9/1/2011 7:19:48 PM

First Story about Science 1. The Intangible in Human Progress

A Radio Talk by Charles F. Kettering We have just been listening to some of the worlds great music. The writing of this fine music has many intangibles. The notes and intervals and sequences are arranged so as to produce a pleasing, a dramatic, or an inspiring impression. The timing and the arrangements and all the other things that go into a composition determine how much you, the public, will like it. These great musical masterpieces are the final result of inspiration, of cut and try rewrite and try again. The dramatic stories from the lives of great composers tell this process much better than I can. Now, composition is to musical notes and tones and intervals what inventions are to iron, and steel, and copper. The difference between good compositions and bad ones, between good inventions and bad ones, is an intangible coordination which is very poorly understood. You people out there listening to me are sitting in front of a radio. It may be a popular-priced one. It may be a very expensive one. That is not important. But did you ever stop to think just how much that radio of yours is really worth? I mean, if you took it apart and put prices on the parts just as you would on

your dinner today. Say, so much for the spinach. So much for the cup of coffee. So much for the lamb chop that is, if you could get one.

Suppose, in our imagination, we take this radio apart. Suppose we take all the pieces out of the wooden box we call a cabinet. Now, you could call in a good cabinetmaker and say, Jim, can you make a cabinet like that for me? Hed answer you, Of course I can. For about five dollars. You could say to another fellow, How much can you make that pin for? He might say, Oh, about a dime." Then you look at all the parts on the table. Someone had to make every piece in the set. If you checked only the weight of the material, you'd probably find the radio could be bought for forty or fifty cents a pound. But you can't buy a radio the way you buy a pound of meat. That material isn't all you bought. You bought something else. You bought that intangible something which, when the parts are all put together, makes it work. That something which makes it possible for you to hear the announcer say, "This is London calling." When you bought that radio you bought the combined knowledge and experience of every great electrical scientist from Michael Faraday

on down to the present. You also bought the results of endless experiments and the ideas of thou-sands of inventors. That is what is housed in that cabinet along with so many pounds of material that intangible some-thing which goes into every product - that something which is priceless. To illustrate how priceless it is - let us suppose there was some force that could take radio away - could completely wipe out radio in the world. What would it be worth to have a group of men rediscover and redevelop that intangible something? The something which makes it possible to take a few pounds of material and a few hours of work and with it be in contact with almost any place in the world. As purchasers, we see the finished article the automobile, the radio, the telephone, the airplane or the Diesel locomotive. But how did they come about? You have heard a great deal about science, research and engineering. But for every experiment that has been a success, there have been thousands of failures, much discouragement and sleepless nights. Long hours have been spent in just thinking about and experimenting with these developments. If that work had not been done, man would not be flying. We would have no electric lights, no motorcars, nor could you now be listening to this great orchestra.

So the thing that really started and maintains progress in the world is man's ability to think, and his dissatisfaction with things as they are. That is the intangible motive power which makes for human progress.

Second Story About Science 2. The Birth of an Idea

A Radio Talk by Charles F. Kettering This Sunday afternoon, in every part of the country, people are listening to this great orchestra. Radio can carry this music to any place in the world. How long has it taken man to do this? The records show we have been developing the elements of radio for about a hundred years. But, if we made a more careful study, we would find the thing really started in the year 600 B.C. more than 2,500 years ago. It really started as a thought - a very weak, vague idea. In the year 600 B.C., a Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, found that by rubbing amber he produced a force that would pick up straws. Two thousand two hundred years later, Sir William Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's physician, did a little more thinking and experimenting with the idea and called the phenomenon electricity. Sixty years later, Otto von Guericke, a German, built a machine to generate static electricity.

One hundred years later, Benjamin Franklin identified positive and negative electricity and proved lightning and electricity were the same thing. In 1820, Oersted, a Dane, proved that electricity would produce magnetism. And about the same time, Faraday did some experimenting and discovered the principles of the electric motor.