#271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

On his death in nineteen seventy four, the New York Times honored Bush with a front page obituary. Calling him the engineer who marshaled American technology for World War Two. And ushered in the atomic age. Jerome Wisner, science advisor to President Kennedy, judged Bush's influence on American science and technology so great. That the twentieth century may not yet produce his equal.

Acts of importance. were the measure of his life. And they are the reason that his life Deserve study today. He was a contrarian sceptical of easy solutions, yet willing to tackle tough problems without a compass.

He was a pragmatist who thought that knowledge arose from a physical encounter with a stubborn reality. Suspicious of big institutions, Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly Bureaucratic society. And the potential for mass mediocrity. Long before such complaints became conventional wisdom.

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