By Thomas F. Schwartz
As the previous blog illustrated, Hoover demonstrated how the university impacted history with the writings of Melanchthon and Agricola. His other point was more theoretical in describing the importance of the transmission of ideas that transformed from the abstract into practical applications affecting everyday life. As Hoover stated: “It is by the free shuttle of ideas between our universities that we weave the great tapestries of knowledge. Our academic traditions have developed a system that is peculiarly effective in spotting outstanding intellects and putting them to work in a climate that fosters creative, original thinking.” It is because of Hoover’s own experience at Stanford that he benefited from being mentored by leading geologists of his day. Perhaps more important was the university’s attracting like-minded intellectually curious individuals that he met his future spouse and geology major, Lou Henry.
The only United States President to be awarded a patent is Abraham Lincoln for an invention to lift boats over shoals. Lincoln also mused about the transmission of ideas into useful applications in a draft presentation, “Discoveries and Inventions.” Lincoln claimed that generational differences were “the result of Discoveries, Inventions, and Improvements. These, in turn, are the result of observation, reflections, and experiment.” It was through writing the great ideas were transmitted. As a lawyer, Lincoln saw the patent system as essential in advancing useful knowledge. Lincoln declared: “The patent system…secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and productions of new and useful things.” Emphasizing the protection of intellectual property, Lincoln saw an economic incentive to advancing scientific knowledge.
While Lincoln saw the dissemination of knowledge springing from grass roots individuals building a better mouse trap, Hoover witnessed the growth of higher education institutions that became the incubators of new knowledge. As Hoover argued:
It may be that at one time scientific discovery and inventions were the product of a poverty-driven genius in a garret. Even if that were so, it is no longer the case. The discovery of natural law does not come as a sudden concept. It comes mostly slowly—step by step—through the action and reaction among our university scientific faculties and their laboratories.
For instance, the parents of our radio communications of today were not the broadcasters. Its parents were Maxwell from one university, who by mathematics formulated the hypothesis of electrical wave motion. It was Hertz of another university who experimentally confirmed Maxwell’s deductions and carried them further to the demonstration that these waves could traverse the atmosphere. Then university-trained technicians from a score of institutions gave the world mounting inventions which finally handed this great tool to the broadcasters.
Critics who fail to understand the evolution of ideas from theory to practical applications led Hoover to conclude with this story:
I could illustrate this mutuality also of Faraday in one university, who discovered that energy could be transformed into electricity through induction. It was a German, a Britisher, and an American who, by applied sciences, fathered the whole system of transmitting power. It is said that Gladstone, on a visit to Faraday, after witnessing Faraday’s “contraption,” said: “Has this thing any practical value?” To which Faraday replied: “Sir, someday you will collect taxes from it.”
The exchange Hoover cites occurred in the 1850s when future-Prime Minister William Gladstone was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Electricity was still a rather exotic subject. Michael Faraday translated a scientific concept into an economic answer that Gladstone would understand.