An illustrated history of American innovators -- some well known, some unknown, and all fascinating -- by the author of the bestselling The American Century. Harold Evans is a British-born journalist and writer who was editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. A graduate of Durham University, he has written a number of bestselling histories. He followed the late Alistair Cooke in commentaries on America for the BBC. An American citizen since 1993, he has held positions as editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Monthly Press , founding editor of the prize-winning Condé Nast Traveler ; editorial director of the Atlantic and US News and the New York Daily News ; and president and publisher of Random House. He holds the British Press Awards' Gold Award for Lifetime Achievement of Journalists. In 2001 British journalists voted him the all-time greatest British newspaper editor, and in 2004 he was knighted. Since 2011, he has been editor-at-large for Reuters . They Made America From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators By Harold Evans Back Bay Books Copyright © 2006 Harold Evans All right reserved. ISBN: 9780316013857 Chapter One The HEROES Who Got America Going The American Declaration of Independence was only one of three landmarks in 1776 In Glasgow that year, on March 8, James Watt unveiled the first commercial model of his condensing steam engine, the fulcrum of the industrial revolution, and from the same Scottish city a few days later Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations , the foundation of a new era of economic thought on both sides of the Atlantic. He analyzed and extolled the virtues of manufacturing, with its division of labor, of free trade and the benefits to society from reasonable men pursuing self-interest without much restriction by government. When the 13 states became the United States with the peace of 1783, America was an empty land, an agrarian nation with only half as many people (four million) as the mother country. No city was a tenth the size of London The new Americans had endured a long war and dissension; they had barely begun to realize how great were the natural resources they could now exploit or even to decide whether they wanted to do so. The thoughts that made pulses beat faster were pastoral; the heroes of popular culture were generals and statesmen, clergymen and landed gentry. Adam Smith concluded that no manufactures "for distant sale" had ever been established in America because of the lure of uncultivated land. He noted that as soon as a producer of goods-Smith called him an "artificer"-had acquired more stock than he needed, he did not extend his own business. He was not tempted by large wages and the easy subsistence this might bring. "He feels that an artificer is the servant of his customers from whom he derives his subsistence; but that a planter who cultivates his own land, and derives his necessary subsistence from the labor of his own family, is really a master and independent of all the world." Colonialism had also fostered a habit of mind inimical to manufacturing and industry: The British imperial practice, known as mercantilism, had been to regard all colonies as sources of raw materials, not places for manufacturing. The fomenters of the American Revolution were more or less of the same mind. They were men of property, imbued with the notion that society was best sustained by farming, fishing and trading; manufacturing was envisaged as women at home making cloth, rugs, soap and garments, men fashioning furniture, shovels and chains, and itinerant tinkers, smiths and carpenters filling the gaps left by the cottage workshops. Capitalism was not in their vocabulary, and if it had been it would have been as a dirty word. Benjamin Franklin constantly inveighed against the individual accumulation of wealth. In the 27 specific complaints in the Declaration of Independence, the founding fathers said nothing about the injustice of England's unpopular curtailment of American manufacturing or methods of financing it. The principal writer had clear ideas on what kind of society America should become: "While we have land to labour then," wrote the Virginian Thomas Jefferson in a letter in 1781, "let us never wish to see our citizens occupied at a workbench, or twirling a distaff. Carpenters, masons, smiths are wanting in husbandry; but for the general operations of manufacture, let our workshops remain in Europe." Gouverneur Morris foresaw a time when America "will abound with mechanics and manufacturers," but he and Alexander Hamilton were relatively isolated in seeing the potency of the industrial revolution gathering force in England. John Adams of Massachusetts clung to land as the only true wealth, turning aside, to his loss, Abigail's wifely advice to invest in securities. Even Franklin, businessman, scientist and inventor, exalted agriculture and looked down on trade. Everything turned on ind