who put the crazy in avant-engineering?
a look at Howard, Nikola and Elon
The obsession of an engineer is no different than an artist’s. It can lead to great results. It can also take its toll on the obsessor. This goes with the territory for artists and musicians. Nobody really asks why. Not so much for engineers. For engineers they ask “what’s wrong with them?”
Traveling recently brought me near one of the engineering wonders of the world, so I made a pit stop to see the H-4 Hercules; better known as the Spruce Goose. I knew it was a big plane and I knew it flew only once, briefly in 1947, as a stunt by designer and rich guy Howard Hughes to get congress off his back about going over budget. The plane is about a decade older than me, so in my lifetime I never stopped to think what the “Spruce” part of the nickname meant. It comes from the fact that the entire behemoth is made of wood (aluminum was in short supply during the war). And spruce is not even the majority of the wood type used. I’ll let Wikipedia fill in the rest…
Wikipedia facts: It was made almost entirely of birch. The Birch Bitch was a more accurate but less socially acceptable moniker that was allegedly used by the mechanics who worked on the plane. The Hercules is the largest flying boat ever built, and it had the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever flown until the twin-fuselaged Scaled Composites Stratolaunch first flew on April 13, 2019.
Did you get that? The Spruce Goose, built in the 1940’s, had the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever flown until 2019!!
Standing before it like an ant, I couldn’t stop thinking about the monumental effort that went into building it. Hughes was an engineering genius for sure, but what he acquired in the gene pool didn’t stop there. It takes more than a genius to build big things. It takes obsession, something Hughes had in spades.
Having worked on a few engineering projects myself, I thought I might have a hint, and only a hint mind you, of what it felt like for Hughes to be so close to his goal with time running out. There’s always one more problem to be worked on. One more fix to be applied. One more test to be done. And then, d’oh … a new problem. Can’t give up now. Stay focused. Fix it. And round and round we go.
Here’s exactly how Hughes described his feelings about working on the big plane as he defended himself in front of a Senate hearing:
“… It is the largest aircraft ever built. … Now, I put the sweat of my life into this thing. I have my reputation all rolled up in it and I have stated several times that if it's a failure, I'll probably leave this country and never come back. And I mean it.”
Obsession can also affect how one sleeps. Hughes called this ‘natural sleep’. His Executive Assistant William Fadiman described it this way in the documentary “The RKO Story - Howard's Way”:
“That meant that one kept awake until one grew tired, when one grew tired, one went to sleep. It could be 36 hours, it could be 3. It could be on the floor of his office, it could be in his bed. It didn't matter terribly.”
Of course the luck of the gene pool goes both ways. That same genius and obsessive drive that allowed Hughes to build big things would also be his undoing.
This giant plane was the last engineering project for Howard Hughes. He continued to be active in business, but within a decade of flying the Goose his obsessive behavior began forcing him into seclusion. He eventually locked himself in a hotel room watching the same movie over and over, pissing in bottles that he arranged neatly into rows. He died in 1976 at the age of 70.
A similar story of engineering obsession played out well before Howard Hughes built any airplanes. Nikola Tesla is regarded by many to be among the greatest engineers to ever live, if not the greatest. His inventions related to AC power systems were such a huge leap in the performance for delivering electric power that we still use some of them today. He put his ideas to use just before 1900 by harnessing the power of Niagara Falls to bring light and industry to Buffalo and eventually the world.
Tesla built this massive Niagara power plant with the help of investor George Westinghouse who purchased Tesla’s patents with a contract agreement that included a royalty of about one dollar per horsepower produced by the Tesla invented motors. Tesla’s power system was so successful that this royalty agreement soon became a huge financial burden for Westinghouse, preventing him from further investment in Tesla’s ongoing projects. To remove this impediment, Tesla tore up the agreement with Westinghouse, foregoing millions of dollars for himself, but saving Westinghouse.
Tesla continued working on bigger and better power systems, convinced that he could tap power from the atmosphere and transmit it wirelessly anywhere. He was still able to attract investors and built huge and expensive systems to test his ideas. “Free power” however did not prove to be popular with investors. By 1905 the investments were all dried up. By the next year the financial burdens of his projects came crashing down on him leading to what many believe was a nervous breakdown. By 1915 he had nearly lost everything. By 1920 the only real friends he had were the pigeons that visited him at his hotel window.
Today it is thought that Tesla suffered from untreated OCD that continued to worsen with age. Around 1917, the number 3 was playing a significant role in his personal decision making. Eventually he was shuffling between cheap hotels and would only stay in rooms with numbers that could be evenly divided by 3, fearing the worst otherwise.
In 1943 he died alone in his hotel room with a “do not disturb” sign hanging on his door. He was 86.
Today, another genius avant-engineer is building big things. The two he’s most recognized for so far are his EVs and his rockets. I’m sure that Elon Musk recognized the footsteps he was walking in when he joined the EV company named after Nikola Tesla (he joined less than a year after it was started by two other engineers). But did he recognize the gene pool risks he may also be inheriting?
Like Nikola, Elon poured the early money he made at his previous jobs into his next big idea — this EV company. Like Nikola, he built demos to impress investors to get the big bucks he needed to carry out his vision. When his vision began to succeed, just like Nikola gave away his royalties, Elon gave away the patents he had created for his EV company in order to remove any impediments to the nascent new car industry he was creating. He alone could not create a big enough market for EVs. He needed others to follow him.
Somewhat ironically, while I was researching this story, I found the “all our patent are belong to you” blog post on the Tesla Inc. website. But when I went back to it just a week or two later it had disappeared. Fortunately it is all explained, including the funny wording of the title, in this video:
Tesla auto patent giveaway:
Musk founded SpaceX in 2001, a couple of years before he joined Tesla. Again he would end up pouring much of his own money into the company, nearly running out of funds before finally being able to successfully launch a rocket in 2008, thus bringing in badly needed investment. Tesla Inc. also nearly went bankrupt in 2008.
In order to make his projects succeed Musk said , "I will spend my last dollar on these companies.” Howard Hughes was doing the same at the time he faced those Senate hearings.
It takes more than money to turn big ideas into reality. It takes hard work. Musk is known to work 120 hours a week. Like Howard Hughes, his sleep patterns are spotty at best. Both would take sleep breaks on or near the factory floor to minimize interruption of their work flow. Musk said he went for almost two decades without a proper vacation. His friends have said they would check in on him out of concern that this heavy work load was harming his health. When asked about his health Musk said “It's not been great, actually."
How much of a toll was it taking? Was it driving him crazy?
In recent interviews, some of the business and tech people talk about Elon and tail off with something like this: “… that was before he went crazy.” Not everyone, least of all not many of his investors, are happy with Elon’s behavior the last few years. Is he sabotaging his own business? Is he spreading himself too thin?
When Nikola and Howard went crazy, the public was mostly unaware of it. Nikola simply faded from the headlines after his work stopped. By the time Howard Hughes went off the deep end, the practice of PR management had become a science and took over what the public could know about him. I was very young, but I remember at least one time when the press started making noise about “what’s happened to Hughes”. This gossip would build up for awhile, and then all of a sudden Hughes would make an “appearance” on a TV talk show. He was there in voice only, on a live telephone call, ready to answer any questions. We all know about staged damage control today.
There are many Elon Musk “events” that you could point to as the beginning of his crazy time. Like a lot of rich guys he can’t seem to keep his mouth shut. If I had to pick out one public event that looks like a turning point, it would be when he bought Twitter. His mouth had gotten him into big trouble before, resulting in fines and even having to step down as Tesla Chairman (but remaining CEO). When he opened his mouth to say he was buying Twitter, I think he immediately regretted it. He tried to back out, but Twitter sued forcing him to complete the deal.
Isn’t engineering a lot more fun than opinioneering? I guess that’s just my opinion. Elon was now the proud owner of the biggest soap box the world had ever seen.
At this point I need to digress for a moment.
There once was another guy that got rich selling cars who loved to shoot his mouth off. This guy bought a newspaper, because there was no internet soap box yet. He then put his stories in said newspaper and forced all his car customers to read it, or at least get it in the mail. He was so happy with his stories that he packaged them into a book which was translated into multiple languages so that everyone in the US and Europe could have the benefit of his car seller wisdom. The book is called The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem, by Henry Ford.
Henry Ford was a popular guy. Now he was even more popular … in Germany.
From Wikipedia:
Ford is the only American mentioned favorably in Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf, Hitler said "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," In July 1938, the German consul in Cleveland gave Ford, on his 75th birthday, the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner.
This was a time when there were plenty of Nazi sympathizers in America. In 1939 they held a rally of 20,000 followers at Madison Square Garden. By then Ford had been forced to tone down his right-wing extremism and religious prejudice. But it was not until after the war, when he was shown newsreel footage of the Nazi concentration camps, that Ford had a moral awakening resulting in a stroke. He died in 1947 from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 83.
Is history rhyming again?
Henry Ford wasn’t crazy. Was he a Nazi? Kinda looks that way. If Germany had won the war, maybe he would’ve become Minister of Government Efficiency. That last sentence is supposed to be a humorous quip taken from recent headlines, but reading it back makes me want to laugh and cry.
Is Elon Musk a Nazi? I sure hope not. Has pushing the limits of extreme engineering driven him crazy? Maybe. Being the smartest guy in the room, even if that room is the entire planet, doesn’t mean you have to go crazy. Einstein and Hawking died with all their marbles. Hawking had to live with one of the most debilitating physical ailments the human body can suffer, and he STILL kept making top contributions in his field AND kept his marbles.
Maybe the engineering business pressures of quarterly profits are greater than the academic science pressures of “publish or perish.” Maybe the mind of the avant engineer can only burn brightly for so long before it burns out.
C’mon Elon. Give Twitter back to the twits. You’ve often said you’re an engineer first. Get off of the crazy train while you still can and build more great big things.
Howard Hughes was the greatest aviation engineer of his time. He not only built innovative airplanes that made huge advances in both military and civilian air travel, he also flew them, often breaking world records in the process. Nikola Tesla brought electricity into nearly every home in America and much of the rest of the world. Elon Musk redefined the auto industry AND the rocket industry, and may very well build the first rockets to make humans a multiplanetary species.
Musk took one giant leap in that direction just a couple of weeks ago when SpaceX performed what many are calling the greatest engineering feat ever. He not only launched the largest rocket ever launched, and not only landed the largest rocket ever to land, he also caught the damn thing in mid air just above the launch pad (he’s doing this so he can more quickly launch the thing again, which he’s going to have to do quickly many times in order to colonize the planets).
It seems unlikely that Elon will die alone in a hotel room. If he does, it will probably be a hotel room on Mars.
What’s wrong with these guys?!
For another take on this subject see this article:
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To end this story with a little fun, here’s a look at what might have been, had some of the early big ideas been further developed in a parallel dimension …
Great stuff, Rick! REALLY good. I have little to say about the rock threads, but this one is excellent. Did't you get quoted by SciAm back in the day?
I don't think this kind of thing is limited to engineers, but surely it is more common to engineers in our day. I look at it as a psychological thing, a personality type of very smart/talented people that believe in their own bullshit and have a personality that doesn't allow in any correction mechanism (i.e. "trust"). Checks and balances. I KNOW I am beautiful, but I probably need to listen a bit if Emily says I need a haircut. Trump is not an engineer but he has the same thing going on, right now he is pushing his bullshit so hard and so much, one would expect a collapse.
I'm glad you wrote this thread, it helps me to understand!
I love these stories, Rick, but what happened to the Giorgio Gomelsky focus that you had started this blog with and for?