#271 Vannevar Bush (Engineer of the American Century)

What I learned from reading Endless Frontier: Vannevar Bush, Engineer of the American Century by G. Pascal Zachary. ---- Founders Notes gives you the superpower to learn from history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. You can search all my notes and highlights from every book I've ever read for the podcast. Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- [7:31] Acts of importance were the measure of his life and they are the reason that his life deserves study today. [8:10] Suspicious of big institutions Bush objected to the pernicious effects of an increasingly bureaucratic society and the potential for mass mediocrity. [8:20] He believed the individual was still of paramount importance. "The individual to me is everything," he wrote  "I would restrict him just as little as possible." He never lost his faith in the power of one. [8:57] Pieces of the Action by Vannevar Bush (Founders #270) [9:32] Dee Hock — founder of VISA episodes: One from Many: VISA and the Rise of Chaordic Organization by Dee Hock (Founders #260) Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 1and Autobiography of a Restless Mind: Reflections on the Human Condition Volume 2 by Dee Hock. (Founders #261) [9:55] Edwin Land episodes: Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. (Founders #264) Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #263)A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War by Ronald Fierstein (Founders #134)Land's Polaroid: A Company and the Man Who Invented It by Peter C. Wensberg (Founders #133)The Instant Image: Edwin Land and the Polaroid Experienceby Mark Olshaker (Founders #132)Insisting On The Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land and Instant: The Story of Polaroid(Founders #40) [10:00] Vannevar Bush and Edwin Land both had a profound belief in the individual capacity for greatness. [12:15] Bush came from an American line of can do engineers and tinkerers, a line beginning with Franklin