Tanya, Sylvain, Maeva and I headed downtown on the metro today to see the White House and the National Museum of American History. The first exhibit we went to was about Thomas Edison, and had lots of equipment in it from the early days of building devices that exploited Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetism.
Seeing early examples of electric motors and generators built by a number of different people, and thinking about the skills, time and ingenuity needed to do that some 150 years ago, was very impressive to me. I have no ability to do that kind of work, and a part of me wishes that I could.
I read an article about Elon Musk recently. He has had success with an internet company (Paypal), a commercial space company (SpaceX) and a startup automobile company (Tesla Motors). Educated in both physics and business, he has a unique ability to see and solve problems differently from most people. He said that when thinking about a new thing, he doesn't focus on what others have already done, but works more from basic knowledge of physics, chemistry, etc.
The museum is filled with the products of human creativity and craftsmanship. Seeing that through the sweep of the past 200 years of so, the leading edge is always moving ahead, and people are continually building on what has come before. Occasionally there's a significant advance that jumps things up to a new plateau.
One exhibit is of a John Bull steam engine. This crude train engine was brought from England to the U.S. in 1831. With it, the time needed to travel from New York to Washington was reduced from two days to five hours. My first reaction to the exhibit quote from the time that the engine had shattered previous limits of time and space was that they had no idea. But then I realized that 180 years later, it still takes about that much time to make the trip. By car it is 4 hours, by train perhaps 3 and a half, and while a plane is much faster, the time getting in and out of the airport would easily make a normal trip that long. So we're still waiting on the next big leap of getting from here to there. A bit humbling.
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