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You probably don’t know who Kelly Johnson is, so I’ll just spell it out: he started Lockheed’s Skunk Works program and designed the SR-71 Blackbird, the U-2 spy plane, the F-117A Stealth fighter, and made the idea of a delta wing aircraft possible in the B-2 Stealth bomber. In fact, he helped design America’s first production jet, so he’s been as instrumental to the development of American aircraft history as the Wright brothers were to the idea of flight itself.
For a little perspective, the United States decommissioned the Stealth fighter this year, deeming the technology outdated. In the meantime, India still has aircraft in its air force with three wings. For another perspective, the Soviet Union tried to surprise the SR-71 Blackbird on a flight over Siberia by chasing it down with a new MiG-25. The Blackbird sped away at Mach 3 and the MiG-25 was grounded after its first flight for an engine overhaul. Keep in mind that designing the Blackbird required about three generations’ worth of advances of technology in four different engineering fields – he needed chemical engineering to make radar absorbing skin, mechanical engineering to make a lightweight titanium body aerodynamic enough to fly at Mach 3 but sturdy enough not to be ripped apart by the wind, computer engineering to handle the controls, and materials engineering to make all these parts cost effective.
But starting at the beginning, Johnson’s story at Lockheed is incredibly interesting. He went there in 1932 to ask for a job but was turned down because he didn’t graduate from a particularly good undergraduate school (Michigan). Johnson went out and got a Master’s in aeronautic engineering before coming back, where he was hired as a tool designer; he cut his teeth in Michigan renting the wind tunnel to help design race cars for the people at Indianapolis. He distinguished himself by making a modification to a transport aircraft that turned it from rubbish into gold (he added the H-tail to give it directional stability). He got himself Skunk Works during a trip to Britain, where the British Army rejected a Lockheed project for a variety of engineering reasons. Johnson single-handedly redesigned the aircraft in his hotel room in two days and went back to America with an approved project.
President Johnson put it best, when he presented Johnson with the Medal of Freedom, the highest honor for a civilian: “Kelly Johnson and the products of his famous Skunk Works epitomize the highest and finest goal of our society, the goal of excellence. His record of design achievement in aviation is both incomparable and virtually incredible. Any one of his many airplane designs would have honored any individual’s career.”
“Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.”
Rather than stick to another hero of the day, I was inspired today by Aki’s alma mater, University College London. It is the first British university to accept students that were not Christian, for which Londoners referred to their student body as “the godless scum of Gower Street”. It was also the first British university to accept women. It peers itself with Oxford and Cambridge, but without the prim British snobbery.
Its real claim to fame, however, is that its alumni are known as “the Great and the Good”. UCL’s favorite sons include Mahatma Gandhi, Alexander Graham Bell, and the guy that invented the right hand rule in physics. UCL grads represent the heads of state in a dozen countries, captains of industry in several areas, and have notable achievements in art, medicine, and science. All five noble gases were discovered at UCL, Francis Crick researched DNA, and it’s even said that Charles Darwin came up with the theory of evolution there. As a research university, more UCL grads go into academia than any other university in Britain.
I don’t know about you, but I’m inspired.
Kinda looks like an ugly version of Congress…
Today’s inspiring hero is John Maynard Keynes, whose economic theories are dominating the solutions for the current recession. He was born in the same year that Karl Marx died, a fitting connection for the man who would kill Marxist theories of Capitalism Doomed and replace it with a theme of Capitalism Viable. Marx was also a bitter man, heavy and constantly disappointed; Keynes was a man alight, happily sailing through life, buoyant and consummately successful.
He showed economic genius from a young age, wheeling and dealing in preparatory school so that he had a “slave” who carried his books and formed a “commercial treaty” with a boy he disliked that he would get books for him from the library in exchange for the boy agreeing to never approach within fifteen yards of him. He bloomed in high school and was a phenom at university, winning awards by the armful and showing excellence in mathematics, classics, and history. Excellence as in he wrote textbooks in those subjects. He rubbed elbows with Max Planck, who told him that he decided to do theoretical physics because economics was too hard, and Bertrand Russell, who told him that he decided to write literature because economics was too easy.
He tried industry, saying “I want to manage a railway or organize a Trust or at least swindle the investing public. It is so easy and fascinating to master the principles of these things.” He tried civil service examinations and scored second of all examinees – his weakness had been in economics, to which he proclaimed that he knew more about the subject than the test writers. But he hated running an office, except for the fact that it allowed him to write treatises on probability and finance in India. He decided to go to Cambridge, where he was immediately selected to join a Royal commission to deal with an Indian currency crisis. Even then, he still had a myriad of interests – he ran the local theater troupe and joined an intellectual circle of friends that included names like Virginia Woolf and EM Forster.
During World War I, he operated on British overseas finances, where he broke the Spanish economy with currency manipulation and managed to buy an impressive collection of French art at happily depressed prices. He represented the British Treasury at the peace negotiations at Versailles, but resigned in despair at what he considered outrageous and impossible terms in the Treaty of Versailles. He became a household name with his work The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which was brilliant and crushing. Some excerpts:
-of French prime minister Georges Clemenceau: “He had only one illusion – France; and one disillusion – mankind, including his own colleagues”
-of American president Woodrow Wilson: “like Odysseus, he looked wiser when seated”
-of the negotiations: “The Council of Four paid no attention to these issues, being preoccupied with others – Clemenceau to crush the economic life of his enemy, Lloyd George to do a deal and bring home something that would pass muster for a week, the President to do nothing that was not just and right. It is an extraordinary fact that the fundamental problems of a Europe starving and disintegrating before their eyes, was the one question in which it was impossible to arouse the interest of the Four. Reparation was their main excursion into the economic field, and they settled it as a problem of theology, of politics, of electoral chicane, from every point of view except that of the economic future of the States whose destiny they were handling”
In the 1920s, he ventured into stocks and turned 30,000 pounds sterling into 380,000. His oracle was nothing more than a minute scrutiny of balance sheets, an encyclopedic knowledge of finance, an intuition into personalities, and a certain flair for trading. He would read financial papers in the morning when he woke up, phone in his orders, then move on to start his day with more important matters, like economic theory. He became bursar for his alma mater, managed an investment trust, and guided the finances of a life insurance company. Meanwhile, he was a frequent columnist at a newspaper, lectured at Cambridge, bought pictures, and read books voraciously.
He wrote his magnus opum (the General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money) during the Great Depression and is widely regarded as one of the greatest economists in history. Quite a career.
My hero of the day is Chris Paul, an NBA player for the New Orleans Hornets, on the back of this one story from last week. The Hornets were trailing the Pacers by 8 points with 3 minutes left to play. Chris Paul is having a terrible game, playing dog crap basketball and going 2-7 at that point.
Paul is preparing to re-enter the game when a Pacers fan suddenly yells out “Hey Paul, you SUCK, way to show up tonight”. Chris Paul turns around and looks at the fan with a quizzical look on his face, to which the fan heckles “Yeah, that’s right! Kobe busted your ass up last year. You didn’t even deserve to be mentioned for MVP.” Next thing you know, Paul goes crazy on the floor, going 5 for 6, gets the game-winning assist, and the Pacers lose by one.
As he walks off the floor, Paul stops, looks up at the Pacers fan and says “That loss was all your fault”.
Chris Paul is one of my favorite basketball players.
My inspiring hero for the day is Nathanael Greene, a Revolutionary War general who rose to greatness despite an unbelievable series of obstacles and setbacks. He was born as the son of a Quaker in Rhode Island and despite the fact that Quakers discouraged literary achievement, he educated himself in math, law, and the Bible.
When the Revolutionary War broke out, he tried to organize a Rhode Island militia but was kicked out for being too fat. Undeterred, he acquired every book on military history that he could get his hands on and taught himself strategy. He got an administrative position in Rhode Island revising militia laws, which he parlayed into a command position over a newly formed militia (after the battles at Lexington and Concord, the situation was considerably more desperate).
His command style makes him possibly the only master in American military history of unconventional warfare. He promoted the burning of New York to prevent the British from using it and his other strategies showed a penchant for sapping British strength rather than engaging them head on. He did not win a single battle as field commander, yet he managed to re-conquer the entire South and corner British forces in Savannah and Chaleston. He was an efficient administrator and had a good eye for talent, finding and promoting some of America’s finest junior officers who would prove skilled at harassing the British and stealing or burning their supplies. His campaign ranks among the most brilliant in our nation’s history.
“We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”
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