The closing paragraph of the book sums up the story it tells nicely.

“This innovation will come from people who are able to link beauty to engineering, humanity to technology, and poetry to processors. In other words, it will come from the spiritual heirs of Ada Lovelace, creators who can flourish where the arts intersect with the sciences and who have a rebellious sense of wonder that opens them to the beauty of both.”

Science, art, teamwork and good execution end up changing the world.

He begins with Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace and peppers stories of lives and critical inventions from then to today. What touched me most about this book was the effect humans can have on the world. By creating something truly amazing and grand these individuals working together on a national, company, and small clubs have changed everything.

Although Ada’s personal story was tragic, she never met her father and died at the age of 36 her idea to be able to program a machine to perform different tasks was eventually accomplished. Again and again we read in the book of an invention, and idea that changed the world. ALthough he does share examples of lone inventors who were never able to execute properly and so their ideas while good did not change anything.

George Boole created the language where logic could be easily expressed.

The ENIAC used mechanical gates to create logic circuits, then along came the vacuum tube then with the transistor everything was different.

Oxide layers between the silicon allowed for laying down paths to create the logic gates.

Johny Von Neuman was quite the character a true genius who helped create atomic weapons eventually dying of cancer.

Some other favorite quotes:

War mobilizes science.

Understand which industries are symbiotic so that you can capitalize on how they will spur each other on.

Arthur Rock:

“I believe so strongly in people that I think talking to the individual is much more important than finding out to much about what they want to do”

Vannevar Bush:

“Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn”

Another theme of the book:

“Once again the greatest innovation would come not from the people who created the breakthrough but from the people who applied them usefully”

The stories in the book were great. Human beings pushing the frontiers of science and knowledge creating the future today. And it is really exciting. Just today Microsoft announced their augmented reality glasses. I can’t wait to try them to see what I can create with them.