealing way

00:36:20.810 --> 00:36:22.040
to think about this place.

00:36:22.040 --> 00:36:24.575
It hasn't changed.

00:36:24.575 --> 00:36:33.510
Well, it's changed, but--
so that's the third week.

00:36:33.510 --> 00:36:38.400
And then the fourth week
is basically-- well,

00:36:38.400 --> 00:36:39.620
it's about two things.

00:36:39.620 --> 00:36:42.190
One of you mentioned
earlier about Harvard

00:36:42.190 --> 00:36:45.120
trying to take over MIT.

00:36:45.120 --> 00:36:47.330
And that's a fascinating story.

00:36:47.330 --> 00:36:49.870
Harvard makes that attempt
at least five times,

00:36:49.870 --> 00:36:54.090
if not six, starting in
1872 and continuing up

00:36:54.090 --> 00:36:57.480
until World War
I or thereabouts.

00:36:57.480 --> 00:37:01.540
And each time-- well, it comes
very close once in the early

00:37:01.540 --> 00:37:02.550
1900's.

00:37:02.550 --> 00:37:04.200
There was actually
a time when you

00:37:04.200 --> 00:37:06.650
could get a joint degree
from Harvard and MIT.

00:37:06.650 --> 00:37:10.040
And it was looking
very much like the two

00:37:10.040 --> 00:37:11.260
places might merge.

00:37:11.260 --> 00:37:12.910
But it never happened.

00:37:12.910 --> 00:37:16.890
But that's an interesting
story that all MIT alums like

00:37:16.890 --> 00:37:20.840
to talk about and
students I suppose.

00:37:20.840 --> 00:37:22.760
And then the other
part of it is how

00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:25.670
this new campus, the so-called
campus, that we're on today,

00:37:25.670 --> 00:37:27.774
how did that come about?

00:37:27.774 --> 00:37:29.440
And of course, it
wouldn't have happened

00:37:29.440 --> 00:37:31.410
without George
Eastman first of all.

00:37:31.410 --> 00:37:35.000
George Eastman put up an
amazing number of dollars

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:37.880
to build the main part
of the campus here.

00:37:37.880 --> 00:37:40.300
The big dome
buildings and all that

00:37:40.300 --> 00:37:42.690
were all built
with Eastman money.

00:37:42.690 --> 00:37:47.160
And it's an interesting story
because I forget exactly how

00:37:47.160 --> 00:37:48.980
much he granted MIT initially.

00:37:48.980 --> 00:37:52.390
But President Maclaurin,
who was the president of MIT

00:37:52.390 --> 00:37:54.420
at that time, kept
going back to him.

00:37:54.420 --> 00:37:56.990
George, could you put a
little more on the till here?

00:37:56.990 --> 00:38:01.470
And each time he'd write a
check, very, very generous.

00:38:01.470 --> 00:38:04.560
And he wasn't a MIT graduate.

00:38:04.560 --> 00:38:06.550
I don't think he had
any MIT affiliation.

00:38:06.550 --> 00:38:08.750
But he employed
some MIT graduates.

00:38:08.750 --> 00:38:12.010
And I think that was
what-- he thought,

00:38:12.010 --> 00:38:13.990
they produce a good
product down there.

00:38:13.990 --> 00:38:15.630
I'm going to
support that school.

00:38:15.630 --> 00:38:18.240
And so that's basically
why he put up so much money

00:38:18.240 --> 00:38:19.130
to build a campus.

00:38:19.130 --> 00:38:21.610
But we'll have Mark
Jarzombek come in.

00:38:21.610 --> 00:38:26.200
He's written a book about the
physical facility or the campus

00:38:26.200 --> 00:38:27.790
itself, the building
of the campus.

00:38:27.790 --> 00:38:29.060
And he'll be the guest
speaker that day.

00:38:29.060 --> 00:38:30.893
And he has really
interesting things to say.

00:38:30.893 --> 00:38:32.772
He's written a book
about that topic.

00:38:32.772 --> 00:38:34.605
But they'll be some
good visuals that you'll

00:38:34.605 --> 00:38:36.215
be able to see in this too.

00:38:36.215 --> 00:38:37.590
PROFESSOR: And
that's really kind

00:38:37.590 --> 00:38:39.930
of the end of the
beginning for MIT.

00:38:39.930 --> 00:38:40.620
PROFESSOR: Yep.

00:38:40.620 --> 00:38:42.614
PROFESSOR: In that.

00:38:42.614 --> 00:38:44.030
And people at the
time, you'll see

00:38:44.030 --> 00:38:47.850
them say, up until that point
there was always money trouble.

00:38:47.850 --> 00:38:50.507
We never knew if we were going
to be around in five years.

00:38:50.507 --> 00:38:52.590
But once they move over
to this side of the campus

00:38:52.590 --> 00:38:54.894
and they build the
buildings, which

00:38:54.894 --> 00:38:56.560
puts them in a bit
of a hole for a while

00:38:56.560 --> 00:38:59.782
financially, but really is
the time that MIT arrived.

00:38:59.782 --> 00:39:01.240
And they feel like
that it's really

00:39:01.240 --> 00:39:03.560
become something that's
going to be lasting,

00:39:03.560 --> 00:39:06.890
only 50 years
after the founding.

00:39:09.720 --> 00:39:12.590
Then the next week we move
into what people sometimes

00:39:12.590 --> 00:39:18.600
call the progressive era,
the age of big business also.

00:39:18.600 --> 00:39:20.810
And actually our guest
speaker is Ross Bassett,

00:39:20.810 --> 00:39:23.440
who was a colleague of
ours, not from here.

00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:25.920
He's written a very interesting
piece, which we'll read,

00:39:25.920 --> 00:39:30.430
about students from India
coming to MIT in the 1930's.

00:39:30.430 --> 00:39:36.440
And there were only
about 20 or 30 students

00:39:36.440 --> 00:39:38.930
from India coming to MIT during
that whole 10 year period.

00:39:38.930 --> 00:39:43.360
But they were all from the 20
or 30 most prominent families

00:39:43.360 --> 00:39:47.750
in India and went back
and did amazing things

00:39:47.750 --> 00:39:49.470
in their own countries as well.

00:39:49.470 --> 00:39:51.790
And that's the
sort of jumping off

00:39:51.790 --> 00:39:54.610
point for our conversation
about MIT's relationships

00:39:54.610 --> 00:39:57.610
with the rest of the world
and the positioning of MIT

00:39:57.610 --> 00:40:00.100
as a global university, which
is obviously a very big thing

00:40:00.100 --> 00:40:00.600
today.

00:40:04.694 --> 00:40:06.110
And again, there's
a lot of issues

00:40:06.110 --> 00:40:10.460
there during that
period about industry

00:40:10.460 --> 00:40:12.200
and the appropriate
role of industry.

00:40:12.200 --> 00:40:14.210
And people are
feeling at the time

00:40:14.210 --> 00:40:16.390
that MIT has gotten much
too close to industry.

00:40:16.390 --> 00:40:19.460
And professors are behaving
more like consultants

00:40:19.460 --> 00:40:21.740
than they are like scientists.

00:40:21.740 --> 00:40:25.430
And that all sort of
turns around in 1930.

00:40:25.430 --> 00:40:27.380
We'll talk about
that in week six,

00:40:27.380 --> 00:40:31.860
both the relationships with
the military during World War I

00:40:31.860 --> 00:40:34.760
and the hiring of
Karl Compton in 1930,

00:40:34.760 --> 00:40:37.330
who was the first
scientist-- I think

00:40:37.330 --> 00:40:40.830
he's the first scientist or the
first physical scientist who

00:40:40.830 --> 00:40:43.800
leads MIT and really
brings the institute back

00:40:43.800 --> 00:40:47.100
toward a basic science
foundation, which is still

00:40:47.100 --> 00:40:51.180
something that you'll see
in your own educations,

00:40:51.180 --> 00:40:55.390
and sets it up for the
second World War in a way.

00:40:55.390 --> 00:40:57.700
So that's the middle of March.

00:40:57.700 --> 00:41:04.380
Then in week seven there's one
of the symposia for the 150th.

00:41:04.380 --> 00:41:06.200
There are six symposia
over the course

00:41:06.200 --> 00:41:09.660
of the semester about
the 150th anniversary.

00:41:09.660 --> 00:41:13.870
And two or three
of them are meeting

00:41:13.870 --> 00:41:15.765
on a time that happens
to be a Monday.

00:41:15.765 --> 00:41:17.480
And I have to be
there all day anyway

00:41:17.480 --> 00:41:20.970
because I'm introducing it
and sort of put it together.

00:41:20.970 --> 00:41:23.070
And what we'll do is
we'll have class time just

00:41:23.070 --> 00:41:24.930
be attend the symposium.

00:41:24.930 --> 00:41:27.450
Now, you don't have to
actually attend the three hours

00:41:27.450 --> 00:41:28.152
1:00 to 4:00.

00:41:28.152 --> 00:41:30.110
We happen to know that's
free in your schedule.

00:41:30.110 --> 00:41:31.650
So that's a good time to go.

00:41:31.650 --> 00:41:35.610
But any three hours over
the course of those two days

00:41:35.610 --> 00:41:37.560
will be fine.

00:41:37.560 --> 00:41:40.810
And that one is about women
in science and engineering

00:41:40.810 --> 00:41:43.040
at MIT, which is a
pretty major part

00:41:43.040 --> 00:41:44.530
of the history in
the last 10 years

00:41:44.530 --> 00:41:47.640
here starting just about
10 years ago with a very

00:41:47.640 --> 00:41:50.910
famous report that came
out, which was, in a sense,

00:41:50.910 --> 00:41:53.169
nothing short of revolutionary.

00:41:53.169 --> 00:41:55.210
And actually, Lotte Bailyn,
who wrote the article

00:41:55.210 --> 00:41:58.940
in this book-- the Kaiser
book-- about that moment

00:41:58.940 --> 00:42:02.770
also was one of the key authors
of that women in science report

00:42:02.770 --> 00:42:06.500
and is one of the organizers
of that symposium.

00:42:06.500 --> 00:42:10.610
PROFESSOR: One other point
is to note now week six,

00:42:10.610 --> 00:42:12.420
we're dealing with
the '20s and '30s.

00:42:12.420 --> 00:42:15.340
And now in week
seven, we're kind

00:42:15.340 --> 00:42:17.180
of jumping chronological
a little bit

00:42:17.180 --> 00:42:18.740
to more current events.

00:42:18.740 --> 00:42:20.850
We have to do that
because the symposia is

00:42:20.850 --> 00:42:22.652
scheduled at this time.

00:42:22.652 --> 00:42:24.610
So there's going to be
some jumping around here

00:42:24.610 --> 00:42:26.442
that we can't avoid.

00:42:26.442 --> 00:42:29.720
But the themes are
sufficiently important that we

00:42:29.720 --> 00:42:31.860
think that going
to that symposia

00:42:31.860 --> 00:42:35.190
would be extremely
interesting and educational.

00:42:35.190 --> 00:42:36.910
PROFESSOR: Yeah,
on the one hand,

00:42:36.910 --> 00:42:38.640
we're roughly moving
chronologically

00:42:38.640 --> 00:42:40.060
over the course of the term.

00:42:40.060 --> 00:42:43.210
But inevitably, even as we've
been doing already today,

00:42:43.210 --> 00:42:45.920
we're going to jump around
throughout the 150 year history

00:42:45.920 --> 00:42:48.680
because things will come
up that are relevant today

00:42:48.680 --> 00:42:49.870
or things that were past.

00:42:49.870 --> 00:42:54.020
So the class is not organized
around the idea of suspense

00:42:54.020 --> 00:42:58.150
where wait and see what
happens in the 1980s

00:42:58.150 --> 00:42:59.870
that you'll only learn
in the last week.

00:42:59.870 --> 00:43:02.820
You're going to incorporate that
over the course of the term.

00:43:02.820 --> 00:43:06.540
Then on week eight, we're
going to actually meet

00:43:06.540 --> 00:43:08.400
at the MIT Museum
where they have

00:43:08.400 --> 00:43:11.180
a special exhibition about MIT.

00:43:11.180 --> 00:43:14.530
Has anybody been to
the exhibition so far?

00:43:14.530 --> 00:43:17.570
So they put that together
for the 150th anniversary.

00:43:17.570 --> 00:43:21.180
It almost reads like a syllabus
for the class in some ways

00:43:21.180 --> 00:43:23.660
and also does a really good
job of tying these larger

00:43:23.660 --> 00:43:27.510
themes together about
different kinds of innovation

00:43:27.510 --> 00:43:30.477
and education and how those
two things tie together.

00:43:30.477 --> 00:43:33.060
And Debbie Douglas, who was the
curator who put that together,

00:43:33.060 --> 00:43:37.370
will give us our personal
tour through that exhibit.

00:43:37.370 --> 00:43:39.410
It's not actually
part of class time.

00:43:39.410 --> 00:43:41.710
But then I just put on
the syllabus April 10

00:43:41.710 --> 00:43:46.120
is the convocation, which
is the ceremonial center

00:43:46.120 --> 00:43:47.710
of the 150th anniversary.

00:43:47.710 --> 00:43:50.799
It's open to all faculty,
staff, and students and alums

00:43:50.799 --> 00:43:52.840
and happens down at the
Boston convention center.

00:43:52.840 --> 00:43:55.470
So I certainly
encourage you all to go.

00:43:55.470 --> 00:43:57.500
The governor of
Massachusetts will be there.

00:43:57.500 --> 00:44:00.250
Quite a number of other high
profile speakers will be there.

00:44:00.250 --> 00:44:02.270
And I'll show you
a little bit later

00:44:02.270 --> 00:44:04.720
about the mid-century
convocation, which

00:44:04.720 --> 00:44:09.080
happened in 1949, which
it's roughly modeled on.

00:44:09.080 --> 00:44:12.180
Then that very week,
actually it's the day after,

00:44:12.180 --> 00:44:15.300
is a symposium on computation
and the transformation

00:44:15.300 --> 00:44:17.277
of practically everything.

00:44:17.277 --> 00:44:19.110
Again, that one happens
to meet on a Monday.

00:44:19.110 --> 00:44:23.530
So class will just be attending
the symposium that day.

00:44:23.530 --> 00:44:26.055
Excuse me.

00:44:26.055 --> 00:44:27.930
Then we kind of pick up
our historical thread

00:44:27.930 --> 00:44:31.090
again with World War
II, also really quite

00:44:31.090 --> 00:44:32.890
a critical turning
point for the institute.

00:44:32.890 --> 00:44:35.430
One that I've done a
lot of work on that

00:44:35.430 --> 00:44:40.310
really begins to see
where we are today.

00:44:44.030 --> 00:44:45.500
Then we'll go into the Cold War.

00:44:49.410 --> 00:44:53.560
Again, one could teach an entire
class on MIT in the Cold War

00:44:53.560 --> 00:44:58.010
as one of our
colleagues, David Kaiser,

00:44:58.010 --> 00:45:02.600
actually teaches a class on
science and the Cold War.

00:45:02.600 --> 00:45:09.500
And then week 12,
we sort of bring it

00:45:09.500 --> 00:45:12.130
up to the last 40 years or so.

00:45:12.130 --> 00:45:15.010
And in a way, that's been
the hardest part of the class

00:45:15.010 --> 00:45:17.470
to teach because it's
not yet history as much

00:45:17.470 --> 00:45:19.580
as the rest of it is.

00:45:19.580 --> 00:45:21.149
And yet, it's still
in the making.

00:45:21.149 --> 00:45:23.190
And actually, the final
writing assignment really

00:45:23.190 --> 00:45:25.430
is partly to ask
you guys to help

00:45:25.430 --> 00:45:27.990
make that history of
the last 40 years or so.

00:45:27.990 --> 00:45:29.490
Because there's a
lot of things that

00:45:29.490 --> 00:45:31.448
haven't been written
about that we don't really

00:45:31.448 --> 00:45:33.450
know that some research
into the archives

00:45:33.450 --> 00:45:34.730
will really help us with.

00:45:34.730 --> 00:45:36.940
Although this year, we
have the oral histories

00:45:36.940 --> 00:45:38.190
that we didn't have last year.

00:45:38.190 --> 00:45:39.689
And I'll show you
those in a moment.

00:45:42.200 --> 00:45:44.950
So it's actually going to
be a pretty packed semester.

00:45:44.950 --> 00:45:46.199
There's a lot going on.

00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:46.990
It's a big history.

00:45:46.990 --> 00:45:49.520
There's a lot that happened.

00:45:49.520 --> 00:45:52.620
But we'll hope you'll get
some sense both for where

00:45:52.620 --> 00:45:55.390
the place that you're
going to school at

00:45:55.390 --> 00:45:59.340
came from, why you are expected
to take the classes that you're

00:45:59.340 --> 00:46:03.900
expected to take-- the
GIRs in particular-- what

00:46:03.900 --> 00:46:05.900
is the philosophy
behind the education

00:46:05.900 --> 00:46:09.376
that you're getting, no
matter what major you're in.

00:46:09.376 --> 00:46:12.220
How many people are
undergrads here by the way?

00:46:12.220 --> 00:46:14.440
Any grad students?

00:46:14.440 --> 00:46:17.169
Couple of grad students.

00:46:17.169 --> 00:46:18.710
And those are two
things-- we'll talk

00:46:18.710 --> 00:46:21.030
about how those two
things, the undergrad

00:46:21.030 --> 00:46:23.710
and the grad experience,
relate to each other.

00:46:23.710 --> 00:46:25.210
And hopefully at
the end of the term

00:46:25.210 --> 00:46:29.030
it will all make perfect
sense to all of you.

00:46:29.030 --> 00:46:31.476
Any questions about the
syllabus or assignments or any

00:46:31.476 --> 00:46:32.142
of those things?

00:46:38.350 --> 00:46:44.440
One of the really interesting
things about the 150th

00:46:44.440 --> 00:46:46.740
and about teaching the
class and writing this book

00:46:46.740 --> 00:46:48.448
and a lot of the other
things we're doing

00:46:48.448 --> 00:46:52.030
is that there isn't really
a fixed history of MIT.

00:46:52.030 --> 00:46:56.730
And as any historian
will tell you,

00:46:56.730 --> 00:46:59.610
what constitutes the history
of any subject changes

00:46:59.610 --> 00:47:04.434
in each generation and in a
sense is constantly rewritten.

00:47:04.434 --> 00:47:06.350
We like to think we don't
write too much of it

00:47:06.350 --> 00:47:09.630
according to today's
values and points of view.

00:47:09.630 --> 00:47:11.601
And at the same
time, we always know

00:47:11.601 --> 00:47:13.350
that we see things
from our point of view.

00:47:13.350 --> 00:47:14.960
And so you look back.

00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.770
And you see things that are
important in one generation

00:47:17.770 --> 00:47:20.870
that were less important in
another generation and vice

00:47:20.870 --> 00:47:22.160
versa.

00:47:22.160 --> 00:47:23.585
And what's been
really interesting

00:47:23.585 --> 00:47:25.710
about the last couple years
and the next few months

00:47:25.710 --> 00:47:29.390
is that we are again
rewriting the history of MIT.

00:47:29.390 --> 00:47:31.590
This book is one
attempt to do that.

00:47:31.590 --> 00:47:34.470
And one of the things
that came out of that

00:47:34.470 --> 00:47:35.950
was this little
video that I want

00:47:35.950 --> 00:47:52.240
to show you which, in a
way, really will anticipate

00:47:52.240 --> 00:47:54.380
a lot of the themes for
the reading for next week.

00:47:54.380 --> 00:47:57.420
It really gets us started on
how we think about these things.

00:47:57.420 --> 00:47:59.880
And over the course
of the 150 you'll

00:47:59.880 --> 00:48:05.600
see we put together about
five or six 12 minute videos

00:48:05.600 --> 00:48:09.656
on different aspects
of the institute.

00:48:09.656 --> 00:48:11.030
Some of them are
more historical.

00:48:11.030 --> 00:48:12.446
Some of them are
more current day.

00:48:12.446 --> 00:48:14.520
One of them focuses on
students and student life.

00:48:14.520 --> 00:48:17.420
One of them focuses
on entrepreneurship.

00:48:17.420 --> 00:48:21.360
And this one focuses
on the founding of MIT.

00:48:21.360 --> 00:48:24.950
And you'll see, maybe, a
familiar name or face in there.

00:48:24.950 --> 00:48:27.200
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

00:48:27.200 --> 00:48:29.680
-Today's Massachusetts
Institute of Technology

00:48:29.680 --> 00:48:32.800
is a world class center
for teaching and research.

00:48:32.800 --> 00:48:34.440
Faculty, students,
and researchers

00:48:34.440 --> 00:48:36.280
are united in their
goal to advance

00:48:36.280 --> 00:48:39.650
the frontiers of knowledge and
solve contemporary real world

00:48:39.650 --> 00:48:45.290
problems, following the vision
laid out for MIT 150 years ago.

00:48:45.290 --> 00:48:46.860
But the place
itself has certainly

00:48:46.860 --> 00:48:49.495
evolved and flourished
since those early days.

00:48:53.200 --> 00:48:56.330
It's hard to imagine how much
the scientific landscape has

00:48:56.330 --> 00:48:59.370
changed from when founder
William Barton Rogers first

00:48:59.370 --> 00:49:02.480
started thinking about a new
kind of polytechnic institute.

00:49:11.710 --> 00:49:14.020
-William Barton Rogers
was born at the beginning

00:49:14.020 --> 00:49:15.500
of the 19th century.

00:49:15.500 --> 00:49:18.590
And that marks the beginning
of an extraordinary time

00:49:18.590 --> 00:49:20.610
in US history.

00:49:20.610 --> 00:49:22.920
It's really the
transition that we're

00:49:22.920 --> 00:49:27.060
going to witness over a century
from an agrarian, rural country

00:49:27.060 --> 00:49:30.950
into an urban and
industrial country.

00:49:30.950 --> 00:49:33.520
-We're beginning to see the
emergence of large cities,

00:49:33.520 --> 00:49:38.210
factories, railroads, canals,
all the early instruments

00:49:38.210 --> 00:49:41.200
of big time industry
in the United States.

00:49:41.200 --> 00:49:43.240
-There's surveying involved.

00:49:43.240 --> 00:49:45.010
There's mechanical engineering.

00:49:45.010 --> 00:49:46.760
There's geology.

00:49:46.760 --> 00:49:48.550
There's all kinds of
civil engineering.

00:49:48.550 --> 00:49:52.770
-The sense of possibility of
what this new technology would

00:49:52.770 --> 00:49:56.180
mean for the country was
very much on Rogers' mind.

00:50:00.900 --> 00:50:04.320
-William Barton Rogers had a
lifelong interest in education.

00:50:04.320 --> 00:50:08.340
And by 1835, he's a professor
at the University of Virginia.

00:50:08.340 --> 00:50:10.920
He soon signs on to
lead a geological survey

00:50:10.920 --> 00:50:11.800
for the state.

00:50:11.800 --> 00:50:14.990
Though he loves the project,
he has a big problem

00:50:14.990 --> 00:50:17.110
finding qualified workers.

00:50:17.110 --> 00:50:20.830
-Rogers' inability to hire
workers for his survey,

00:50:20.830 --> 00:50:23.810
that combined scientific
knowledge and the ability

00:50:23.810 --> 00:50:28.670
to use technical apparatus,
was a great problem

00:50:28.670 --> 00:50:30.370
to his way of thinking.

00:50:30.370 --> 00:50:33.790
He wasn't the only person
that needed an individual

00:50:33.790 --> 00:50:34.810
with that skill.

00:50:34.810 --> 00:50:37.840
The world was filled
with new industries.

00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:44.300
And they all needed people
that combined smarts and skill.

00:50:44.300 --> 00:50:46.790
-Eventually, Rogers
decides to leave behind

00:50:46.790 --> 00:50:48.880
the frustrations and
political turmoil

00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:51.840
he's encountered in
Virginia's slave society

00:50:51.840 --> 00:50:54.440
and moved north to the
vibrant city of Boston.

00:50:54.440 --> 00:50:56.500
-Boston was one of the
leading commercial centers

00:50:56.500 --> 00:50:57.260
of the country.

00:50:57.260 --> 00:51:00.775
And the area surrounding
Boston was without question

00:51:00.775 --> 00:51:04.900
the most developed industrially
of any state in the union.

00:51:04.900 --> 00:51:07.240
-There probably was
not an American city

00:51:07.240 --> 00:51:10.670
that had more of a need
for engineers than Boston.

00:51:10.670 --> 00:51:12.840
The city itself was
being transformed

00:51:12.840 --> 00:51:14.430
by one of the
greatest engineering

00:51:14.430 --> 00:51:18.120
projects of the 19th century,
the filling in of the back bay.

00:51:18.120 --> 00:51:20.210
-And then you had
these reform movements,

00:51:20.210 --> 00:51:23.400
temperance movements,
pacifist movements,

00:51:23.400 --> 00:51:26.490
and of course the famous
anti-slavery abolitionist

00:51:26.490 --> 00:51:27.080
movement.

00:51:27.080 --> 00:51:28.580
This was the place.

00:51:28.580 --> 00:51:32.190
Boston was so radical
in its reform spirit.

00:51:32.190 --> 00:51:34.170
-The wealth generated
by all of this industry

00:51:34.170 --> 00:51:37.700
Bostonians put into various
philanthropic enterprises,

00:51:37.700 --> 00:51:41.900
endowing schools, hospitals,
libraries, museums,

00:51:41.900 --> 00:51:45.390
various institutions which
benefit the broader community.

00:51:45.390 --> 00:51:47.580
-Rogers writes in
his memoirs how much

00:51:47.580 --> 00:51:51.420
he likes the so-called
enterprising spirit

00:51:51.420 --> 00:51:55.390
and even uses the word knowledge
seeking spirit of this area.

00:51:58.070 --> 00:52:01.140
-For decades, Rogers had been
talking with his brother Henry

00:52:01.140 --> 00:52:04.570
about a new kind of
polytechnic institution.

00:52:04.570 --> 00:52:06.600
-At the time, the
ideals of science

00:52:06.600 --> 00:52:10.010
really focused on fundamental
principles somewhat

00:52:10.010 --> 00:52:13.120
disconnected from the
real problems of industry

00:52:13.120 --> 00:52:14.820
and the people who
worked in industry.

00:52:14.820 --> 00:52:18.590
-They began thinking about
how to incorporate science

00:52:18.590 --> 00:52:21.690
into what they referred
to as the useful arts.

00:52:21.690 --> 00:52:23.920
Today we would call
that technology.

00:52:23.920 --> 00:52:27.130
-It's a revolutionary
idea that someone

00:52:27.130 --> 00:52:29.650
will go to school
to get training

00:52:29.650 --> 00:52:33.830
to become an architect,
an engineer, a scientist.

00:52:33.830 --> 00:52:37.180
These are typically
occupations that people

00:52:37.180 --> 00:52:38.130
would learn by doing.

00:52:38.130 --> 00:52:42.420
-This was experimental
from the get go.

00:52:42.420 --> 00:52:46.960
Even the word technology
was new at that time.

00:52:46.960 --> 00:52:49.580
-He wanted students who had
a grasp of human nature,

00:52:49.580 --> 00:52:51.899
of basic sciences,
of mathematics far

00:52:51.899 --> 00:52:54.190
beyond the requirements for
making this or that machine

00:52:54.190 --> 00:52:54.690
work.

00:52:54.690 --> 00:52:57.649
He wanted to train students who
would be able to kind of guide

00:52:57.649 --> 00:52:59.190
the nation through
industrialization,

00:52:59.190 --> 00:53:00.490
not just build the widgets.

00:53:03.206 --> 00:53:04.830
-Different players
are coming together,

00:53:04.830 --> 00:53:07.060
trying to bring a bunch of
different scientific and

00:53:07.060 --> 00:53:09.010
practical institutions together.

00:53:09.010 --> 00:53:12.640
And Rogers proves very skilled
at taking that set of people

00:53:12.640 --> 00:53:16.090
and orienting their ideas
toward his proposal.

00:53:16.090 --> 00:53:18.490
-They knew it was
going to be in Boston,

00:53:18.490 --> 00:53:22.400
and the land in Back Bay
was the place to put it.

00:53:22.400 --> 00:53:25.340
So they were going to have
to convince the Massachusetts

00:53:25.340 --> 00:53:28.700
state legislature
that not only was

00:53:28.700 --> 00:53:32.630
the school worth establishing,
but that it was worth

00:53:32.630 --> 00:53:35.150
designating a piece of land for.

00:53:35.150 --> 00:53:37.750
-The proposal was brought to
the state of Massachusetts.

00:53:37.750 --> 00:53:41.180
And the first step is to
essentially incorporate it

00:53:41.180 --> 00:53:42.210
as a state corporation.

00:53:42.210 --> 00:53:47.270
And that's what we celebrate on
the founding day of April 10,

00:53:47.270 --> 00:53:50.840
1861, when the governor
finally signs the MIT charter.

00:54:03.990 --> 00:54:10.020
-Just two days after MIT's
founding on April 10 in 1861,

00:54:10.020 --> 00:54:14.900
the first shots are fired on
Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

00:54:14.900 --> 00:54:17.270
And with the start
of the Civil War,

00:54:17.270 --> 00:54:23.040
it meant that classes at MIT
could not start right away.

00:54:23.040 --> 00:54:26.040
This proved fortuitous
for MIT, because it

00:54:26.040 --> 00:54:30.490
allowed them the opportunity
to raise additional funds--

00:54:30.490 --> 00:54:35.236
to acquire the land, to start
construction, to hire faculty.

00:54:37.830 --> 00:54:41.375
-One can imagine that when
Rogers tried to raise money--

00:54:41.375 --> 00:54:46.950
it's wartime, and energies are
being devoted to other things.

00:54:46.950 --> 00:54:48.870
Yet on the other
hand, if we have

00:54:48.870 --> 00:54:50.820
optimism about the
outcome of the war,

00:54:50.820 --> 00:54:54.180
we can see the necessity
for young men and women

00:54:54.180 --> 00:54:56.320
to become engineers
and scientists,

00:54:56.320 --> 00:54:58.850
to be able to solve
these other problems.

00:54:58.850 --> 00:55:02.520
-When the Morrill Act is
passed in Washington in 1862,

00:55:02.520 --> 00:55:04.980
it grants every state
some land that then they

00:55:04.980 --> 00:55:09.220
can either use or sell to found
an agricultural or mechanical

00:55:09.220 --> 00:55:10.090
institution.

00:55:10.090 --> 00:55:12.560
-Rogers and his
colleagues won support

00:55:12.560 --> 00:55:15.780
from the state
legislature that a portion

00:55:15.780 --> 00:55:18.040
of the funds from
the Land Grant Act

00:55:18.040 --> 00:55:20.970
would be dedicated
to this new school,

00:55:20.970 --> 00:55:24.990
assuming that they could raise
the other funds successfully.

00:55:24.990 --> 00:55:29.000
And then they had to go
out, house by house, factory

00:55:29.000 --> 00:55:32.150
to factory, and convince
people one at a time

00:55:32.150 --> 00:55:34.665
to donate funds to
support this enterprise.

00:55:40.960 --> 00:55:44.570
-As the war is ending in 1865,
the Massachusetts Institute

00:55:44.570 --> 00:55:46.555
of Technology holds
its first classes

00:55:46.555 --> 00:55:50.195
in rented space in downtown
Boston's Mercantile Building

00:55:50.195 --> 00:55:54.470
while constructing its own
buildings near Copley Square.

00:55:54.470 --> 00:55:56.800
Rogers' vision for a
new kind of education,

00:55:56.800 --> 00:55:59.130
with its emphasis on
hands on learning,

00:55:59.130 --> 00:56:02.780
made it crucial to establish
cutting edge laboratories.

00:56:02.780 --> 00:56:04.770
-Rogers had a very
strong reaction

00:56:04.770 --> 00:56:06.810
against what he
considered rote learning.

00:56:06.810 --> 00:56:09.640
And so from the beginning,
MIT was a great innovator

00:56:09.640 --> 00:56:11.640
in getting laboratory
work right down

00:56:11.640 --> 00:56:13.440
to the earliest levels
of the curriculum.

00:56:13.440 --> 00:56:14.950
Entry undergraduate
students would

00:56:14.950 --> 00:56:17.220
be entitled to do a lot of
work in the laboratories

00:56:17.220 --> 00:56:19.010
with their own hands, not
just seeing someone else

00:56:19.010 --> 00:56:20.100
demonstrate some effect.

00:56:20.100 --> 00:56:22.940
-Rogers needed
faculty who were going

00:56:22.940 --> 00:56:27.245
to be willing to invent
a new kind of curriculum.

00:56:27.245 --> 00:56:30.310
That they were going to
have to cobble together

00:56:30.310 --> 00:56:34.070
for the first time ever
laboratory exercises.

00:56:34.070 --> 00:56:39.530
-He allowed his professors to
basically experiment with it,

00:56:39.530 --> 00:56:42.410
tinker with it, adjust
it, and build the program.

00:56:42.410 --> 00:56:45.590
I think of Pickering in
physics, for example.

00:56:45.590 --> 00:56:49.550
Professor Storer, who was one
of the early chemists at MIT.

00:56:49.550 --> 00:56:51.680
And both of them
become very famous.

00:56:51.680 --> 00:56:53.810
And they're producing
textbooks to accompany

00:56:53.810 --> 00:56:56.760
the lab oriented
educational process.

00:56:56.760 --> 00:56:58.450
-You look at the
curriculum offered

00:56:58.450 --> 00:57:02.970
in that very first set of
classes at MIT in 1865--

00:57:02.970 --> 00:57:06.400
it looks a lot like what we
call the GIRs today, the General

00:57:06.400 --> 00:57:09.310
Institute Requirements, that
still every freshman has

00:57:09.310 --> 00:57:10.010
to take.

00:57:10.010 --> 00:57:12.430
Mathematics,
chemistry, physics--

00:57:12.430 --> 00:57:15.220
those are all required
at MIT from day one.

00:57:15.220 --> 00:57:17.970
-There was an emphasis on
combining basic science

00:57:17.970 --> 00:57:19.880
with applied things
in the field.

00:57:19.880 --> 00:57:23.240
Students took field trips to
all kinds of working places,

00:57:23.240 --> 00:57:25.870
where the technological
world was being built.

00:57:25.870 --> 00:57:27.580
And Barton Rogers
wanted all that right

00:57:27.580 --> 00:57:28.880
in the curriculum for
his undergraduates,

00:57:28.880 --> 00:57:29.754
right from the start.

00:57:37.570 --> 00:57:39.770
-As a young startup,
MIT had its share

00:57:39.770 --> 00:57:43.470
of hurdles-- ongoing money
troubles, takeover attempts

00:57:43.470 --> 00:57:45.210
by neighboring Harvard.

00:57:45.210 --> 00:57:47.890
But with every passing year,
with every successful student

00:57:47.890 --> 00:57:50.470
who went on to make his
or her mark in the world,

00:57:50.470 --> 00:57:53.480
MIT's reputation grew,
and the school's standing

00:57:53.480 --> 00:57:56.200
became more and more secure.

00:57:56.200 --> 00:57:58.950
By 1894, President
Francis Amasa Walker

00:57:58.950 --> 00:58:01.660
was able to declare
in his annual report

00:58:01.660 --> 00:58:03.250
that the battle of
the new education

00:58:03.250 --> 00:58:06.290
is won, proclaiming that
the influence of MIT

00:58:06.290 --> 00:58:10.380
and its innovative ways are
now recognized far and wide.

00:58:10.380 --> 00:58:12.640
-In the early years, the
MIT way of doing business,

00:58:12.640 --> 00:58:16.170
with a great deal of emphasis
on hands on and doing things

00:58:16.170 --> 00:58:19.430
in reality, contrasted
very substantially

00:58:19.430 --> 00:58:22.060
with the more classically
oriented education.

00:58:22.060 --> 00:58:25.270
But today, even for
those institutions

00:58:25.270 --> 00:58:27.710
which are more classically
oriented liberal arts,

00:58:27.710 --> 00:58:32.950
they have moved,
actually, towards MIT.

00:58:32.950 --> 00:58:36.000
-By the time operations
moved across the Charles

00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:39.020
to the brand new
Cambridge campus in 1916,

00:58:39.020 --> 00:58:42.210
MIT's ongoing future
seemed assured.

00:58:42.210 --> 00:58:45.710
Over the decades, the roadmap
Rogers laid out for his school

00:58:45.710 --> 00:58:47.400
has proved flexible
enough to stay

00:58:47.400 --> 00:58:50.030
true to his founding
ideals while incorporating

00:58:50.030 --> 00:58:51.980
new fields as they emerge.

00:58:51.980 --> 00:58:53.980
-There have been a
lot of continuities

00:58:53.980 --> 00:58:55.900
in the history of
MIT, especially

00:58:55.900 --> 00:58:58.390
around the type of
curriculum that students

00:58:58.390 --> 00:59:01.000
are required to follow.

00:59:01.000 --> 00:59:03.240
There's surely a greater
range choice today,

00:59:03.240 --> 00:59:07.890
but the emphasis on combining
science with practice

00:59:07.890 --> 00:59:11.645
is still an important
dimension of what

00:59:11.645 --> 00:59:13.540
is happening around
the Institute today.

00:59:13.540 --> 00:59:16.490
-That idea of mind and
hands-- mens et manus--

00:59:16.490 --> 00:59:19.270
that goes right back to
the beginnings of MIT.

00:59:19.270 --> 00:59:21.230
And it's coincident
with the idea

00:59:21.230 --> 00:59:25.940
that learning takes place by
doing, as well just by seeing.

00:59:25.940 --> 00:59:29.340
-MIT today shows
remarkable commitment

00:59:29.340 --> 00:59:32.460
to the original vision
articulated by William Barton

00:59:32.460 --> 00:59:37.430
Rogers of a place that solves
great problems, that educates

00:59:37.430 --> 00:59:41.000
students who have
the capacity to be

00:59:41.000 --> 00:59:43.060
independent in their thinking.

00:59:43.060 --> 00:59:48.430
Those commitments are timeless,
and stretch across 150 years.

00:59:57.596 --> 01:00:39.428
[MUSIC PLAYING]

01:00:39.428 --> 01:00:41.450
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

01:00:41.450 --> 01:00:43.560
AUDIENCE: Is this part
of a bigger series,

01:00:43.560 --> 01:00:45.250
or is this just one?

01:00:45.250 --> 01:00:46.890
PROFESSOR: So as I
mentioned, there's

01:00:46.890 --> 01:00:48.240
five or six of these coming out.

01:00:48.240 --> 01:00:50.150
But it's not like the class.

01:00:50.150 --> 01:00:51.880
They're not going
chronologically.

01:00:51.880 --> 01:00:53.350
One is on entrepreneurship.

01:00:53.350 --> 01:00:54.819
One is on the student body.

01:00:54.819 --> 01:00:56.610
They'll each have a
little history in them,

01:00:56.610 --> 01:00:58.870
but it's not a
consecutive series.

01:00:58.870 --> 01:01:00.460
When they first
wanted to do this,

01:01:00.460 --> 01:01:06.180
they said, well, we'll
do one from 1861 to 1916.

01:01:06.180 --> 01:01:07.750
And we really pushed
them to go back

01:01:07.750 --> 01:01:10.910
into that earlier period, and
the background of the founding,

01:01:10.910 --> 01:01:12.240
and spend more time on that.

01:01:12.240 --> 01:01:15.247
Because the context, which
we'll read about next week,

01:01:15.247 --> 01:01:16.580
is so interesting and important.

01:01:19.944 --> 01:01:22.568
AUDIENCE: I feel like there were
three people who kept talking,

01:01:22.568 --> 01:01:23.776
and two of them were you two.

01:01:23.776 --> 01:01:25.070
Who was the third one?

01:01:25.070 --> 01:01:27.670
PROFESSOR: The third one-- the
woman was Debbie Douglas, who

01:01:27.670 --> 01:01:29.710
is the curator at
the museum, who

01:01:29.710 --> 01:01:31.620
we'll meet when
we go over there.

01:01:31.620 --> 01:01:36.535
And we'll also read a chapter
of hers, I think, in the book.

01:01:36.535 --> 01:01:39.800
AUDIENCE: How recently
did this come out?

01:01:39.800 --> 01:01:41.540
PROFESSOR: Two months ago.

01:01:41.540 --> 01:01:43.080
It was just released.

01:01:43.080 --> 01:01:44.860
It was released on
the day that 150th

01:01:44.860 --> 01:01:46.180
opened, which was January 7.

01:01:46.180 --> 01:01:47.510
So it's brand new, basically.

01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:52.197
Yeah, Michelle?

01:01:52.197 --> 01:01:53.280
AUDIENCE: Who produced it?

01:01:53.280 --> 01:01:55.790
PROFESSOR: Who produced it?

01:01:55.790 --> 01:01:58.919
Larry Gallagher, who
heads AV, produced it.

01:01:58.919 --> 01:02:00.710
And then it was directed
by a woman named--

01:02:00.710 --> 01:02:01.835
PROFESSOR: Maggie Villiger.

01:02:01.835 --> 01:02:03.500
PROFESSOR: Maggie Villiger.

01:02:03.500 --> 01:02:06.250
Actually, one of the interesting
things that we're doing

01:02:06.250 --> 01:02:08.550
is for each of five
of these videos,

01:02:08.550 --> 01:02:10.860
they're directed by
a different person.

01:02:10.860 --> 01:02:13.610
So it's not going to be a
consistent style across them.

01:02:13.610 --> 01:02:16.750
They're all going to have a
slightly different style, which

01:02:16.750 --> 01:02:20.220
should make it kind
of interesting.

01:02:20.220 --> 01:02:22.344
AUDIENCE: At the beginning,
I saw a lot of pictures

01:02:22.344 --> 01:02:26.490
with women in, for
instance, classrooms.

01:02:26.490 --> 01:02:28.950
Is that--

01:02:28.950 --> 01:02:30.305
PROFESSOR: Good question.

01:02:30.305 --> 01:02:32.360
That's a good question.

01:02:32.360 --> 01:02:38.930
MIT actually admitted women as
special students quite early.

01:02:38.930 --> 01:02:41.510
Ellen Swallow Richards, who
was the first actual graduate,

01:02:41.510 --> 01:02:43.640
also graduated quite early.

01:02:43.640 --> 01:02:45.370
I think 1878 was the
year she graduated.

01:02:45.370 --> 01:02:46.786
PROFESSOR: Somewhere
around there.

01:02:46.786 --> 01:02:47.770
Somewhere in there.

01:02:47.770 --> 01:02:49.186
PROFESSOR: My alma
mater, which is

01:02:49.186 --> 01:02:54.150
Yale-- they started
admitting students in 1969.

01:02:54.150 --> 01:02:56.892
But MIT was way
ahead of that curve.

01:02:56.892 --> 01:02:58.350
Now, actually, it's
a good question

01:02:58.350 --> 01:03:00.990
to ask Karen about when she
comes here in a little while.

01:03:00.990 --> 01:03:04.490
Because she was a student here
in the early '70s, I think.

01:03:04.490 --> 01:03:07.540
And it was very different
from what it is today.

01:03:07.540 --> 01:03:11.590
It's not like there were--
and I think even-- I got here

01:03:11.590 --> 01:03:15.460
in 1991, and I believe at
the undergraduate level,

01:03:15.460 --> 01:03:19.610
it was still only
about 30% women.

01:03:19.610 --> 01:03:23.850
And now it's more like
50% or 55% women, I think.

01:03:23.850 --> 01:03:26.160
So it's come up a lot
even in that period.

01:03:26.160 --> 01:03:29.040
So there have always
been women here,

01:03:29.040 --> 01:03:31.750
but the proportions
that you know of today

01:03:31.750 --> 01:03:34.820
are fairly recent.

01:03:34.820 --> 01:03:37.110
But again, if you look at
the Ivy League schools,

01:03:37.110 --> 01:03:39.330
they were in the
Stone Age compared

01:03:39.330 --> 01:03:43.912
to MIT with how they
handled and treated women.

01:03:43.912 --> 01:03:45.370
AUDIENCE: So you
guys in that video

01:03:45.370 --> 01:03:48.380
are saying that MIT sort of
grew out of and contributed

01:03:48.380 --> 01:03:50.790
to the Boston area at
the beginning, mostly.

01:03:50.790 --> 01:03:53.980
When did it sort of hit
international and national

01:03:53.980 --> 01:03:57.740
prominence and become like a
huge international technology

01:03:57.740 --> 01:03:59.220
institution?

01:03:59.220 --> 01:04:01.870
PROFESSOR: That's a really
good question, actually,

01:04:01.870 --> 01:04:03.670
and one of the
things we'll look at

01:04:03.670 --> 01:04:05.750
again and again all semester.

01:04:05.750 --> 01:04:12.410
I think as the
video talks about,

01:04:12.410 --> 01:04:15.590
New England was really
attractive to William Barton

01:04:15.590 --> 01:04:16.700
Rogers.

01:04:16.700 --> 01:04:19.410
There's every reason that
we could be celebrating

01:04:19.410 --> 01:04:22.820
the Virginia Institute of
Technology's 150th anniversary,

01:04:22.820 --> 01:04:23.440
but we're not.

01:04:23.440 --> 01:04:27.360
He felt Virginia was
not the place for this.

01:04:27.360 --> 01:04:29.265
That New England,
for reasons that Roe

01:04:29.265 --> 01:04:33.500
will talk about next week,
was much more suited to it.

01:04:33.500 --> 01:04:38.040
I would guess that already
by the late 19th century,

01:04:38.040 --> 01:04:42.610
a lot of the MIT graduates
are going out west, and doing

01:04:42.610 --> 01:04:44.970
the surveys and engineering
on the railroads

01:04:44.970 --> 01:04:48.260
and dams and water supplies.

01:04:48.260 --> 01:04:52.260
Fremont, one of the great
surveyor engineers of the west,

01:04:52.260 --> 01:04:53.880
was an MIT graduate.

01:04:53.880 --> 01:04:56.750
He was maybe even a faculty
member here, wasn't he?

01:04:56.750 --> 01:04:57.750
PROFESSOR: John Fremont?

01:04:57.750 --> 01:04:58.750
PROFESSOR: John Fremont.

01:04:58.750 --> 01:05:01.090
PROFESSOR: No, I don't think so.

01:05:01.090 --> 01:05:04.385
But I'm trying to remember who--
there is someone in that guise,

01:05:04.385 --> 01:05:05.260
but it's not Fremont.

01:05:08.450 --> 01:05:10.240
I think, with reference
to your question

01:05:10.240 --> 01:05:12.430
about when does MIT
start to achieve

01:05:12.430 --> 01:05:18.180
an international reputation,
probably the real reputation

01:05:18.180 --> 01:05:20.720
comes during and
after World War II.

01:05:20.720 --> 01:05:24.690
I mean, that's
when MIT is really

01:05:24.690 --> 01:05:29.230
recognized as being a big
time place internationally.

01:05:29.230 --> 01:05:33.590
There were surely
hints of recognition

01:05:33.590 --> 01:05:35.880
in the late 19th
century, the 1890s.

01:05:35.880 --> 01:05:41.510
When Francis Amasa Walker, after
whom the Walker building is

01:05:41.510 --> 01:05:44.870
named, makes his
annual report-- I

01:05:44.870 --> 01:05:47.920
think it's in 1894 or
thereabouts-- in which he says

01:05:47.920 --> 01:05:51.630
the battle of the
new education is won,

01:05:51.630 --> 01:05:54.070
clearly he was making
a reference to the fact

01:05:54.070 --> 01:05:58.380
that MIT was being recognized
not only by American higher

01:05:58.380 --> 01:06:00.669
educational institutions,
but by that time,

01:06:00.669 --> 01:06:02.585
there were foreign
students beginning to come.

01:06:02.585 --> 01:06:05.940
It's very small
numbers, but still.

01:06:05.940 --> 01:06:08.740
So it's increasing,
but it really

01:06:08.740 --> 01:06:15.284
doesn't hit the big
center spot until-- I

01:06:15.284 --> 01:06:16.450
was going to say centerfold.

01:06:16.450 --> 01:06:17.840
That's not quite the right word.

01:06:17.840 --> 01:06:18.920
[LAUGHTER]

01:06:18.920 --> 01:06:21.220
PROFESSOR: But
until, I would say,

01:06:21.220 --> 01:06:22.990
World War II,
after World War II.

01:06:22.990 --> 01:06:25.890
So much was happening here,
and it really became famous.

01:06:25.890 --> 01:06:29.920
PROFESSOR: If you look in the
sciences, well into the 1930s,

01:06:29.920 --> 01:06:32.650
if you're a bright
young physicist,

01:06:32.650 --> 01:06:35.830
you're basically sent to
Germany to get your PhD.

01:06:35.830 --> 01:06:38.600
And that changes,
obviously, during the course

01:06:38.600 --> 01:06:41.680
of the second World
War, not least

01:06:41.680 --> 01:06:44.650
because the Germans kicked out
a lot of the good physicists

01:06:44.650 --> 01:06:47.270
and they all came here.

01:06:47.270 --> 01:06:52.434
And also in 1940, when Vannevar
Bush goes to Washington--

01:06:52.434 --> 01:06:53.850
we'll talk about
this-- and really

01:06:53.850 --> 01:06:57.330
founds the whole wartime
research establishment, which

01:06:57.330 --> 01:07:00.810
includes the Manhattan Project,
includes the radiation lab,

01:07:00.810 --> 01:07:03.970
includes the whole modern way
that the federal government

01:07:03.970 --> 01:07:09.130
supports research, that's
when you see MIT people really

01:07:09.130 --> 01:07:12.470
literally at the right
hand of the president.

01:07:12.470 --> 01:07:15.740
I don't know that there
would be any senior MIT

01:07:15.740 --> 01:07:19.990
person in a national political
role before about then.

01:07:19.990 --> 01:07:23.080
We'll see over the course of the
term, but I don't think of one.

01:07:23.080 --> 01:07:27.730
Whereas after that, the first
presidential science adviser

01:07:27.730 --> 01:07:30.770
ever appointed is James
Killian, president of MIT.

01:07:30.770 --> 01:07:33.390
The second one,
under John F Kennedy,

01:07:33.390 --> 01:07:37.900
is Jerry Wiesner, who later
becomes president of MIT.

01:07:37.900 --> 01:07:38.940
On and on and on.

01:07:38.940 --> 01:07:41.670
And for the period
of the '50s and '60s,

01:07:41.670 --> 01:07:45.720
the place really acquires
that national-- but also

01:07:45.720 --> 01:07:52.120
during the '50s, MIT faculty,
much like they're doing today,

01:07:52.120 --> 01:07:55.290
are off abroad founding
engineering schools

01:07:55.290 --> 01:07:58.790
in the MIT model
all over the world.

01:07:58.790 --> 01:08:02.980
I once went to a conference
where I was seated at dinner--

01:08:02.980 --> 01:08:04.470
it was an oil
industry conference--

01:08:04.470 --> 01:08:09.610
the guy I was next to was
the associate oil minister

01:08:09.610 --> 01:08:13.337
for Iran, which is not the sort
of person that Americans meet

01:08:13.337 --> 01:08:15.670
very often at conferences,
because there aren't too many

01:08:15.670 --> 01:08:16.380
conferences where--

01:08:16.380 --> 01:08:16.939
PROFESSOR: --you
have the Iranians.

01:08:16.939 --> 01:08:18.821
PROFESSOR: And I was
sort of like, gee,

01:08:18.821 --> 01:08:20.279
what is this going
to conversation.

01:08:20.279 --> 01:08:23.109
And he said, oh, MIT.

01:08:23.109 --> 01:08:25.840
My technical institute
in Tehran that I went to

01:08:25.840 --> 01:08:28.936
was founded by MIT
faculty on the MIT model.

01:08:28.936 --> 01:08:31.630
He had an enormous
respect for what

01:08:31.630 --> 01:08:33.279
MIT represented in that country.

01:08:33.279 --> 01:08:36.479
And that's true in a lot of
places in the Middle East,

01:08:36.479 --> 01:08:39.620
a lot of so-called developing
nations during that period.

01:08:39.620 --> 01:08:41.779
The Indian Institutes
of Technology--

01:08:41.779 --> 01:08:44.819
it's not a coincidence,
IIT is what they're called.

01:08:44.819 --> 01:08:45.859
There are many of them.

01:08:45.859 --> 01:08:47.569
And so that's one of the ways.

01:08:47.569 --> 01:08:50.779
And it's of course
happening today in Singapore

01:08:50.779 --> 01:08:53.140
and other places in
Asia, particularly,

01:08:53.140 --> 01:08:57.700
that new institutes
are being founded

01:08:57.700 --> 01:08:59.420
with MIT's influence there.

01:08:59.420 --> 01:09:02.500
AUDIENCE: So did we do Caltech?

01:09:02.500 --> 01:09:05.653
PROFESSOR: Well,
Caltech-- anybody

01:09:05.653 --> 01:09:07.819
know what it was called
before it was the California

01:09:07.819 --> 01:09:09.235
Institute of
Technology, which has

01:09:09.235 --> 01:09:12.210
some resonance to the
name of this institution?

01:09:12.210 --> 01:09:14.790
It was called Throop College.

01:09:14.790 --> 01:09:18.250
And in the '20s or
in the '30s-- I'm

01:09:18.250 --> 01:09:21.069
forgetting exactly when--
they changed the name to it

01:09:21.069 --> 01:09:22.890
California Institute
of Technology.

01:09:22.890 --> 01:09:25.790
For many years, just the
word "tech" meant MIT.

01:09:25.790 --> 01:09:27.960
And then gradually, all
these other institutes

01:09:27.960 --> 01:09:31.010
formed, where they became
Georgia Tech or Caltech

01:09:31.010 --> 01:09:33.290
or other places like that.

01:09:33.290 --> 01:09:36.613
And then the word, the
"tech" term, became generic.

01:09:36.613 --> 01:09:38.529
Most of you probably
don't refer to this place

01:09:38.529 --> 01:09:39.800
as "Tech," do you?

01:09:39.800 --> 01:09:41.359
When you're home
on break, you say,

01:09:41.359 --> 01:09:42.979
I've got to go back
to Tech for this.

01:09:42.979 --> 01:09:45.120
But for many years, that's
what people referred to it.

01:09:45.120 --> 01:09:46.703
Or they referred to
it as "Technology"

01:09:46.703 --> 01:09:48.899
in the 19th century.

01:09:48.899 --> 01:09:51.670
So yes, Caltech and
Stanford, very much so.

01:09:51.670 --> 01:09:53.580
The father of Silicon
Valley was a guy

01:09:53.580 --> 01:09:57.200
named Frederick Terman, who got
his PhD here in Vannevar Bush's

01:09:57.200 --> 01:10:00.690
lab in the late '20s and early
'30s, and then moved out west.

01:10:00.690 --> 01:10:02.890
And Stanford, again,
had been founded--

01:10:02.890 --> 01:10:05.280
he didn't found
Stanford-- but he really

01:10:05.280 --> 01:10:07.850
built up the model
of a university

01:10:07.850 --> 01:10:10.690
as the center of a kind
of industrial region,

01:10:10.690 --> 01:10:13.450
with Hewlett and
Packard and many

01:10:13.450 --> 01:10:15.020
of those other
early entrepreneurs.

01:10:15.020 --> 01:10:19.459
And so there's a lot of that
kind of influence there.

01:10:19.459 --> 01:10:21.750
You'll see this a lot in the
reading in the next couple

01:10:21.750 --> 01:10:23.331
weeks-- useful arts.

01:10:23.331 --> 01:10:25.080
That's a phrase that
Leo talked about that

01:10:25.080 --> 01:10:26.190
comes up all the time.

01:10:26.190 --> 01:10:29.310
It's in the MIT
charter, I believe.

01:10:29.310 --> 01:10:33.930
And a useful way to think of
that is not art as in fine art,

01:10:33.930 --> 01:10:36.630
like you'd go to the Museum
of Fine Arts to see today,

01:10:36.630 --> 01:10:39.850
but art as in
artisanal, artisans--

01:10:39.850 --> 01:10:45.750
you know, a brick layer,
a tile layer, a carpenter.

01:10:45.750 --> 01:10:47.600
Those were sort of more
what people referred

01:10:47.600 --> 01:10:51.310
to when they used the term
the "useful arts" then.

01:10:51.310 --> 01:10:54.220
The steam engine and the
locomotive is a machine.

01:10:54.220 --> 01:10:59.460
But a locomotive is
only a very small part

01:10:59.460 --> 01:11:00.960
of what it takes
to make a railroad.

01:11:00.960 --> 01:11:02.410
There's all this
civil engineering

01:11:02.410 --> 01:11:05.470
that goes involved in
laying the tracks, and maybe

01:11:05.470 --> 01:11:09.230
some surveying, and thinking
about it as a system.

01:11:09.230 --> 01:11:11.650
And then railroads
and telegraphs

01:11:11.650 --> 01:11:14.000
came up really
very much together.

01:11:14.000 --> 01:11:16.480
All the early telegraphs went
along the railroad routes

01:11:16.480 --> 01:11:17.520
in this country.

01:11:17.520 --> 01:11:20.180
And so you almost can't even
think about the railroad

01:11:20.180 --> 01:11:23.014
without thinking
about a telegraph.

01:11:23.014 --> 01:11:24.430
There was even a
book out recently

01:11:24.430 --> 01:11:27.890
called The Victorian Internet,
a kind of early information

01:11:27.890 --> 01:11:29.090
network that ran around.

01:11:32.030 --> 01:11:35.619
There's a famous
book by a guy named

01:11:35.619 --> 01:11:37.410
Alfred Chandler at
Harvard Business School.

01:11:37.410 --> 01:11:42.420
He talks about-- modern
management arose as actually

01:11:42.420 --> 01:11:45.090
between the Worcester
to Albany railroad.

01:11:45.090 --> 01:11:47.410
It was one of the first
long railroads in the world,

01:11:47.410 --> 01:11:49.410
in Western Massachusetts
and New York state.

01:11:49.410 --> 01:11:52.300
When that railroad was built,
it was longer than 60 miles.

01:11:52.300 --> 01:11:56.830
And they started running
into each other, the trains.

01:11:56.830 --> 01:11:59.090
And he said when you started
building railroads that

01:11:59.090 --> 01:12:05.490
were bigger than 60 miles,
all of a sudden-- hi, Karen.

01:12:05.490 --> 01:12:07.430
This is our speaker
for our next hour.

01:12:07.430 --> 01:12:10.240
But we're talking a little bit
about the idea of technology.

01:12:14.840 --> 01:12:17.346
When the railroad became
longer than 60 miles,

01:12:17.346 --> 01:12:18.970
it needed a whole
new organization just

01:12:18.970 --> 01:12:21.820
to coordinate who was
on the tracks when

01:12:21.820 --> 01:12:24.100
and keep the trains from
running into each other.

01:12:24.100 --> 01:12:26.740
And that's exactly the
same kind of period

01:12:26.740 --> 01:12:28.630
about which Leo Marx
is talking about,

01:12:28.630 --> 01:12:31.862
where suddenly you have
these people called managers.

01:12:31.862 --> 01:12:34.035
There's nobody in the
world called a "manager"

01:12:34.035 --> 01:12:37.520
before about 1840.

01:12:37.520 --> 01:12:39.710
And even then, they
rise only gradually

01:12:39.710 --> 01:12:41.300
over the course of
the 19th century.

01:12:41.300 --> 01:12:42.510
You have these people
called "managers."

01:12:42.510 --> 01:12:44.120
You have this
whole organization.

01:12:44.120 --> 01:12:45.170
Yes, you have machines.

01:12:45.170 --> 01:12:47.740
But a machine is not a
great way to describe it.

01:12:47.740 --> 01:12:51.150
And sure enough, right
about then, if you look,

01:12:51.150 --> 01:12:53.480
you have this word--
it's not actually

01:12:53.480 --> 01:12:57.380
coined in 1829 by Jacob
Bigelow, but it is sort of

01:12:57.380 --> 01:13:03.010
brought into a modern usage--
this word "technology."

01:13:03.010 --> 01:13:08.960
And Leo really writes
about why was it

01:13:08.960 --> 01:13:11.440
at this point in history you
needed a new word for this,

01:13:11.440 --> 01:13:14.300
and what did this new
word come to stand for.

01:13:14.300 --> 01:13:20.500
And even after 1829, the
word wasn't used very much

01:13:20.500 --> 01:13:21.620
until the T in MIT.

01:13:21.620 --> 01:13:24.950
It was really one of the first
significant uses of the word.

01:13:24.950 --> 01:13:28.350
And even then, you wouldn't
see people using the word

01:13:28.350 --> 01:13:30.550
technology like
they use it today

01:13:30.550 --> 01:13:33.130
until after World
War II, really.

01:13:33.130 --> 01:13:35.720
So you'd see a student
today in a lab might say,

01:13:35.720 --> 01:13:39.360
I made a new technology
for handling micropayments

01:13:39.360 --> 01:13:41.060
on the internet, or
something like that.

01:13:41.060 --> 01:13:42.990
You'd never see that in 1940.

01:13:42.990 --> 01:13:45.190
They would say, I
built an apparatus.

01:13:45.190 --> 01:13:47.830
They used that
phrase a lot, even

01:13:47.830 --> 01:13:49.860
though they were working at MIT.

01:13:49.860 --> 01:13:51.605
Technology is an abstraction.

01:13:51.605 --> 01:13:55.030
[INAUDIBLE] sort of [INAUDIBLE]
these different things.

01:13:55.030 --> 01:14:00.390
And then when people
start using it as a noun

01:14:00.390 --> 01:14:04.490
that actually has active agency
in the world, what is that?

01:14:04.490 --> 01:14:05.874
It's a very strange way to talk.

01:14:05.874 --> 01:14:08.600
And we won't talk about
it this way in the class.

01:14:08.600 --> 01:14:11.650
Technology doesn't force
people to do things.

01:14:11.650 --> 01:14:12.950
People build technologies.

01:14:12.950 --> 01:14:16.300
People like you
build technologies.

01:14:16.300 --> 01:14:17.840
People do things with machines.

01:14:17.840 --> 01:14:22.730
People are influenced by
certain kinds of forces.

01:14:22.730 --> 01:14:26.310
But technology itself is
this sort of invisible thing

01:14:26.310 --> 01:14:28.820
that exists out
there, that doesn't

01:14:28.820 --> 01:14:32.130
think, it doesn't have a mind,
it doesn't have an address,

01:14:32.130 --> 01:14:34.100
doesn't pay taxes.

01:14:34.100 --> 01:14:35.610
It doesn't order anybody around.

01:14:38.770 --> 01:14:41.150
Now, interestingly,
in his conception

01:14:41.150 --> 01:14:44.060
when he wrote this
paper, he had this idea

01:14:44.060 --> 01:14:48.230
that technology conjures up an
idea of white men in lab coats

01:14:48.230 --> 01:14:50.190
sort of sitting at lab benches.

01:14:50.190 --> 01:14:55.320
More and more, personal
technologies-- PCs

01:14:55.320 --> 01:14:59.890
and cellphones and things--
if you look in the technology

01:14:59.890 --> 01:15:03.090
section of either the
bookstore or the newspaper,

01:15:03.090 --> 01:15:05.180
they don't even talk about
airplanes and railroads

01:15:05.180 --> 01:15:07.300
and ships and submarines.

01:15:07.300 --> 01:15:11.260
They talk about basically
personal information technology

01:15:11.260 --> 01:15:12.970
almost exclusively.

01:15:12.970 --> 01:15:14.077
So that word has come.

01:15:14.077 --> 01:15:15.660
And if you talk about
the tech sector,

01:15:15.660 --> 01:15:18.319
they almost always
mean the companies

01:15:18.319 --> 01:15:19.860
in Silicon Valley
and a few companies

01:15:19.860 --> 01:15:23.714
around here who do
this kind of stuff.

01:15:23.714 --> 01:15:25.880
I once had an experience--
it was about 10 years ago

01:15:25.880 --> 01:15:28.450
already-- where Microsoft
gave a whole bunch of money

01:15:28.450 --> 01:15:31.470
to MIT-- I think
they still do it,

01:15:31.470 --> 01:15:34.010
it was what became what
is now called iCampus--

01:15:34.010 --> 01:15:38.150
to do research projects in
technology and education.

01:15:38.150 --> 01:15:40.130
And the guy from
Microsoft came and said,

01:15:40.130 --> 01:15:42.380
OK, we'll give
$25 million to MIT

01:15:42.380 --> 01:15:44.360
for experiments in
technology in education,

01:15:44.360 --> 01:15:46.443
technology in education,
technology in education--

01:15:46.443 --> 01:15:47.970
he kept repeating that phrase.

01:15:47.970 --> 01:15:49.330
I said, oh, that's interesting.

01:15:49.330 --> 01:15:52.040
And I raised my hand and I said,
what do you mean by technology?

01:15:52.040 --> 01:15:57.124
Do you mean like helicopters
and submarines and ships?

01:15:57.124 --> 01:15:59.290
And the guy said, oh, no,
no, I should clarify that.

01:15:59.290 --> 01:16:01.440
What we mean is
personal computers

01:16:01.440 --> 01:16:03.270
running Microsoft software.

01:16:03.270 --> 01:16:03.971
Oh, OK.

01:16:03.971 --> 01:16:05.346
As long as we're
clear on what we

01:16:05.346 --> 01:16:07.210
mean by technology in education.

01:16:07.210 --> 01:16:09.076
That's helpful.

01:16:09.076 --> 01:16:10.450
That was sort of
an extreme case,

01:16:10.450 --> 01:16:12.930
but you see that around a lot.

01:16:12.930 --> 01:16:14.635
But even then, it's
still worth-- I

01:16:14.635 --> 01:16:17.140
happen to be reading
a book by my colleague

01:16:17.140 --> 01:16:19.224
Sherry Turkle, which
you may have seen.

01:16:19.224 --> 01:16:20.390
It's been in the news a lot.

01:16:20.390 --> 01:16:22.850
She was on Stephen
Colbert a couple weeks ago

01:16:22.850 --> 01:16:27.000
talking about cellphone
use, and particularly

01:16:27.000 --> 01:16:28.460
teenagers and technology.

01:16:28.460 --> 01:16:30.470
It says, "Why do we expect
more from technology

01:16:30.470 --> 01:16:32.701
and less from each other?"

01:16:32.701 --> 01:16:35.200
She's a close colleague of mine
and of Leo Marx's, but she's

01:16:35.200 --> 01:16:38.600
constantly using the word
technology makes us do this,

01:16:38.600 --> 01:16:43.120
technology makes us do
that, when actually,

01:16:43.120 --> 01:16:44.800
it's how we relate
to our machines

01:16:44.800 --> 01:16:46.670
in a slightly different way.

01:16:46.670 --> 01:16:50.390
So we sort of start out
the class with this piece.

01:16:50.390 --> 01:16:53.670
And if you haven't finished it,
please do read the rest of it

01:16:53.670 --> 01:16:56.777
between now and
next week, to give

01:16:56.777 --> 01:16:58.360
a little bit of
historical perspective

01:16:58.360 --> 01:16:59.310
on what is the thing.

01:16:59.310 --> 01:17:01.000
We're at this Institute
of Technology--

01:17:01.000 --> 01:17:03.820
what do we really mean by that?

01:17:03.820 --> 01:17:07.790
And the word can become so big
that it can kind of encompass

01:17:07.790 --> 01:17:09.155
anything and everything.

01:17:09.155 --> 01:17:10.530
You can ask the
same, by the way,

01:17:10.530 --> 01:17:11.850
about the word engineering.

01:17:11.850 --> 01:17:13.380
How many people are
here engineering

01:17:13.380 --> 01:17:15.160
majors of one kind or another?

01:17:15.160 --> 01:17:16.530
So almost everybody.

01:17:16.530 --> 01:17:17.410
Science majors?

01:17:17.410 --> 01:17:18.430
Any?

01:17:18.430 --> 01:17:19.130
One, two?

01:17:22.620 --> 01:17:25.590
And actually, the
profession of engineering

01:17:25.590 --> 01:17:28.900
has almost the exact same kind
of chronology as both the word

01:17:28.900 --> 01:17:36.327
technology and the
history of MIT.

01:17:36.327 --> 01:17:38.160
Does anybody know what
the first engineering

01:17:38.160 --> 01:17:40.364
school in the United States was?

01:17:40.364 --> 01:17:41.240
AUDIENCE: West Point.

01:17:41.240 --> 01:17:42.690
PROFESSOR: Yeah, West Point.

01:17:42.690 --> 01:17:43.190
1804.

01:17:43.190 --> 01:17:44.680
It was not MIT.

01:17:44.680 --> 01:17:48.080
Second one was Rensselaer
Polytechnic, RPI.

01:17:48.080 --> 01:17:51.230
And MIT was pretty much the
third one, but almost 50 years

01:17:51.230 --> 01:17:55.280
later-- almost 60 years
later from West Point.

01:17:55.280 --> 01:17:57.840
So engineering as
we know it today

01:17:57.840 --> 01:18:01.820
has its origins in what today
we call civil engineering,

01:18:01.820 --> 01:18:04.180
but actually was really
called military engineering.

01:18:04.180 --> 01:18:06.989
And all engineering
was basically--

01:18:06.989 --> 01:18:08.780
up until the beginning
of the 19th century,

01:18:08.780 --> 01:18:12.650
all engineering was
civil engineering,

01:18:12.650 --> 01:18:15.360
which meant roads,
bridges, fortifications,

01:18:15.360 --> 01:18:18.280
a little bit of artillery work.

01:18:18.280 --> 01:18:21.790
And it's only in the course
of the mid 19th century

01:18:21.790 --> 01:18:25.370
that you get-- in fact, the
profession, the discipline

01:18:25.370 --> 01:18:31.220
of mechanical engineering, is a
post Civil War thing, organized

01:18:31.220 --> 01:18:33.910
around steam engines
and steam engineering.

01:18:33.910 --> 01:18:36.650
In fact, the MIT department
of mechanical engineering,

01:18:36.650 --> 01:18:39.460
as like many other departments
of mechanical engineering,

01:18:39.460 --> 01:18:41.540
is formed by Navy
steam engineers

01:18:41.540 --> 01:18:45.660
who come out of
the Civil War Navy.

01:18:45.660 --> 01:18:49.450
Electrical engineering
is even later.

01:18:49.450 --> 01:18:51.880
And all the other
kinds of engineering

01:18:51.880 --> 01:18:53.540
are even later after that.

01:18:53.540 --> 01:18:57.750
So you're all familiar with
the course number story at MIT,

01:18:57.750 --> 01:18:58.560
right?

01:18:58.560 --> 01:19:02.600
That the course
numbers are basically

01:19:02.600 --> 01:19:05.250
the chronology on
which they were added.

01:19:05.250 --> 01:19:07.070
So course one is what?

01:19:07.070 --> 01:19:07.880
AUDIENCE: Civil.

01:19:07.880 --> 01:19:08.670
PROFESSOR: Civil.

01:19:08.670 --> 01:19:10.660
The environmental
is added later.

01:19:10.660 --> 01:19:12.070
Actually pretty
recently, I think

01:19:12.070 --> 01:19:14.220
within the last 10 or 15 years.

01:19:14.220 --> 01:19:17.260
Course two, Mechanical
Engineering, comes next.

01:19:17.260 --> 01:19:20.360
Course three, Material
Science, anybody

01:19:20.360 --> 01:19:24.610
know when the phrase
"material science" comes from?

01:19:24.610 --> 01:19:27.480
That's a 1960s,
'70s, '80s phrase.

01:19:27.480 --> 01:19:28.550
What was it before that?

01:19:28.550 --> 01:19:29.820
AUDIENCE: Didn't it
used to be mining?

01:19:29.820 --> 01:19:31.030
PROFESSOR: Mining
and Metallurgy.

01:19:31.030 --> 01:19:32.600
So that's a much
more traditional way

01:19:32.600 --> 01:19:35.110
of thinking about that kind
of engineering, very, very

01:19:35.110 --> 01:19:40.160
old way of kind of engineering,
straight of alchemy, really.

01:19:40.160 --> 01:19:40.750
What's four?

01:19:40.750 --> 01:19:41.708
AUDIENCE: Architecture.

01:19:41.708 --> 01:19:45.440
PROFESSOR: Architecture,
also very early.

01:19:45.440 --> 01:19:50.040
Five is Chemistry,
also very early.

01:19:50.040 --> 01:19:52.980
Electrical Engineering, getting
to be a little bit later.

01:19:52.980 --> 01:19:55.420
That's an effect of the 1880s.

01:19:55.420 --> 01:19:56.610
And then, on up from there.

01:19:56.610 --> 01:19:58.315
AUDIENCE: Did course six used
to be something different?

01:19:58.315 --> 01:19:59.640
PROFESSOR: I think
course six was always

01:19:59.640 --> 01:20:00.598
Electrical Engineering.

01:20:03.390 --> 01:20:06.080
I'm not exactly sure when the
department itself was founded.

01:20:06.080 --> 01:20:10.790
It was probably around
the turn of the century.

01:20:10.790 --> 01:20:15.200
But certainly, mechanical
engineering is much older.

01:20:15.200 --> 01:20:21.400
And mechanical engineering
exists more or less prior

01:20:21.400 --> 01:20:23.010
to the science that supports it.

01:20:23.010 --> 01:20:25.900
In fact, most of the fundamental
science in thermodynamics

01:20:25.900 --> 01:20:29.690
is done because of problems
raised by steam engines.

01:20:29.690 --> 01:20:32.457
So it's not like the physicists
worked out the thermo

01:20:32.457 --> 01:20:34.040
and then they built
the steam engines.

01:20:34.040 --> 01:20:35.780
It's exactly the
other way around.

01:20:35.780 --> 01:20:37.150
Engineers built steam engines.

01:20:37.150 --> 01:20:38.830
And then, that raised
problems of thermo

01:20:38.830 --> 01:20:40.840
that people needed to solve.

01:20:40.840 --> 01:20:43.670
Whereas, electrical
engineering is much more--

01:20:43.670 --> 01:20:45.600
you almost can't have
it without the physics.

01:20:45.600 --> 01:20:48.710
And it's much more
intimately tied with science,

01:20:48.710 --> 01:20:50.170
from its very foundings.

01:20:50.170 --> 01:20:52.960
So it's quite, in a way,
a much more different kind

01:20:52.960 --> 01:20:55.350
of engineering.

01:20:55.350 --> 01:20:58.565
Then you have AeroAstro as
Course 16, much later on.

01:20:58.565 --> 01:21:00.231
AUDIENCE: How can
Electrical Engineering

01:21:00.231 --> 01:21:01.632
come before Biology?

01:21:01.632 --> 01:21:02.475
PROFESSOR: Sorry?

01:21:02.475 --> 01:21:03.800
AUDIENCE: Or Physics?

01:21:03.800 --> 01:21:05.800
AUDIENCE: Yeah, why would
Electrical Engineering

01:21:05.800 --> 01:21:06.650
come before Biology?

01:21:06.650 --> 01:21:08.066
PROFESSOR: That's
a good question.

01:21:08.066 --> 01:21:14.811
And I think, A,
there were things

01:21:14.811 --> 01:21:16.810
that were taught at MIT
that weren't necessarily

01:21:16.810 --> 01:21:21.870
departments, so
various things at work.

01:21:21.870 --> 01:21:23.900
And we'll see, as we look
in the next few weeks,

01:21:23.900 --> 01:21:26.780
the early MIT is
a teaching school.

01:21:26.780 --> 01:21:28.780
It doesn't really become
a research institution

01:21:28.780 --> 01:21:32.290
until rather later,
in a fundamental way.

01:21:32.290 --> 01:21:35.760
And so biology was
the sort of thing--

01:21:35.760 --> 01:21:39.580
and we'll see this-- that
they did at Harvard because it

01:21:39.580 --> 01:21:41.750
had very little practical
application, compared

01:21:41.750 --> 01:21:43.600
to other things.

01:21:43.600 --> 01:21:47.960
And Louis Agassiz, who was
the great Harvard biologist,

01:21:47.960 --> 01:21:51.295
got into a very public a war
with Charles Elliott, who

01:21:51.295 --> 01:21:54.010
was the president of MIT,
over the issue of evolution.

01:21:54.010 --> 01:21:58.240
And Physics-- you would think--
would be an earlier department.

01:21:58.240 --> 01:22:00.300
And I'm not exactly
sure why that one

01:22:00.300 --> 01:22:02.632
was founded a little bit later.

01:22:02.632 --> 01:22:03.670
That's a good question.

01:22:03.670 --> 01:22:04.170
Yeah.

01:22:04.170 --> 01:22:08.004
AUDIENCE: What about those
that do not have numbers?

01:22:08.004 --> 01:22:09.670
PROFESSOR: Those are
mostly added later.

01:22:09.670 --> 01:22:15.100
Like my course, STS,
comes from the '70s.

01:22:15.100 --> 01:22:17.010
And I think also, in
general, you probably

01:22:17.010 --> 01:22:20.830
can find that
around the 15s, 16s,

01:22:20.830 --> 01:22:22.800
the numbering system
starts to break down.

01:22:22.800 --> 01:22:25.640
And it doesn't follow as
much of a rational pattern.

01:22:25.640 --> 01:22:27.570
Like, Course 21 is Humanities.

01:22:27.570 --> 01:22:29.840
Humanities have been around
for a long time at MIT.

01:22:29.840 --> 01:22:32.540
But they weren't incorporated
into a particular course,

01:22:32.540 --> 01:22:34.260
until after World War II.

01:22:34.260 --> 01:22:36.260
And again, then, some
of the earlier ones,

01:22:36.260 --> 01:22:39.120
like Mining and
Metallurgy, is transformed

01:22:39.120 --> 01:22:41.410
into Material Science and stuff.

01:22:41.410 --> 01:22:45.720
So past the first
15 or so, I think

01:22:45.720 --> 01:22:47.832
the chronology is a
little more complicated.

01:22:47.832 --> 01:22:49.984
AUDIENCE: Isn't course
nine fairly new,

01:22:49.984 --> 01:22:51.150
Brain and Cognitive Science?

01:22:51.150 --> 01:22:55.160
PROFESSOR: It is, but it
was Psychology before.

01:22:55.160 --> 01:22:59.090
So psychology has a
kind of older pedigree.

01:23:01.610 --> 01:23:04.120
And then, there were other
courses that were cancelled,

01:23:04.120 --> 01:23:08.220
like Applied Biology, famously
so, not that long ago.

01:23:14.220 --> 01:23:16.480
Another interesting way
to look at the history.

01:23:16.480 --> 01:23:20.490
So now, I would
like to introduce

01:23:20.490 --> 01:23:22.650
my friend and colleague,
Karen Arenson.

01:23:22.650 --> 01:23:26.410
And maybe, as I do, I'll call
up the page of the oral history.

01:23:26.410 --> 01:23:34.960
So people get a sense for what
the actual accomplishment looks

01:23:34.960 --> 01:23:35.720
like.

01:23:35.720 --> 01:23:38.030
And as I did mention
before, Karen

01:23:38.030 --> 01:23:41.600
is a former member of the
MIT Corporation, an alum,

01:23:41.600 --> 01:23:43.736
from I'm not quite
sure which year.

01:23:43.736 --> 01:23:44.670
KAREN ARENSON: '70.

01:23:44.670 --> 01:23:46.260
PROFESSOR: '70.

01:23:46.260 --> 01:23:49.510
So she has a lot of interesting
perspective on women at MIT,

01:23:49.510 --> 01:23:51.920
which we talked about
a little bit before,

01:23:51.920 --> 01:23:54.914
as well as a former
higher education

01:23:54.914 --> 01:23:56.330
journalist for The
New York Times.

01:23:56.330 --> 01:24:00.210
So she's seen what MIT looks
like in the context of a larger

01:24:00.210 --> 01:24:08.450
picture, as well as a member
the Council of the Arts,

01:24:08.450 --> 01:24:09.220
here at MIT.

01:24:09.220 --> 01:24:16.860
And in all of those
sort of capacities,

01:24:16.860 --> 01:24:18.960
we did this oral
history project.

01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:21.840
And she conducted not
all but a large fraction

01:24:21.840 --> 01:24:22.840
of these oral histories.

01:24:22.840 --> 01:24:24.950
So she's, at the
moment, probably

01:24:24.950 --> 01:24:27.840
heard more about the last
40 years of MIT's history

01:24:27.840 --> 01:24:31.360
than almost anybody
and maybe will

01:24:31.360 --> 01:24:34.160
incorporate all those things
in what she has to say.

01:24:34.160 --> 01:24:36.560
But while she's
starting to talk,

01:24:36.560 --> 01:24:39.736
let me call up the
oral history page

01:24:39.736 --> 01:24:41.110
because it's worth
having a look.

01:24:41.110 --> 01:24:42.870
And it's this
incredibly rich thing.

01:24:42.870 --> 01:24:45.245
KAREN ARENSON: Have any of
you looked at the oral history

01:24:45.245 --> 01:24:46.301
thing?

01:24:46.301 --> 01:24:50.040
I've just begun to.

01:24:50.040 --> 01:24:54.760
Hi, I was in your seat, not
in this room, many years ago.

01:24:54.760 --> 01:24:58.008
And when I was walking here
and passed near 26-100,

01:24:58.008 --> 01:25:00.808
I thought, 801, 802.

01:25:00.808 --> 01:25:03.605
They existed back
when I was a student.

01:25:07.420 --> 01:25:10.670
I've been asked to talk
today a little about who I am

01:25:10.670 --> 01:25:15.790
and where I came from, a little
about the Oral History Project,

01:25:15.790 --> 01:25:21.240
specifically, and then a little
about what I learned from it.

01:25:21.240 --> 01:25:24.840
And that's been the
challenging part.

01:25:24.840 --> 01:25:29.920
I fell in love with MIT when I
first visited it as an admitted

01:25:29.920 --> 01:25:33.250
freshman, back in
1966 and discovered

01:25:33.250 --> 01:25:36.690
that other people
talked my language.

01:25:36.690 --> 01:25:40.490
They thought quantitatively
and analytically.

01:25:40.490 --> 01:25:42.465
And they liked to
solve problems.

01:25:42.465 --> 01:25:45.880
And I think that's
still true today.

01:25:45.880 --> 01:25:49.620
And although many of
them were brilliant,

01:25:49.620 --> 01:25:53.220
they also turned out to be
nice people and friendly

01:25:53.220 --> 01:25:56.260
and unpretentious--
I think a distinction

01:25:56.260 --> 01:26:00.300
from another place in
Cambridge-- and helpful.

01:26:00.300 --> 01:26:03.500
And I've never fallen out
of love with the Institute.

01:26:03.500 --> 01:26:05.720
And the Oral History
Project gave me

01:26:05.720 --> 01:26:09.870
a chance to explore areas
that I was familiar with,

01:26:09.870 --> 01:26:13.320
like economics and the
Alumni Association,

01:26:13.320 --> 01:26:17.440
and also areas that I knew
nothing about, like STS, which

01:26:17.440 --> 01:26:21.240
didn't exist when I was
here; Biotechnology, which

01:26:21.240 --> 01:26:27.820
didn't exist anywhere;
Engineering Systems.

01:26:27.820 --> 01:26:31.710
I applied to MIT
because I liked math.

01:26:31.710 --> 01:26:33.930
And I wanted to focus
on social problems.

01:26:33.930 --> 01:26:36.540
I didn't come here thinking
I would major in math.

01:26:36.540 --> 01:26:37.900
I thought Economics.

01:26:37.900 --> 01:26:40.560
And this place had the best
Economics Department then.

01:26:40.560 --> 01:26:42.790
It still does.

01:26:42.790 --> 01:26:46.670
And I majored in Economics
and in student government

01:26:46.670 --> 01:26:48.140
and in the newspaper.

01:26:48.140 --> 01:26:51.530
And lived at The
Tech an awful lot.

01:26:51.530 --> 01:26:55.300
I was one of 50 women
in a class to 900.

01:26:55.300 --> 01:26:59.450
They had built McCormick
Hall a few years before.

01:26:59.450 --> 01:27:02.130
And all of a sudden, the
numbers shot up to 50

01:27:02.130 --> 01:27:06.310
per class, that had been
less than 20 before that.

01:27:06.310 --> 01:27:10.150
And by the time I graduated,
after all the Vietnam turmoil

01:27:10.150 --> 01:27:13.150
and society turning
inside out, they

01:27:13.150 --> 01:27:15.970
decided to make the
other dorms co-ed.

01:27:15.970 --> 01:27:18.500
And all of a sudden, there
was more room for women.

01:27:18.500 --> 01:27:22.340
The number of women shot
up, gradually, into the 30%.

01:27:22.340 --> 01:27:26.040
You're about mid
40s now, in terms

01:27:26.040 --> 01:27:27.415
of undergraduate population.

01:27:30.180 --> 01:27:32.970
I went from the
Economics Department

01:27:32.970 --> 01:27:36.310
here to the Public
Policy School at Harvard

01:27:36.310 --> 01:27:38.490
and did a master's degree.

01:27:38.490 --> 01:27:40.380
And the one thing I
learned was that I

01:27:40.380 --> 01:27:42.690
didn't want to
sit behind a desk,

01:27:42.690 --> 01:27:44.570
and maybe I should
be a journalist.

01:27:44.570 --> 01:27:46.500
I had lived at The
Tech all those years

01:27:46.500 --> 01:27:50.220
and at my student newspaper
in the high school.

01:27:50.220 --> 01:27:52.800
And it took me about
a year to land a job.

01:27:52.800 --> 01:27:54.990
But I landed it
at Business Week.

01:27:54.990 --> 01:27:56.060
I was lucky.

01:27:56.060 --> 01:27:58.650
I spent five years
there and then moved

01:27:58.650 --> 01:28:00.240
to The New York Times.

01:28:00.240 --> 01:28:02.480
Business journalism was
becoming more important.

01:28:05.140 --> 01:28:06.450
I love numbers.

01:28:06.450 --> 01:28:10.090
And it was a wonderful
career for me.

01:28:10.090 --> 01:28:13.330
Along the way, I remained
involved with MIT

01:28:13.330 --> 01:28:15.820
because I like the people.

01:28:15.820 --> 01:28:19.100
And as Professor
Mindell said, I served

01:28:19.100 --> 01:28:22.580
on the corporation and
the executive committee

01:28:22.580 --> 01:28:25.010
and discovered that
businessmen, who made up

01:28:25.010 --> 01:28:26.940
most of the corporation,
are actually

01:28:26.940 --> 01:28:28.370
pretty interesting people.

01:28:28.370 --> 01:28:29.760
And they had other lives.

01:28:29.760 --> 01:28:35.550
And they weren't the kind of bad
people we thought in the 1960s,

01:28:35.550 --> 01:28:36.820
when all business was bad.

01:28:36.820 --> 01:28:40.870
And nobody wanted to
go to business school.

01:28:40.870 --> 01:28:44.430
Because of my involvement with
MIT, The Times, at some point,

01:28:44.430 --> 01:28:47.780
they asked me to start writing
about higher education.

01:28:47.780 --> 01:28:49.380
That was an interesting topic.

01:28:49.380 --> 01:28:52.440
The only trouble was I had
to cut my ties with MIT.

01:28:52.440 --> 01:28:54.260
Because it would
have been perceived

01:28:54.260 --> 01:28:55.970
as a conflict of
interest or might

01:28:55.970 --> 01:28:58.350
have been a conflict
of interest.

01:28:58.350 --> 01:29:04.160
And so I had a period of about
13 years, when I pulled back.

01:29:04.160 --> 01:29:09.350
And I took a buy-out
from The Times in 2008

01:29:09.350 --> 01:29:11.870
and began to reengage.

01:29:11.870 --> 01:29:14.670
And one day, I got a phone
call from out of the blue,

01:29:14.670 --> 01:29:16.370
from a guy named Paul Gray.

01:29:16.370 --> 01:29:18.070
Maybe some of you
have encountered him,

01:29:18.070 --> 01:29:20.860
a former president of MIT.

01:29:20.860 --> 01:29:23.550
And he asked if I would
conduct some interviews

01:29:23.550 --> 01:29:27.030
for this project they
had, oral history.

01:29:27.030 --> 01:29:30.600
And I didn't know
what oral history was.

01:29:30.600 --> 01:29:32.040
But it sounded interesting.

01:29:32.040 --> 01:29:33.580
And I'm not good at saying "no."

01:29:33.580 --> 01:29:35.210
And I said, sure.

01:29:35.210 --> 01:29:35.900
I hung up.

01:29:35.900 --> 01:29:37.660
And I started googling.

01:29:37.660 --> 01:29:39.690
And I discovered that
Columbia University

01:29:39.690 --> 01:29:41.960
was the center of oral history.

01:29:41.960 --> 01:29:45.000
They had this big
archive of world figures.

01:29:45.000 --> 01:29:47.600
A history professor
in the 1940s had

01:29:47.600 --> 01:29:52.750
started to do this thing
that hadn't existed before.

01:29:52.750 --> 01:29:55.110
So I visited Colombia
and talked with them

01:29:55.110 --> 01:29:56.730
and discovered that
what we were doing

01:29:56.730 --> 01:29:58.570
wasn't really oral
history, which

01:29:58.570 --> 01:30:01.140
tends to be much
more open ended.

01:30:01.140 --> 01:30:04.300
These things go one
for 40, 50, 100 hours.

01:30:04.300 --> 01:30:08.260
It's sort of sit back
and dump everything,

01:30:08.260 --> 01:30:11.680
in a very relaxed fashion.

01:30:11.680 --> 01:30:14.460
The MIT ones were
about two hours each,

01:30:14.460 --> 01:30:17.510
tied to the sesquicentennial.

01:30:17.510 --> 01:30:19.340
There had been a
planning committee that

01:30:19.340 --> 01:30:23.780
started about five
years ago, to say,

01:30:23.780 --> 01:30:25.760
150th anniversary is coming up.

01:30:25.760 --> 01:30:27.440
What should we do?

01:30:27.440 --> 01:30:29.480
And one of the things
they came up with

01:30:29.480 --> 01:30:33.550
was to gather some
interviews with people

01:30:33.550 --> 01:30:36.720
who had been important in the
development of the Institute,

01:30:36.720 --> 01:30:38.260
over the last 50 years.

01:30:38.260 --> 01:30:42.440
And they put together a
list of about 75 people

01:30:42.440 --> 01:30:48.820
and had hired a guy named
John Hockenberry, who

01:30:48.820 --> 01:30:53.070
has been on ABC, I think,
and National Public Radio.

01:30:53.070 --> 01:30:56.620
But he was a visiting
professor in the Media Lab.

01:30:56.620 --> 01:30:59.485
And he was the main person who
was going to do the interviews.

01:30:59.485 --> 01:31:02.125
They had a couple of
other people helping him.

01:31:02.125 --> 01:31:05.400
And at some point,
he got a new program.

01:31:05.400 --> 01:31:08.760
And he said, so
long, can't do both.

01:31:08.760 --> 01:31:10.730
And that's when I
got the phone call.

01:31:10.730 --> 01:31:13.060
So I came in part way through.

01:31:13.060 --> 01:31:17.160
He had already done a handful
of interviews, probably six

01:31:17.160 --> 01:31:20.260
or eight or 10, including
the former presidents who

01:31:20.260 --> 01:31:22.860
were still living.

01:31:22.860 --> 01:31:27.200
They had laid out a sort
of rough template of seven

01:31:27.200 --> 01:31:28.560
broad topic areas.

01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:30.380
They wanted to make
sure we asked people

01:31:30.380 --> 01:31:32.930
where they were born
and how they grew up;

01:31:32.930 --> 01:31:36.680
how they got to MIT, whether it
was as a student or a faculty

01:31:36.680 --> 01:31:41.250
member; whatever their
impressions of MIT;

01:31:41.250 --> 01:31:45.460
their role in the world of
MIT; how it had changed;

01:31:45.460 --> 01:31:47.110
and how it had
affected their lives.

01:31:47.110 --> 01:31:49.670
So if you sign on
to these things.

01:31:49.670 --> 01:31:52.250
And there are, I
think, about 102.

01:31:52.250 --> 01:31:59.050
I did 40 of them, over about
2 and 1/2 years, including

01:31:59.050 --> 01:32:01.400
your professor and
your other professor.

01:32:01.400 --> 01:32:02.670
He isn't here today.

01:32:02.670 --> 01:32:04.130
PROFESSOR: He had
to run out for--

01:32:04.130 --> 01:32:04.880
KAREN ARENSON: OK.

01:32:04.880 --> 01:32:06.270
Anyway, I did both of them.

01:32:09.110 --> 01:32:12.030
Unfortunately, my
thesis adviser,

01:32:12.030 --> 01:32:14.840
Bob Solow, one of the
Nobel Prize winners,

01:32:14.840 --> 01:32:17.350
subsequently had
already been done.

01:32:17.350 --> 01:32:19.320
Samuelson had been done.

01:32:19.320 --> 01:32:23.460
I did Jim Poterba,
Lester Thurow.

01:32:23.460 --> 01:32:24.850
It was a sort of hit or miss.

01:32:24.850 --> 01:32:27.280
It depended on their
scheduling and mine.

01:32:27.280 --> 01:32:32.460
So I got to do some people I
knew and got thrown into some.

01:32:32.460 --> 01:32:35.960
I said, I don't know
anything about that.

01:32:35.960 --> 01:32:38.340
So I learned.

01:32:38.340 --> 01:32:42.000
And that actually
was the fun of it.

01:32:42.000 --> 01:32:45.460
As a journalist, I was very
used to interviewing people.

01:32:45.460 --> 01:32:48.620
I've been doing it
professionally for 35 years.

01:32:48.620 --> 01:32:49.990
But it was very different.

01:32:49.990 --> 01:32:52.700
I never had to do it
in front of a camera.

01:32:52.700 --> 01:32:55.470
And these interviews
were videotaped.

01:32:55.470 --> 01:32:58.110
I never had to worry about
a beginning, a middle,

01:32:58.110 --> 01:32:58.890
and an end.

01:32:58.890 --> 01:33:02.370
I could sort of start
somewhere and sort of go

01:33:02.370 --> 01:33:05.140
and come back to
it, say thank you.

01:33:05.140 --> 01:33:07.300
And if I forgot
something, I call up again

01:33:07.300 --> 01:33:10.740
or email and say,
oops, what about this.

01:33:10.740 --> 01:33:13.670
These were two-hour
sound bytes that

01:33:13.670 --> 01:33:18.120
were pretty much as
they were recorded.

01:33:18.120 --> 01:33:20.740
They weren't edited.

01:33:20.740 --> 01:33:24.880
Except for maybe, they took
out some "ums" and "you knows."

01:33:24.880 --> 01:33:27.810
But other than that, they're
pretty much as recorded.

01:33:30.330 --> 01:33:34.290
I was pretty compulsive
about preparing for them.

01:33:34.290 --> 01:33:36.450
I tried to learn
as much as possible

01:33:36.450 --> 01:33:39.390
about the people I was
going to interview.

01:33:39.390 --> 01:33:43.270
And I usually drew up about
12 to 14 pages of questions.

01:33:43.270 --> 01:33:45.790
Because I didn't want to
get to an hour and a half

01:33:45.790 --> 01:33:49.500
and have half an hour to fill
and think, oh, my goodness.

01:33:49.500 --> 01:33:51.130
What am I going to ask?

01:33:51.130 --> 01:33:54.570
It's not that I've ever had a
problem thinking of questions.

01:33:54.570 --> 01:33:57.360
But when you're on camera,
you can't just sort of

01:33:57.360 --> 01:33:58.640
sit there and think, hm.

01:33:58.640 --> 01:34:01.490
What do I do next?

01:34:01.490 --> 01:34:04.140
Some of the interviewees
answered questions

01:34:04.140 --> 01:34:07.640
at length, two, three,
five paragraphs.

01:34:07.640 --> 01:34:10.800
Sometimes, people answered
in two or three words.

01:34:10.800 --> 01:34:12.490
And the trouble
was I didn't know

01:34:12.490 --> 01:34:15.725
which it was going to be
because I didn't know them.

01:34:18.510 --> 01:34:21.330
When I prepared to
interview Noam Chomsky,

01:34:21.330 --> 01:34:26.340
the famous linguist and the
highly-visible political

01:34:26.340 --> 01:34:29.680
activist, there
was more material

01:34:29.680 --> 01:34:31.980
than you could
absorb in a lifetime.

01:34:31.980 --> 01:34:34.190
He'd written so many books.

01:34:34.190 --> 01:34:36.250
There were several
biographies about him,

01:34:36.250 --> 01:34:40.880
including his life at MIT
and what he thought about it.

01:34:40.880 --> 01:34:43.510
I think he's the most
interviewed man on earth,

01:34:43.510 --> 01:34:44.570
literally.

01:34:44.570 --> 01:34:46.750
I mean, there are days
when he'll schedule three

01:34:46.750 --> 01:34:49.880
or four interviews, five,
six, seven days a week.

01:34:49.880 --> 01:34:51.670
If you google Noam
Chomsky, there's

01:34:51.670 --> 01:34:54.060
a whole website where lots
of them are available.

01:34:54.060 --> 01:34:57.810
So if you're into that,
he's a fascinating man.

01:34:57.810 --> 01:35:01.070
But there was a lot more
than I could digest.

01:35:01.070 --> 01:35:02.870
I dipped into some of it.

01:35:02.870 --> 01:35:04.290
I ordered some of his books.

01:35:04.290 --> 01:35:06.290
I had some of them on my shelf.

01:35:06.290 --> 01:35:07.890
I read about him.

01:35:07.890 --> 01:35:12.170
But there was no way I was
going to understand it all.

01:35:12.170 --> 01:35:14.000
And then, at the other
end of the spectrum,

01:35:14.000 --> 01:35:18.190
there were people where you
could find almost nothing,

01:35:18.190 --> 01:35:21.090
like your provost Rafael Reif.

01:35:21.090 --> 01:35:24.250
I had a short biographical
sketch of him.

01:35:24.250 --> 01:35:26.850
I had a news release,
announcing that he

01:35:26.850 --> 01:35:28.900
was going to be provost.

01:35:28.900 --> 01:35:31.570
And then, there was this blank.

01:35:31.570 --> 01:35:33.090
Where did he come from?

01:35:33.090 --> 01:35:36.020
What did he do?

01:35:36.020 --> 01:35:39.000
It turned out, he was a
pretty interesting fellow,

01:35:39.000 --> 01:35:41.960
whose parents had
fled Nazi Europe

01:35:41.960 --> 01:35:44.240
and moved around Latin America.

01:35:44.240 --> 01:35:48.073
He grew up in Venezuela.

01:35:51.160 --> 01:35:54.394
He was a chess expert,
all this stuff.

01:35:54.394 --> 01:35:55.810
But you couldn't
find it anywhere.

01:35:55.810 --> 01:35:58.800
So I began to learn
about it by calling

01:35:58.800 --> 01:36:03.940
some of the people he worked
with, and little by little.

01:36:03.940 --> 01:36:07.050
I could've gone
into the interviews

01:36:07.050 --> 01:36:09.520
without knowing all this
and just sort of said, so

01:36:09.520 --> 01:36:11.880
tell me where you were
born and where you grew up

01:36:11.880 --> 01:36:13.580
and what you liked
to do as a kid.

01:36:13.580 --> 01:36:14.840
And did you tinker?

01:36:14.840 --> 01:36:18.750
But I liked to know
as much as I could.

01:36:18.750 --> 01:36:20.570
Because maybe he
wouldn't think something

01:36:20.570 --> 01:36:23.520
was interesting or
important that I would.

01:36:23.520 --> 01:36:27.180
And if I knew about it, I
could say, but what about this.

01:36:27.180 --> 01:36:34.370
So I did as much learning as
possible before each interview.

01:36:34.370 --> 01:36:36.590
And then, the two
biggest challenges

01:36:36.590 --> 01:36:39.180
were to figure out
what was important

01:36:39.180 --> 01:36:41.920
and how to pace the interview.

01:36:41.920 --> 01:36:44.457
There were all these topics
I was supposed to cover.

01:36:44.457 --> 01:36:46.040
And you didn't know
if they were going

01:36:46.040 --> 01:36:50.060
to talk fast or talk slowly.

01:36:50.060 --> 01:36:53.330
At the end of 40 interviews,
I still couldn't tell you how.

01:36:53.330 --> 01:36:55.930
I used to sit there very tense.

01:36:55.930 --> 01:36:57.710
The first hour
was OK because you

01:36:57.710 --> 01:37:00.100
figured whatever we covered.

01:37:00.100 --> 01:37:03.320
But then, it began to
be, do I have enough.

01:37:03.320 --> 01:37:05.250
Are we going to
have way too much?

01:37:05.250 --> 01:37:08.450
And how do I get everything in?

01:37:08.450 --> 01:37:11.020
So that's the process.

01:37:11.020 --> 01:37:14.010
What did I learn?

01:37:14.010 --> 01:37:16.250
I didn't have any
of these interviews

01:37:16.250 --> 01:37:18.960
to look at until
January 7, when they all

01:37:18.960 --> 01:37:20.680
went up on the website.

01:37:20.680 --> 01:37:24.900
And then, I said, I have to
do this panel on February 15.

01:37:24.900 --> 01:37:26.380
And it would be
really helpful if I

01:37:26.380 --> 01:37:29.980
could look at the interviews
and have the transcripts.

01:37:29.980 --> 01:37:36.510
Because the videos are
interesting, but it's hard.

01:37:36.510 --> 01:37:37.990
It's slow.

01:37:37.990 --> 01:37:39.000
They take two hours.

01:37:39.000 --> 01:37:41.270
If you read them, it's faster.

01:37:41.270 --> 01:37:43.440
And if you go to the
little unlock feature,

01:37:43.440 --> 01:37:46.440
it turns out you can
disengage from the voice.

01:37:46.440 --> 01:37:51.460
And you can even turn it off,
by just lowering your voice.

01:37:51.460 --> 01:37:55.690
It's a little hard to read down.

01:37:55.690 --> 01:37:59.400
I called the people who
are running them and said,

01:37:59.400 --> 01:38:03.160
can people download the
voice and listen on an iPod,

01:38:03.160 --> 01:38:05.920
while they're on treadmill?

01:38:05.920 --> 01:38:10.370
And they said,
hm, good idea, no.

01:38:10.370 --> 01:38:11.940
This is MIT.

01:38:11.940 --> 01:38:16.800
So anyway, I've begun
to go through them.

01:38:16.800 --> 01:38:19.950
They all meld together,
in a funny way.

01:38:19.950 --> 01:38:23.280
They were all my favorite
because pretty much all of them

01:38:23.280 --> 01:38:27.330
were fascinating
in different ways.

01:38:27.330 --> 01:38:29.620
So lessons I learned,
and I'm going

01:38:29.620 --> 01:38:32.950
to tell you some stories
and maybe too many.

01:38:32.950 --> 01:38:35.740
Probably the most
important lesson

01:38:35.740 --> 01:38:38.240
was that MIT is
indeed filled with

01:38:38.240 --> 01:38:42.650
amazing, brilliant,
creative people.

01:38:42.650 --> 01:38:45.100
For me, it was a dream
to be able to talk

01:38:45.100 --> 01:38:47.180
with so many of them.

01:38:47.180 --> 01:38:50.180
But it's actually
important because MIT

01:38:50.180 --> 01:38:53.310
is a special and
important institution.

01:38:53.310 --> 01:38:59.010
Because somehow, it manages
to attract them and hold them.

01:38:59.010 --> 01:39:00.320
It includes the students.

01:39:00.320 --> 01:39:03.950
Faculty say over and over
again that they stay here

01:39:03.950 --> 01:39:06.330
because they get
students like you,

01:39:06.330 --> 01:39:10.200
who are just really bright and
really interested and really

01:39:10.200 --> 01:39:12.340
driven.

01:39:12.340 --> 01:39:15.780
But the staff, the
alumni, the trustees.

01:39:15.780 --> 01:39:18.060
And when you begin to
put people like this

01:39:18.060 --> 01:39:23.080
in some kind of environment,
innovation happens.

01:39:23.080 --> 01:39:25.780
And that's what
MIT is known for.

01:39:25.780 --> 01:39:28.210
And it's not a coincidence.

01:39:28.210 --> 01:39:29.680
And you need an
environment where

01:39:29.680 --> 01:39:32.680
they can mix with
each other and create.

01:39:32.680 --> 01:39:35.760
And many of the interviewees
talk about that,

01:39:35.760 --> 01:39:38.490
during their two hours.

01:39:38.490 --> 01:39:41.495
One example is Bob Langer,
the chemical engineer

01:39:41.495 --> 01:39:43.970
and biotechnologist.

01:39:43.970 --> 01:39:47.400
When they called me and said,
he's this biotechnologist.

01:39:47.400 --> 01:39:48.910
I said, ew.

01:39:48.910 --> 01:39:51.245
I don't know anything
about that subject.

01:39:51.245 --> 01:39:52.810
But I fell in love with him.

01:39:52.810 --> 01:39:54.920
He's just amazing.

01:39:54.920 --> 01:39:58.160
He has more than 750 patents.

01:39:58.160 --> 01:40:01.260
He runs the biggest lab at MIT.

01:40:01.260 --> 01:40:04.150
And he's one of the guys who
said that what holds him here--

01:40:04.150 --> 01:40:08.980
and I'm sure he's had offers
from anywhere and everywhere.

01:40:08.980 --> 01:40:10.570
He said, "It's the best place.

01:40:10.570 --> 01:40:14.080
It has exceptional students,
exceptional colleagues.

01:40:14.080 --> 01:40:17.550
I feel I can have the
greatest impact because

01:40:17.550 --> 01:40:19.570
of all those people."

01:40:19.570 --> 01:40:21.750
Or Donald Sadoway, I
don't know if any of you

01:40:21.750 --> 01:40:29.520
took his 3.091, which satisfies
the chemistry requirement.

01:40:29.520 --> 01:40:34.180
He talked about arriving here
as a post-doc from Toronto.

01:40:34.180 --> 01:40:36.350
He said, "I remember
when I first arrived.

01:40:36.350 --> 01:40:39.870
And I walked up the stairs,
the steps from that crosswalk

01:40:39.870 --> 01:40:44.950
at 77, and looked up at those
pillars and thought, well,

01:40:44.950 --> 01:40:47.260
you've really done it.

01:40:47.260 --> 01:40:51.260
This is high stakes, no more
big fish in a small pond."

01:40:51.260 --> 01:40:53.200
He'd been up in Toronto.

01:40:53.200 --> 01:40:54.600
"This is the real deal."

01:40:54.600 --> 01:40:56.270
So here's this big
guy and telling

01:40:56.270 --> 01:40:58.510
us what went through his mind.

01:40:58.510 --> 01:41:00.900
"And the early days
were very heady.

01:41:00.900 --> 01:41:04.630
I mean to be surrounded
with super bright people.

01:41:04.630 --> 01:41:06.890
I was postdocing with Julian.

01:41:06.890 --> 01:41:09.030
And the kinds of
people would come

01:41:09.030 --> 01:41:11.800
to visit him was just
a different world

01:41:11.800 --> 01:41:13.970
from the University of Toronto."

01:41:13.970 --> 01:41:16.680
So it's not only the people who
are here, but the people who

01:41:16.680 --> 01:41:19.750
came to see them, who
added to that whole, what

01:41:19.750 --> 01:41:22.850
makes MIT special.

01:41:22.850 --> 01:41:24.700
There were other common themes.

01:41:24.700 --> 01:41:26.990
Many of the people
at MIT started

01:41:26.990 --> 01:41:29.400
from really modest backgrounds.

01:41:29.400 --> 01:41:32.320
Many of them were
immigrants or children

01:41:32.320 --> 01:41:36.785
of immigrants, Joel Moses, the
former provost, Rafael Reif,

01:41:36.785 --> 01:41:40.790
the current provost, Claude
Canizares, the vice president

01:41:40.790 --> 01:41:44.200
for research and
associate provost.

01:41:44.200 --> 01:41:46.590
Many of them pointed
to serendipity,

01:41:46.590 --> 01:41:49.180
in the shaping of their
lives and their careers.

01:41:49.180 --> 01:41:53.960
That's a wonderful word, one
that the sociologist, Merton,

01:41:53.960 --> 01:41:57.960
who's the father of the Merton
here, did a whole book about.

01:41:57.960 --> 01:42:01.020
I think he called
it Serendipity.

01:42:01.020 --> 01:42:05.520
It would be easy to think that
all these brilliant people knew

01:42:05.520 --> 01:42:08.860
what they wanted to do
from the age of three

01:42:08.860 --> 01:42:13.520
and that they followed a
smooth, predictable path.

01:42:13.520 --> 01:42:16.390
When you're trying to figure
out should I do this or that,

01:42:16.390 --> 01:42:17.850
you think everyone
else knows what

01:42:17.850 --> 01:42:19.565
they're doing except for me.

01:42:19.565 --> 01:42:20.970
It ain't so.

01:42:20.970 --> 01:42:24.030
If you watch these videos,
over and over again,

01:42:24.030 --> 01:42:27.300
people talk about well,
I was going along.

01:42:27.300 --> 01:42:28.340
And then this happened.

01:42:28.340 --> 01:42:29.860
And suddenly, I was going along.

01:42:29.860 --> 01:42:32.850
And this happened.

01:42:32.850 --> 01:42:34.940
It really is striking.

01:42:34.940 --> 01:42:37.580
Most of them said
they had no grand plan

01:42:37.580 --> 01:42:39.620
and that luck
played a large role.

01:42:39.620 --> 01:42:43.320
One example was Bob
Horvitz, the MIT professor

01:42:43.320 --> 01:42:47.870
who won a Nobel Prize for
his research on worms.

01:42:47.870 --> 01:42:51.300
He was actually one of my
news editors at The Tech.

01:42:51.300 --> 01:42:52.840
He was two years ahead of me.

01:42:55.980 --> 01:42:58.240
He double majored in
Math and Economics.

01:42:58.240 --> 01:43:02.590
And he was ready to graduate
after three years anyway.

01:43:02.590 --> 01:43:06.230
But he got elected president
of the student government.

01:43:06.230 --> 01:43:07.840
So he stayed for another year.

01:43:07.840 --> 01:43:10.690
So he had to fill out a
fourth year of classes.

01:43:10.690 --> 01:43:12.420
He didn't know what to take.

01:43:12.420 --> 01:43:14.390
And one of his
fraternity brothers

01:43:14.390 --> 01:43:18.910
said, why don't you try a
biology class, course seven.

01:43:18.910 --> 01:43:21.310
So he took a bio course.

01:43:21.310 --> 01:43:23.310
And he fell in love with it.

01:43:23.310 --> 01:43:25.630
And six weeks into
the term, he thought,

01:43:25.630 --> 01:43:29.050
this is what I want to do,
not math, not economics.

01:43:29.050 --> 01:43:32.109
I want to do biology.

01:43:32.109 --> 01:43:33.400
But he was kind of embarrassed.

01:43:33.400 --> 01:43:35.054
Here he was a senior.

01:43:35.054 --> 01:43:36.470
And he was taking
his first class.

01:43:36.470 --> 01:43:38.000
And he wanted to
go to grad school.

01:43:38.000 --> 01:43:40.160
So we went up to his professor.

01:43:40.160 --> 01:43:42.650
And he was sort of apologetic.

01:43:42.650 --> 01:43:46.600
And he said, I want to go to
grad school, but you know.

01:43:46.600 --> 01:43:49.620
And the professor, whose
name was Cy Leventhal,

01:43:49.620 --> 01:43:50.890
told him not to worry.

01:43:50.890 --> 01:43:53.240
He had been a physics major.

01:43:53.240 --> 01:43:55.530
And he had gone to
graduate school in physics

01:43:55.530 --> 01:43:57.420
and gotten his PhD in Physics.

01:43:57.420 --> 01:44:01.110
And here he was
teaching biology at MIT.

01:44:01.110 --> 01:44:03.000
He said, so you're
starting early.

01:44:03.000 --> 01:44:05.620
So it really isn't
too late to figure out

01:44:05.620 --> 01:44:11.830
what you like to do and try
things and keep exploring.

01:44:11.830 --> 01:44:17.210
Woodie Flowers, the mechanical
engineering professor

01:44:17.210 --> 01:44:21.310
who started the big contest,
where you get a bag of stuff.

01:44:21.310 --> 01:44:24.490
And you have to build a
gadget that does something.

01:44:24.490 --> 01:44:28.190
And then, they have a
big contest at the end.

01:44:28.190 --> 01:44:30.930
And the different
little robotic machines

01:44:30.930 --> 01:44:32.130
compete with each other.

01:44:32.130 --> 01:44:34.450
That was Woodie Flowers.

01:44:34.450 --> 01:44:36.600
He didn't even plan
to go to college.

01:44:36.600 --> 01:44:40.830
I think he grew up in Alabama
or Arkansas, in a poor family.

01:44:40.830 --> 01:44:43.300
His family couldn't afford it.

01:44:43.300 --> 01:44:46.530
But his senior year in high
school, one of his teachers

01:44:46.530 --> 01:44:50.360
noticed that his arm
wasn't set right.

01:44:50.360 --> 01:44:53.260
He had broken it when he fell
out of a tree in second grade.

01:44:53.260 --> 01:44:55.500
And it had never
been fixed properly.

01:44:55.500 --> 01:44:58.770
And some teacher took
an interested in him

01:44:58.770 --> 01:45:01.740
and got it set right, I guess.

01:45:01.740 --> 01:45:03.670
They had to re-break
it or something.

01:45:03.670 --> 01:45:04.470
I don't know.

01:45:04.470 --> 01:45:07.400
But then, the orthopedic surgeon
looked at the elbow and said,

01:45:07.400 --> 01:45:10.160
you really need some rehab.

01:45:10.160 --> 01:45:12.520
You can't just walk out of here.

01:45:12.520 --> 01:45:15.640
And he wrote some kind
of letter to the state.

01:45:15.640 --> 01:45:18.100
And the state gave
Woodie Flowers

01:45:18.100 --> 01:45:22.540
what he called a rehabilitation
scholarship to college.

01:45:22.540 --> 01:45:25.460
And so we went to college.

01:45:25.460 --> 01:45:27.364
And at the end of college,
he was doing well.

01:45:27.364 --> 01:45:28.780
And his professor
said, you really

01:45:28.780 --> 01:45:30.680
ought to think
about grad school.

01:45:30.680 --> 01:45:32.820
And you really ought
to think about MIT.

01:45:32.820 --> 01:45:35.370
I mean, this isn't all Woodie
doing lots of homework.

01:45:35.370 --> 01:45:38.530
It's some chance
meeting with people

01:45:38.530 --> 01:45:40.360
who took an interest in him.

01:45:40.360 --> 01:45:42.735
Now undoubtedly, he worked hard.

01:45:42.735 --> 01:45:44.310
He was smart.

01:45:44.310 --> 01:45:45.620
He was creative.

01:45:45.620 --> 01:45:48.130
And so I don't think it's
a coincidence that people

01:45:48.130 --> 01:45:50.650
were taking an interest in him.

01:45:50.650 --> 01:45:56.130
But it wasn't his
planning out his life.

01:45:56.130 --> 01:46:00.580
Rafael Reif, the provost
I was telling you about,

01:46:00.580 --> 01:46:03.220
had several other older
brothers and one of them

01:46:03.220 --> 01:46:06.320
had come to study in the states.

01:46:06.320 --> 01:46:08.210
This is way before the internet.

01:46:08.210 --> 01:46:10.630
How do you learn about
colleges in the states?

01:46:10.630 --> 01:46:12.670
You go to the American embassy.

01:46:12.670 --> 01:46:15.010
They have a bunch
of college catalogs.

01:46:15.010 --> 01:46:16.920
And the one thing
he knew was that he

01:46:16.920 --> 01:46:20.350
didn't think he wanted
to experience winter.

01:46:20.350 --> 01:46:23.960
Venezuela's not a
place of winters.

01:46:23.960 --> 01:46:29.450
So he looked at California
schools, ended up at Stanford,

01:46:29.450 --> 01:46:33.310
didn't know a lot of English
when he came, translated hard

01:46:33.310 --> 01:46:37.650
for lots of hours the first
two semesters, did pretty well.

01:46:37.650 --> 01:46:42.210
And he was going to go home
to Venezuela to be a teacher.

01:46:42.210 --> 01:46:45.040
Only, he had a
brother at MIT and he

01:46:45.040 --> 01:46:48.030
thought he'd come visit
him before he went back

01:46:48.030 --> 01:46:49.947
to Venezuela.

01:46:49.947 --> 01:46:51.530
And one of his former
colleagues said,

01:46:51.530 --> 01:46:52.880
I thought you were going home?

01:46:52.880 --> 01:46:55.230
And he said, yeah, but
I'm going to go visit MIT.

01:46:55.230 --> 01:46:58.280
And the guy said, there's
a spot open there.

01:46:58.280 --> 01:47:02.210
So he said, well,
maybe I'll look at it.

01:47:02.210 --> 01:47:06.135
Of course, he got the
offer, told his wife,

01:47:06.135 --> 01:47:08.260
I think we're
going to stay here.

01:47:08.260 --> 01:47:10.570
Somebody told him you
put on lots of layers

01:47:10.570 --> 01:47:12.770
and you deal with
winter, so he's

01:47:12.770 --> 01:47:14.830
dealt with winter ever since.

01:47:14.830 --> 01:47:20.100
But again, sort of a chance
meeting with a former colleague

01:47:20.100 --> 01:47:22.880
who said, I know about a spot.

01:47:22.880 --> 01:47:26.180
But for that, he'd probably
be back in Venezuela teaching.

01:47:29.660 --> 01:47:31.370
He summed it up
by saying, "I had

01:47:31.370 --> 01:47:34.100
to change all the plans
at the last minute.

01:47:34.100 --> 01:47:36.950
It was just one of those
accidents of history

01:47:36.950 --> 01:47:38.850
that helped me a great deal."

01:47:38.850 --> 01:47:41.810
But you get this over and
over again in these videos.

01:47:41.810 --> 01:47:45.870
And it's really
kind of stunning.

01:47:45.870 --> 01:47:47.630
Other lessons from
the interviews--

01:47:47.630 --> 01:47:50.070
I learned a lot
about MIT's history.

01:47:50.070 --> 01:47:52.470
You know, I'd heard of
William Barton Rogers,

01:47:52.470 --> 01:47:55.460
but it wasn't until I
started reading the Decisions

01:47:55.460 --> 01:47:57.890
book, which is
really a good read,

01:47:57.890 --> 01:48:02.340
and talked to Professor Smith,
for example, that I understood

01:48:02.340 --> 01:48:07.780
a lot more about MIT's
early years, the emphasis

01:48:07.780 --> 01:48:11.760
that William Barton Rogers put
on real scientific research,

01:48:11.760 --> 01:48:14.870
the people he drew
to support him,

01:48:14.870 --> 01:48:18.870
the efforts to merge Harvard
and MIT, several times.

01:48:18.870 --> 01:48:21.820
Luckily, it didn't happen.

01:48:21.820 --> 01:48:24.710
There was an interesting
chapter on MIT's Center

01:48:24.710 --> 01:48:28.440
for International Studies,
which had links to the CIA

01:48:28.440 --> 01:48:29.370
for a while.

01:48:29.370 --> 01:48:32.670
The CIA essentially
got it off the ground.

01:48:32.670 --> 01:48:35.410
By the end of World
War II, MIT was

01:48:35.410 --> 01:48:38.810
used to collaborating
with the government.

01:48:38.810 --> 01:48:42.790
It had provided lots of
help on things like radar.

01:48:42.790 --> 01:48:45.570
And so, when the
CIA asked for help

01:48:45.570 --> 01:48:51.230
in learning more about
communications and propaganda--

01:48:51.230 --> 01:48:53.450
because it was
the Cold War, late

01:48:53.450 --> 01:49:00.040
'40s-- MIT said, sure,
why worry about it?

01:49:00.040 --> 01:49:02.490
So two of the interviews
are with people

01:49:02.490 --> 01:49:05.630
who were involved with the
center-- Donald Blackmer

01:49:05.630 --> 01:49:07.820
and Jean Shkolnikov.

01:49:07.820 --> 01:49:11.120
And they talk about the
center, and the protests

01:49:11.120 --> 01:49:12.760
against the center.

01:49:12.760 --> 01:49:15.900
There was a bombing in
the Herman building,

01:49:15.900 --> 01:49:18.950
and the eventual
break with the CIA.

01:49:18.950 --> 01:49:20.940
And they talk about
the development

01:49:20.940 --> 01:49:22.800
of political science at MIT.

01:49:22.800 --> 01:49:25.320
You were talking about how
different courses evolve,

01:49:25.320 --> 01:49:31.210
so course 14, 15, and 17 all
used to be glommed together--

01:49:31.210 --> 01:49:33.690
economics, political
science, and management.

01:49:33.690 --> 01:49:36.730
At some point they were
separated, economics

01:49:36.730 --> 01:49:40.610
and management, first,
political science later.

01:49:40.610 --> 01:49:42.960
Probably would make a
good project for somebody

01:49:42.960 --> 01:49:47.380
to explore the different
courses and how they came along.

01:49:47.380 --> 01:49:50.950
Another historical chapter that
some interviewees talked about

01:49:50.950 --> 01:49:53.670
was the huge disruption
during Vietnam.

01:49:53.670 --> 01:49:56.960
The anti-war protests
that tore the campus apart

01:49:56.960 --> 01:49:59.230
in the late 1960s.

01:49:59.230 --> 01:50:02.280
So Noam Chomsky talked about
it from the perspective

01:50:02.280 --> 01:50:05.460
of an activist professor.

01:50:05.460 --> 01:50:10.210
Larry Bacow and I, I
got interviewed too,

01:50:10.210 --> 01:50:11.790
talked about it
from the perspective

01:50:11.790 --> 01:50:13.620
of the students who were there.

01:50:13.620 --> 01:50:16.140
Howard Johnson talks
about that period

01:50:16.140 --> 01:50:19.260
from the perspective
of a president.

01:50:19.260 --> 01:50:21.680
And then there was a guy
named Bill Pounds, who

01:50:21.680 --> 01:50:25.930
was dean of the Sloan
School at that point, who

01:50:25.930 --> 01:50:30.440
had followed Howard Johnson
as Dean of Sloan, who suddenly

01:50:30.440 --> 01:50:33.010
found himself appointed
by the president

01:50:33.010 --> 01:50:38.760
to head a committee to study the
role of MIT's two defense labs.

01:50:38.760 --> 01:50:41.250
He said that Howard
Johnson went out of his way

01:50:41.250 --> 01:50:43.970
to ensure that the membership
of this committee, which

01:50:43.970 --> 01:50:47.440
was sort of meant to placate
everybody as much as to figure

01:50:47.440 --> 01:50:52.320
out what to do, that the
president had gone out

01:50:52.320 --> 01:50:55.790
of his way to make sure
there were radicals

01:50:55.790 --> 01:51:00.890
and conservatives, that the
whole spectrum was represented.

01:51:00.890 --> 01:51:03.050
He said it was kind of
like a Noah's Ark, two

01:51:03.050 --> 01:51:05.375
by two, a radical, a
conservative, a radical,

01:51:05.375 --> 01:51:07.250
a conservative.

01:51:07.250 --> 01:51:10.407
And Bill stood up during
a raucous faculty meeting

01:51:10.407 --> 01:51:11.990
and announced that
the committee would

01:51:11.990 --> 01:51:15.020
start meeting the
following day-- a Saturday.

01:51:15.020 --> 01:51:17.330
I think he'd been given
two or three days notice.

01:51:17.330 --> 01:51:21.690
And this wasn't an area
he knew anything about.

01:51:21.690 --> 01:51:24.210
They would meet every
day from 9:00 to 5:00

01:51:24.210 --> 01:51:26.620
until they reached a conclusion.

01:51:26.620 --> 01:51:28.430
He said that one
step that cleared

01:51:28.430 --> 01:51:30.410
the way for the
commission to even begin

01:51:30.410 --> 01:51:35.280
to talk to each other was
to give them as much time

01:51:35.280 --> 01:51:38.650
as they needed at the front
end, just to go around the room

01:51:38.650 --> 01:51:44.220
and let everybody talk about
their views on war and peace,

01:51:44.220 --> 01:51:47.950
universities and truth,
and all the other kinds

01:51:47.950 --> 01:51:50.610
of profundities, as he put it.

01:51:50.610 --> 01:51:52.720
And then they got down to
work, because they'd all

01:51:52.720 --> 01:51:54.160
sort of cleared their throats.

01:51:54.160 --> 01:51:56.400
He said it took about a
week or a week and a half.

01:51:59.210 --> 01:52:02.730
He also made observation about
being made dean of the Sloan

01:52:02.730 --> 01:52:07.010
School just a few years
after he'd arrived at MIT.

01:52:07.010 --> 01:52:11.450
And he said he hadn't
really understood the place.

01:52:11.450 --> 01:52:15.950
We all look up to deans as these
are all-knowing creatures who

01:52:15.950 --> 01:52:19.090
have put in lots of
time and get promoted.

01:52:19.090 --> 01:52:21.770
He said, here he was
dean, and he didn't really

01:52:21.770 --> 01:52:23.095
have much of a clue.

01:52:23.095 --> 01:52:25.850
And he said he thought
that becoming dean, quote,

01:52:25.850 --> 01:52:29.090
"might pull back
the curtain on MIT."

01:52:29.090 --> 01:52:31.540
Instead, he said, he
discovered that quote,

01:52:31.540 --> 01:52:35.380
"there was neither a curtain
nor anyone behind it."

01:52:35.380 --> 01:52:38.850
Kind of like the Wizard of Oz.

01:52:38.850 --> 01:52:40.980
He was an interesting
guy because he also

01:52:40.980 --> 01:52:45.500
headed the Rockefeller
Brothers office for a decade

01:52:45.500 --> 01:52:51.690
but was attached enough to MIT
so he commuted between Boston

01:52:51.690 --> 01:52:55.480
and New York the whole time,
running the Rockefeller's

01:52:55.480 --> 01:52:58.670
business and still
remaining here.

01:52:58.670 --> 01:53:01.430
Anyway, he's very articulate.

01:53:01.430 --> 01:53:04.830
It's another fun one to look
at, even if you've never

01:53:04.830 --> 01:53:06.920
heard of him before today.

01:53:06.920 --> 01:53:09.000
Another theme that
came up repeatedly

01:53:09.000 --> 01:53:13.400
was MIT's unusual
openness and flexibility.

01:53:13.400 --> 01:53:16.520
It seemed to be better
than many universities

01:53:16.520 --> 01:53:21.530
at accepting people whose work
didn't fit into neat boxes.

01:53:21.530 --> 01:53:24.150
And it was better
than most universities

01:53:24.150 --> 01:53:27.440
and allowing people to
cut across boundaries.

01:53:27.440 --> 01:53:30.340
I think when you're here,
you take it for granted

01:53:30.340 --> 01:53:32.460
that it doesn't matter
what school you're in.

01:53:32.460 --> 01:53:34.500
On other campuses,
it matters a lot

01:53:34.500 --> 01:53:38.160
you never see the other people.

01:53:38.160 --> 01:53:39.950
Again and again,
these were cited

01:53:39.950 --> 01:53:43.790
as really important
factors in allowing people

01:53:43.790 --> 01:53:46.330
to do innovative work.

01:53:46.330 --> 01:53:49.140
And I'm sure MIT isn't
perfect on this score,

01:53:49.140 --> 01:53:52.380
but it does appear to
really be different

01:53:52.380 --> 01:53:54.000
from other institutions.

01:53:54.000 --> 01:53:57.370
Chomsky, for example,
recalled his early efforts

01:53:57.370 --> 01:54:01.760
to have his ground breaking
work in linguistics published,

01:54:01.760 --> 01:54:05.330
only to be told that
there was no such field.

01:54:05.330 --> 01:54:08.140
I mean, he was the father
of modern linguistics.

01:54:08.140 --> 01:54:11.190
But MIT provided a
home from for him.

01:54:11.190 --> 01:54:16.420
His first teaching job was to
help graduate students cram

01:54:16.420 --> 01:54:20.510
for the language exams they
had to pass to get their PhDs.

01:54:20.510 --> 01:54:22.350
I don't know if PhDs
are still required

01:54:22.350 --> 01:54:26.500
to pass one or two languages,
but they were back in the '50s.

01:54:30.730 --> 01:54:32.570
He said, "in your
early 20s, you're

01:54:32.570 --> 01:54:34.700
thinking about
what you are doing.

01:54:34.700 --> 01:54:38.020
You don't really care
what the world thinks."

01:54:38.020 --> 01:54:42.210
Gradually, of course, his work
drew attention and respect

01:54:42.210 --> 01:54:44.170
and got published.

01:54:44.170 --> 01:54:47.700
Bob Langer, the biotech guy
I was talking to you about,

01:54:47.700 --> 01:54:50.610
had a similar story.

01:54:50.610 --> 01:54:54.450
He was a doctoral student
here in chemical engineering.

01:54:54.450 --> 01:54:58.540
And most of his classmates
went from chemical engineering

01:54:58.540 --> 01:55:00.230
to the petroleum industry.

01:55:00.230 --> 01:55:02.110
This is what you did.

01:55:02.110 --> 01:55:06.490
So he flew to Louisiana
to interview with Exxon.

01:55:06.490 --> 01:55:08.520
And the executives
there explained

01:55:08.520 --> 01:55:13.340
that if they could increase the
yield of some petrochemicals

01:55:13.340 --> 01:55:17.050
by one one hundredth
of a percent,

01:55:17.050 --> 01:55:20.160
they would make
billions of dollars.

01:55:20.160 --> 01:55:23.020
On his flight home he
was thinking of that.

01:55:23.020 --> 01:55:26.780
And he realized he had no
interest in doing any of that.

01:55:26.780 --> 01:55:28.260
But what would he do?

01:55:28.260 --> 01:55:30.220
Well, he kind of
wanted to change

01:55:30.220 --> 01:55:33.490
the shape of chemical
engineering and chemistry.

01:55:33.490 --> 01:55:35.640
So he started applying
for jobs to look

01:55:35.640 --> 01:55:36.710
like they would do that.

01:55:36.710 --> 01:55:38.500
But they didn't want him.

01:55:38.500 --> 01:55:42.390
Exxon would have
taken him, but-- so he

01:55:42.390 --> 01:55:45.460
kept looking and looking,
and eventually someone

01:55:45.460 --> 01:55:48.470
suggested that he go talk
to this cancer researcher

01:55:48.470 --> 01:55:49.840
at Harvard named Judah Folkman.

01:55:52.630 --> 01:55:55.300
Hiring a chemical
engineer in a cancer lab

01:55:55.300 --> 01:55:57.010
doesn't sound like
an obvious thing

01:55:57.010 --> 01:56:01.480
to do, especially back
when he was coming out.

01:56:01.480 --> 01:56:04.340
But Folkman was a
risk taker, and Langer

01:56:04.340 --> 01:56:07.120
made a stunning breakthrough
in finding a new approach

01:56:07.120 --> 01:56:11.300
to controlled drug delivery.

01:56:11.300 --> 01:56:12.520
That was his post-doc.

01:56:12.520 --> 01:56:14.860
He came back to MIT.

01:56:14.860 --> 01:56:17.920
He got hired, but his
path was still bumpy.

01:56:17.920 --> 01:56:20.570
He actually didn't get hired
into chemical engineering.

01:56:20.570 --> 01:56:23.050
They didn't think he was doing
chemical engineering type

01:56:23.050 --> 01:56:25.170
work, like petrochemicals.

01:56:25.170 --> 01:56:30.370
He went into this applied
biology, course 20 at the time.

01:56:30.370 --> 01:56:31.850
And they didn't love him either.

01:56:31.850 --> 01:56:35.480
But somehow he kept on.

01:56:35.480 --> 01:56:39.060
He said, "the path I wanted
to follow didn't exist,"

01:56:39.060 --> 01:56:40.540
but he was hired.

01:56:40.540 --> 01:56:42.000
And there was
enough room for him

01:56:42.000 --> 01:56:45.780
to run and to start
publishing and earn tenure.

01:56:45.780 --> 01:56:51.040
And today he's one of the most
venerated figures in the field.

01:56:51.040 --> 01:56:53.390
You are another example
of crossing boundaries.

01:56:53.390 --> 01:56:56.450
I mean, I don't know if he's
told you about his background.

01:56:56.450 --> 01:56:57.860
He studied literature.

01:56:57.860 --> 01:57:01.170
He double majored in literature
and electrical engineering

01:57:01.170 --> 01:57:02.300
at Yale.

01:57:02.300 --> 01:57:06.510
That's a pretty unusual
set of double majors.

01:57:06.510 --> 01:57:08.510
And even after he
got here, he's been

01:57:08.510 --> 01:57:12.000
a bridge between the humanities
department and the engineering

01:57:12.000 --> 01:57:13.060
school.

01:57:13.060 --> 01:57:16.050
I think he's the only professor
with full appointments

01:57:16.050 --> 01:57:17.380
in both schools.

01:57:17.380 --> 01:57:21.120
So you'll have to get him
to talk during the semester

01:57:21.120 --> 01:57:23.650
about being this kind of bridge.

01:57:23.650 --> 01:57:25.970
But during the
interview, you said

01:57:25.970 --> 01:57:28.610
STS is not a discipline
for people trying

01:57:28.610 --> 01:57:30.820
to escape science
and engineering.

01:57:30.820 --> 01:57:34.620
It's really about
pulling them together.

01:57:34.620 --> 01:57:37.100
People talked about
their backgrounds.

01:57:37.100 --> 01:57:38.890
Lots of them were tinkerers.

01:57:38.890 --> 01:57:41.040
There are lots of good
stories about that.

01:57:41.040 --> 01:57:44.630
A lot of them did ham radio.

01:57:44.630 --> 01:57:49.750
Even the women who came-- as
a young girl, Brit d'Arbeloff,

01:57:49.750 --> 01:57:53.040
who holds a master's degree in
mechanical engineering from MIT

01:57:53.040 --> 01:57:55.890
and is a life member
of the MIT Corporation,

01:57:55.890 --> 01:57:59.450
her late husband was chairman
of MIT's Corporation,

01:57:59.450 --> 01:58:02.330
founded a big company
called Teradyne.

01:58:02.330 --> 01:58:05.870
But when she was a
little girl, her father

01:58:05.870 --> 01:58:10.160
was an engineer at this
appliance company in Chicago.

01:58:10.160 --> 01:58:14.190
And he brought home the
machines that he invented,

01:58:14.190 --> 01:58:16.800
things like the mix master.

01:58:16.800 --> 01:58:20.180
He worked on the hair
dryer and the toaster.

01:58:20.180 --> 01:58:21.950
So she used to play with them.

01:58:21.950 --> 01:58:23.380
She got out to Stanford.

01:58:23.380 --> 01:58:27.440
She said I was looking to get as
far from my parents as I could.

01:58:27.440 --> 01:58:29.640
And the engineering
professors there said,

01:58:29.640 --> 01:58:31.580
you don't want to
major in engineering.

01:58:31.580 --> 01:58:33.520
They didn't want a girl.

01:58:33.520 --> 01:58:35.330
But one of my favorite
tales that she

01:58:35.330 --> 01:58:40.080
told, she had to take welding,
and foundry, and machine shop--

01:58:40.080 --> 01:58:43.060
only girls at Stanford had
to wear dresses and skirts.

01:58:43.060 --> 01:58:44.860
There was a dress code.

01:58:44.860 --> 01:58:48.900
So she knew she didn't want
to do welding in a skirt.

01:58:48.900 --> 01:58:51.900
So she used to put on her
jeans, and roll them up, and put

01:58:51.900 --> 01:58:54.640
a trenchcoat over them,
so nobody could see,

01:58:54.640 --> 01:58:57.950
even if it was 90 degrees
out, and go to class.

01:58:57.950 --> 01:58:59.640
They didn't give
her trouble there.

01:58:59.640 --> 01:59:01.892
Of course, she graduated
number one in her class.

01:59:01.892 --> 01:59:04.308
PROFESSOR: I walked by the
glass lab on Saturday afternoon

01:59:04.308 --> 01:59:05.183
and she was in there.

01:59:05.183 --> 01:59:07.110
KAREN ARENSON: She was there.

01:59:07.110 --> 01:59:10.835
She's now chair of the
Arts Council at MIT.

01:59:13.600 --> 01:59:16.060
Let me get one or two
others and then-- there

01:59:16.060 --> 01:59:19.650
were some incredible personal
stories in these interviews.

01:59:19.650 --> 01:59:22.050
And I think the one that
move me the most was

01:59:22.050 --> 01:59:26.790
Wesley Harris, who's a
professor of Aero and Astro.

01:59:26.790 --> 01:59:30.195
He's now associate provost
for faculty equity,

01:59:30.195 --> 01:59:32.640
as in diversity.

01:59:32.640 --> 01:59:35.310
He's the descendant of
slaves in the South.

01:59:35.310 --> 01:59:39.780
He grew up in segregated
Richmond, Virginia in the '50s.

01:59:39.780 --> 01:59:42.430
He was a good student.

01:59:42.430 --> 01:59:46.200
And in the '50s, the
University of Virginia

01:59:46.200 --> 01:59:47.750
simply didn't take blacks.

01:59:47.750 --> 01:59:51.180
They said go to one of the
historically black colleges.

01:59:51.180 --> 01:59:53.890
One exception was
engineering because there

01:59:53.890 --> 01:59:56.040
was no separate but equal.

01:59:56.040 --> 01:59:58.040
So his physics
teacher in high school

01:59:58.040 --> 02:00:01.480
said, you've got to go to
UVA and study engineering

02:00:01.480 --> 02:00:05.650
because they've got to
see that blacks can excel.

02:00:05.650 --> 02:00:08.830
So even though he wanted to
study physics, he went to UVA

02:00:08.830 --> 02:00:12.320
and studied engineering
to make the point.

02:00:12.320 --> 02:00:14.347
Some of this
professors, I don't know

02:00:14.347 --> 02:00:15.930
if they were the
ones he had teaching,

02:00:15.930 --> 02:00:22.670
but some of the professors there
threw cigarette butts at him.

02:00:22.670 --> 02:00:24.300
They spit on him.

02:00:24.300 --> 02:00:26.535
I mean, just an incredible tale.

02:00:26.535 --> 02:00:28.080
But he had mentors.

02:00:28.080 --> 02:00:30.310
And they helped him get through.

02:00:30.310 --> 02:00:33.325
They pushed him on to Princeton.

02:00:33.325 --> 02:00:37.360
He had an offer to come to
MIT, but his good old physics

02:00:37.360 --> 02:00:40.620
teacher from high school said,
you've got to go back to UVA

02:00:40.620 --> 02:00:44.360
and make a point that you can
be a professor and do it well.

02:00:44.360 --> 02:00:47.890
So here he was, sort
of, pushing his life

02:00:47.890 --> 02:00:51.040
in directions he probably
didn't really want to take

02:00:51.040 --> 02:00:54.510
and suffering because--
to make a point.

02:00:54.510 --> 02:00:57.480
It's a kind of
civil rights battle.

02:00:57.480 --> 02:01:00.950
And he talks about this
during the interview.

02:01:00.950 --> 02:01:02.610
It made me go back
and look-- there's

02:01:02.610 --> 02:01:06.880
a big told by a guy named
Clarence Williams who

02:01:06.880 --> 02:01:09.940
did a lot of interviews
with blacks at MIT.

02:01:09.940 --> 02:01:13.690
I'd never read them before
I started reading them.

02:01:13.690 --> 02:01:16.800
It's amazing.

02:01:16.800 --> 02:01:22.870
Anyway, actually, the chairman
of the board, John Reed,

02:01:22.870 --> 02:01:27.190
who I also interviewed,
who was also

02:01:27.190 --> 02:01:30.480
the former chairman of
Citicorp, is an interesting set

02:01:30.480 --> 02:01:32.410
of personal tales.

02:01:32.410 --> 02:01:34.270
His parents were
American but his father

02:01:34.270 --> 02:01:35.680
was in the meat business.

02:01:35.680 --> 02:01:38.730
They lived in Latin America
most of his childhood.

02:01:38.730 --> 02:01:40.950
He grew up in Brazil
and Argentina.

02:01:40.950 --> 02:01:43.540
His father had gone to MIT.

02:01:43.540 --> 02:01:48.220
But to ease the transition
back to the states,

02:01:48.220 --> 02:01:51.160
he enrolled in
MIT's 3-2 program,

02:01:51.160 --> 02:01:55.300
started at a small liberal arts
college and then came here.

02:01:55.300 --> 02:02:01.260
And he describes his years
at MIT as being invisible.

02:02:01.260 --> 02:02:04.280
He said I would go to classes
and go back to my apartment.

02:02:04.280 --> 02:02:08.840
This is the guy who later became
head of Citicorp, head of MIT.

02:02:08.840 --> 02:02:10.890
He loved physical
chemistry but was

02:02:10.890 --> 02:02:14.780
too awed by the formidable
professor to even talk to him.

02:02:17.340 --> 02:02:20.980
He worked at Goodyear Tire for
a year on the assembly line.

02:02:20.980 --> 02:02:24.700
He had a rubber
workers union card.

02:02:24.700 --> 02:02:26.720
Amazing stories.

02:02:26.720 --> 02:02:28.955
When he was in the army,
he did something wrong

02:02:28.955 --> 02:02:33.000
and was assigned to clean
garbage pails for three days.

02:02:33.000 --> 02:02:36.830
He said, I assure you
that no one has ever

02:02:36.830 --> 02:02:38.890
washed them as well as I did.

02:02:38.890 --> 02:02:42.120
I was always enthusiastic
about whatever I was doing.

02:02:42.120 --> 02:02:43.440
It's a great skill.

02:02:43.440 --> 02:02:48.050
So these tales are buried
through these interviews.

02:02:48.050 --> 02:02:54.250
Anyway, I'd better wind down.

02:02:54.250 --> 02:02:57.510
There are more than
200 hours of video.

02:02:57.510 --> 02:02:59.310
They're fascinating
in different ways.

02:02:59.310 --> 02:03:04.900
They humanize this place in a
way it doesn't do for itself.

02:03:04.900 --> 02:03:07.900
I don't think there are
any plans to do a book

02:03:07.900 --> 02:03:10.770
or to keep going.

02:03:10.770 --> 02:03:14.510
I think it would be a shame to
stop the chronicling process.

02:03:14.510 --> 02:03:19.840
But I know that we'll be doing
some of your own probing,

02:03:19.840 --> 02:03:22.730
maybe the oral histories
will help a little.

02:03:22.730 --> 02:03:26.110
I just came from a meeting of
the council of the arts, which

02:03:26.110 --> 02:03:29.170
is having its 40th
anniversary next year.

02:03:29.170 --> 02:03:31.364
I'm doing a one line
commercial, if I may.

02:03:34.090 --> 02:03:35.900
Part of that, we were
thinking about doing

02:03:35.900 --> 02:03:39.210
a history of the council
and the arts at MIT.

02:03:39.210 --> 02:03:41.970
There are lots of documents
there are living people.

02:03:41.970 --> 02:03:44.730
As you all go about
figuring out what you're

02:03:44.730 --> 02:03:47.500
going to delve into for your
projects later, if any of you

02:03:47.500 --> 02:03:49.605
like the arts, this
would be a fun topic.

02:03:49.605 --> 02:03:51.690
And we'd love to
have one or more

02:03:51.690 --> 02:03:54.910
of you do a history of
the council for the arts.

02:03:54.910 --> 02:03:56.590
And we'd feature it next year.

02:03:59.214 --> 02:04:01.380
I don't know if there's any
time left for questions,

02:04:01.380 --> 02:04:02.770
but if there are.

02:04:02.770 --> 02:04:04.180
PROFESSOR: I want to take
a little time for questions

02:04:04.180 --> 02:04:06.300
but I also want to play this
little farm video they made.

02:04:06.300 --> 02:04:07.925
KAREN ARENSON: Oh,
that's a wonderful--

02:04:10.310 --> 02:04:12.282
PROFESSOR: I'll show you,
you can look yourself

02:04:12.282 --> 02:04:13.990
at the interface
because you can actually

02:04:13.990 --> 02:04:17.500
search through-- you can do text
searches of all the interviews

02:04:17.500 --> 02:04:18.580
altogether.

02:04:18.580 --> 02:04:21.550
And you can search on a
particular keyword or topic.

02:04:21.550 --> 02:04:23.730
And then it'll also take
you right to that point

02:04:23.730 --> 02:04:25.660
in the video, of any video.

02:04:25.660 --> 02:04:30.690
And the video guys just
searched on the word farm.

02:04:30.690 --> 02:04:33.200
And from that little search,
they made this a little video.

02:04:33.200 --> 02:04:35.058
KAREN ARENSON: The first
guy is Bill Pounds,

02:04:35.058 --> 02:04:37.433
who I was telling you about,
the former dean of the Sloan

02:04:37.433 --> 02:04:38.971
school and Rockefeller.

02:04:38.971 --> 02:04:41.515
They don't identify him.

02:04:41.515 --> 02:04:42.820
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

02:04:42.820 --> 02:04:45.210
-I grew up in Pennsylvania.

02:04:45.210 --> 02:04:48.860
And I have the distinction of
having been born on a farm.

02:04:48.860 --> 02:04:50.030
-I grew up on a farm.

02:04:50.030 --> 02:04:51.745
-So I was born on a
farm, if you will.

02:04:51.745 --> 02:04:54.000
-I grew up in Montana.

02:04:54.000 --> 02:04:54.950
I'm a cowboy at heart.

02:04:54.950 --> 02:04:56.250
-Father was a farmer.

02:04:56.250 --> 02:05:00.400
-We were in Sunbury, PA,
which is a rural community,

02:05:00.400 --> 02:05:01.560
farming community.

02:05:01.560 --> 02:05:04.920
-When my parents were
about 20 years old,

02:05:04.920 --> 02:05:06.690
they decided to
live a simpler life.

02:05:06.690 --> 02:05:10.520
And they basically moved
to rural West Virginia

02:05:10.520 --> 02:05:12.980
as a way of going
back to the land.

02:05:12.980 --> 02:05:15.920
-I rode and trained
horses as a child.

02:05:15.920 --> 02:05:19.900
-Well, I was brought up in
farm country of Pennsylvania.

02:05:19.900 --> 02:05:22.400
And I had my share of work
picking tomatoes and doing

02:05:22.400 --> 02:05:23.350
farm work.

02:05:23.350 --> 02:05:25.750
-So I grew up in
the bush, very much.

02:05:25.750 --> 02:05:28.790
I come from a fifth
generation Australian family

02:05:28.790 --> 02:05:31.380
and always very
much in the bush.

02:05:31.380 --> 02:05:35.440
-Between the time
I was 17 months old

02:05:35.440 --> 02:05:40.190
and five or six years
old, I spent on a farm.

02:05:40.190 --> 02:05:43.140
-So we went to Idaho when
I was nine years old.

02:05:43.140 --> 02:05:45.420
And we settled in a
little farming village.

02:05:45.420 --> 02:05:47.810
-We lived on a mini farm.

02:05:47.810 --> 02:05:50.810
-Well, I was born
on a cattle ranch,

02:05:50.810 --> 02:05:54.167
spent my youth on
a cattle ranch.

02:05:54.167 --> 02:05:55.875
-I think it had an
influence in the sense

02:05:55.875 --> 02:05:57.400
that farmers are entrepreneurs.

02:05:57.400 --> 02:05:59.820
And they are their own boss.

02:05:59.820 --> 02:06:02.880
And so I think that's sort
of settled into my psyche.

02:06:02.880 --> 02:06:04.100
-Hard work.

02:06:04.100 --> 02:06:06.890
You learn how to
focus on a farm.

02:06:06.890 --> 02:06:09.150
-People in the cities
romanticize the bush

02:06:09.150 --> 02:06:12.380
in the same way that Americans
romanticize the west.

02:06:12.380 --> 02:06:14.270
It's not to be
romanticized, actually,

02:06:14.270 --> 02:06:15.770
it's a pretty tough
and rough place.

02:06:15.770 --> 02:06:17.186
-It is kind of
strange for someone

02:06:17.186 --> 02:06:20.090
to grow up in a house with
not a lot of technology

02:06:20.090 --> 02:06:22.850
to become a faculty
member at MIT.

02:06:22.850 --> 02:06:24.880
But I became an
engineer, in part,

02:06:24.880 --> 02:06:29.430
because I was good at math,
and I liked problem solving.

02:06:29.430 --> 02:06:32.910
But I think the childhood
has influenced me

02:06:32.910 --> 02:06:36.130
in terms of how I
bias technologies.

02:06:36.130 --> 02:06:38.840
That is, I give
value to technologies

02:06:38.840 --> 02:06:41.830
that are maybe simpler or local.

02:06:41.830 --> 02:06:47.545
And I think that does come out
of my research and my work.

02:06:47.545 --> 02:06:49.525
[END VIDEO PLAYBACK]

02:06:49.525 --> 02:06:51.986
KAREN ARENSON: So, if you
go on the MIT 150 website,

02:06:51.986 --> 02:06:55.010
there's something called
Infinite History, which

02:06:55.010 --> 02:06:57.316
has the 100 oral histories.

02:06:57.316 --> 02:06:58.770
There's a separate
little category

02:06:58.770 --> 02:07:02.810
called Multimedia, which is
where this is tucked away,

02:07:02.810 --> 02:07:05.700
way at the bottom of
the right hand column.

02:07:05.700 --> 02:07:09.640
It's a bunch of videos that
include some oral history

02:07:09.640 --> 02:07:13.561
snippets, which this
was, and other stuff.

02:07:13.561 --> 02:07:15.310
PROFESSOR: If we have
the right interface,

02:07:15.310 --> 02:07:17.730
and I talked to the company to
do that, I would love to have,

02:07:17.730 --> 02:07:19.104
if you wanted,
for an assignment,

02:07:19.104 --> 02:07:21.310
to make little videos
like that snipping

02:07:21.310 --> 02:07:22.632
from these oral histories.

02:07:22.632 --> 02:07:25.090
But at the moment, we don't
quite have the interface to it.

02:07:25.090 --> 02:07:25.890
KAREN ARENSON: That
would be fabulous.

02:07:25.890 --> 02:07:28.098
PROFESSOR: But let's have
a few minutes for questions

02:07:28.098 --> 02:07:31.880
before we're all
done or comments.

02:07:36.870 --> 02:07:37.995
KAREN ARENSON: Three hours.

02:07:37.995 --> 02:07:38.495
Yeah.

02:07:38.495 --> 02:07:40.845
AUDIENCE: You said you
did 40 of the interviews,

02:07:40.845 --> 02:07:43.230
and there are 100 or so.

02:07:43.230 --> 02:07:44.230
KAREN ARENSON: I did 40.

02:07:44.230 --> 02:07:45.905
AUDIENCE: So who
did the other 60?

02:07:45.905 --> 02:07:48.530
KAREN ARENSON: There were
actually four other people,

02:07:48.530 --> 02:07:54.010
a graduate of MIT, he had been
an undergraduate in engineering

02:07:54.010 --> 02:07:57.040
and STS, did the
first dozen or so

02:07:57.040 --> 02:07:59.510
as a kind of feasibility study.

02:07:59.510 --> 02:08:02.930
And then John
Hockenberry, the NPR guy,

02:08:02.930 --> 02:08:05.920
got pulled in to do the project.

02:08:05.920 --> 02:08:08.650
And he probably did 8 or 10
before he went out the door.

02:08:08.650 --> 02:08:11.990
He came back and
did one or two more.

02:08:11.990 --> 02:08:16.000
They had hired a local
journalist, Toby Smith,

02:08:16.000 --> 02:08:21.480
and she did, I think,
40, 45 of them.

02:08:21.480 --> 02:08:24.870
And them one of the guys in
the video lab, Larry Gallagher,

02:08:24.870 --> 02:08:27.320
did a handful.

02:08:27.320 --> 02:08:30.150
And the styles are different.

02:08:30.150 --> 02:08:32.150
Nobody was looking at them.

02:08:32.150 --> 02:08:34.410
My lead-ins are way too slow.

02:08:34.410 --> 02:08:36.620
I never saw one of them before.

02:08:36.620 --> 02:08:39.990
I kept thinking, these are
going into the archive.

02:08:39.990 --> 02:08:43.000
I need an intro to say, why
are we talking to this person.

02:08:43.000 --> 02:08:45.210
So I have pretty
substantial intros,

02:08:45.210 --> 02:08:48.460
and I talk way too slowly.

02:08:48.460 --> 02:08:52.887
But I had no idea until January
7, which is a real shame.

02:08:52.887 --> 02:08:53.970
I'd love to rerecord them.

02:08:57.460 --> 02:09:01.330
But Hockenberry's are more
like radio interviews.

02:09:01.330 --> 02:09:04.080
Toby pretty much starts
with where were you born?

02:09:04.080 --> 02:09:05.350
How did you grow up?

02:09:05.350 --> 02:09:09.310
So anyway, there are
several different styles--

02:09:09.310 --> 02:09:10.070
probably good.

02:09:13.430 --> 02:09:13.930
Any other?

02:09:17.167 --> 02:09:19.500
AUDIENCE: You said you did
economics when you were here?

02:09:19.500 --> 02:09:21.300
So for people like
yourself, probably

02:09:21.300 --> 02:09:24.270
the majority of graduates,
who do something completely

02:09:24.270 --> 02:09:27.660
different than what
they studied, like,

02:09:27.660 --> 02:09:30.527
is there sort of a general
thing that you still

02:09:30.527 --> 02:09:32.235
retain from your
undergraduate education?

02:09:32.235 --> 02:09:33.720
I mean, obviously,
you don't really

02:09:33.720 --> 02:09:36.250
use economics day-to-day.

02:09:36.250 --> 02:09:38.290
What are the basic
things that people

02:09:38.290 --> 02:09:41.130
who go on to do different
things keep from MIT?

02:09:44.010 --> 02:09:45.712
KAREN ARENSON: You
mean just in general?

02:09:45.712 --> 02:09:47.670
AUDIENCE: Yeah, was it
a complete wast of time?

02:09:47.670 --> 02:09:50.800
KAREN ARENSON: Lots of people
go into law, medicine, business,

02:09:50.800 --> 02:09:54.590
a few people go into
journalism, not very many.

02:09:54.590 --> 02:09:59.170
I did economics and finance
journalism for 35 years

02:09:59.170 --> 02:10:03.310
before I did higher ed, so I was
using my economics background.

02:10:03.310 --> 02:10:04.970
I actually went back
to school and took

02:10:04.970 --> 02:10:08.340
finance, and accounting,
and financial institutions

02:10:08.340 --> 02:10:10.890
because I realized there
was a certain amount I just

02:10:10.890 --> 02:10:13.410
didn't know.

02:10:13.410 --> 02:10:17.580
But I did use my
economics background.

02:10:17.580 --> 02:10:21.590
And as a journalist,
a lot of journalists

02:10:21.590 --> 02:10:24.280
come from being English majors.

02:10:24.280 --> 02:10:26.790
Some of them are
journalism majors.

02:10:26.790 --> 02:10:29.000
There aren't very
many economics majors,

02:10:29.000 --> 02:10:30.990
but I was very analytical.

02:10:30.990 --> 02:10:33.650
So they all learned
how to write.

02:10:33.650 --> 02:10:35.090
I learned how to
look at numbers,

02:10:35.090 --> 02:10:37.180
and we sort of came
together in the middle.

02:10:37.180 --> 02:10:41.140
I had to learn how
to write on the job.

02:10:41.140 --> 02:10:43.230
Some of them learned
to use numbers.

02:10:43.230 --> 02:10:44.660
Some of them never did.

02:10:44.660 --> 02:10:47.910
When I was editing, I can
remember the first couple weeks

02:10:47.910 --> 02:10:51.810
I ran the Sunday business
section for the New York Times.

02:10:51.810 --> 02:10:54.880
And I got a big story in, and
one of the editors under me

02:10:54.880 --> 02:10:56.510
had worked it.

02:10:56.510 --> 02:10:57.350
And it came to me.

02:10:57.350 --> 02:10:59.080
And the story wasn't bad.

02:10:59.080 --> 02:11:02.370
And at the last minute,
the graphic arrived.

02:11:02.370 --> 02:11:06.370
And the story said this, and
the graphic looked like this.

02:11:06.370 --> 02:11:08.030
And I said, they don't agree.

02:11:10.950 --> 02:11:13.210
I killed it at that point.

02:11:13.210 --> 02:11:15.390
People, a lot of
journalists, at least back

02:11:15.390 --> 02:11:18.300
when I was starting
just were number-phobic.

02:11:20.840 --> 02:11:24.450
But I like to look at
stories as puzzles.

02:11:24.450 --> 02:11:26.700
In other words, how
did this happen?

02:11:26.700 --> 02:11:28.810
How did the pieces
come together?

02:11:28.810 --> 02:11:31.360
Kind of like an MIT
education trains

02:11:31.360 --> 02:11:32.830
you to look at the world.

02:11:32.830 --> 02:11:37.070
And that's how I looked
at it, even higher ed.

02:11:37.070 --> 02:11:39.750
So it was fun.

02:11:39.750 --> 02:11:41.753
PROFESSOR: Let's leave
it at that for today.

02:11:41.753 --> 02:11:42.440
Please join me in
thanking Karen.

02:11:42.440 --> 02:11:43.481
KAREN ARENSON: Good luck.

02:11:43.481 --> 02:11:44.240
[APPLAUSE]

02:11:44.240 --> 02:11:46.090
KAREN ARENSON: Thank you.