21 May 2021

We Invent Products That, in turn, Reinvent Us: Lincoln and the Hirsute Republicans

Abraham Lincoln rather famously grew a beard just before he was elected president, apparently inspired by an 11-year-old girl who suggested it would help him to get elected. He was the first president to have a beard.

He was followed by a succession of Republican presidents with facial hair.



Lincoln and the hirsute Republicans championed policies that made America host to an industrial revolution that triggered a parade of new products.

The list of product inventions from around 1900 includes central heating; stainless steel implements; the electric toaster, iron, and oven; the sewing machine; the dishwasher; the electric elevator; the dial phone; the portable typewriter; radium treatment for breast cancer; heart surgery; the psychiatric clinic; contact lenses; toothpaste in tubes; motion pictures; musical comedy; the gramophone; volleyball and basketball; the Ferris wheel; the jukebox; the striptease; breakfast cereals; milk delivered in bottles; packaged produce; Coca-Cola; margarine; the ice cream cone; the refrigerator; the correspondence course; the full-range department store; the chain store; the shopping center; the coin telephone; the traveler’s check; fingerprinting; the automatic pistol; the electric chair; the automobile and the airplane; the underground city subway train; the pneumatic tire; color photography; rayon and other artificial textiles; and chewing gum.

These products changed the human experience in thousands of ways we can hardly describe.
In 1901, King Gillette invented the disposable safety razor that made it easy for men to shave. It took a while to catch on.

President William Howard Taft, who served until 1913, had a mustache, in keeping with the theme of facial hair for presidents. But by 1915, Gillette sold 70 million blades to a public who had adopted the clean-shaven look. This product changed how men looked.

No president since Taft has had facial hair. (Well, other than eyebrows.) We invent products and then they reinvent us.

17 May 2021

1980s Insubordination at Apple - the Curious Team Dynamics Between Jobs and His Engineers

Excuse the language but this is simply too good not to share.

In 1980, Apple had gone public. This meant that Steve Jobs had more money but less power. The engineering team developing the Lisa computer essentially exiled him from their team. At this time, a woman Jobs had been dating claimed he was her child's father. He denied this. The woman named her daughter Lisa; the engineering team decided to name the computer they were developing Lisa, in the hopes that Jobs would also walk away from them.

So Jobs, lurching about for a project to engage in, found Jef Raskin, who was obsessed with making a friendly computer. Raskin didn't want Jobs encroaching on his Macintosh project but, of course, Jobs did, eventually making it his own.

Here is their relationship as recounted by various Apple people, including Jobs.
Andy Hertzfeld: The Mac was initially a skunkworks. At this time it was not an important project at Apple. It was a very minor thing.
Randy Wigginton: And Steve went over to Macintosh where Jef Raskin was, and he and Jef did not mix well.
Steve Jobs: Jef's a shithead who sucks.
Jef Raskin: Steve would have made an excellent king of France.

Apple may have done well to bring in junior high teachers to help with team dynamics. Or maybe that would have defused all the creative energy. Who knows? You live on a weird planet. Apple is the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, now worth $2.1 trillion. It's hard to know how much of this is because of and how much of this is in spite of men who took projects so personally.

These comments are from Adam Fisher's Valley of Genius.