Master storyteller Malcolm Gladwell tells the tale of the Norden bombsight, a groundbreaking piece of World War II technology with a deeply unexpected result.
Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here. I
last did a TEDTalk I think about seven years ago or so. I talked about
spaghetti sauce. And so many people, I guess, watch those videos. People have
been coming up to me ever since to ask me questions about spaghetti sauce,
which is a wonderful thing in the short term -- (Laughter) but it's proven to
be less than ideal over seven years. And so I though I would come and try and
put spaghetti sauce behind me.
The theme of this morning's session is Things We
Make. And so I thought I would tell a story about someone who made one of the
most precious objects of his era. And the man's name is Carl Norden. Carl
Norden was born in 1880. And he was Swiss. And of course, the Swiss can be
divided into two general categories: those who make small, exquisite, expensive
objects and those who handle the money of those who buy small, exquisite,
expensive objects. And Carl Norden is very firmly in the former camp. He's an
engineer. He goes to the Federal Polytech in Zurich. In fact, one of his
classmates is a young man named Lenin who would go on to break small,
expensive, exquisite objects.
And he's a Swiss engineer, Carl. And I mean that
in its fullest sense of the word. He wears three-piece suits; and he has a very,
very small, important mustache; and he is domineering and narcissistic and
driven and has an extraordinary ego; and he works 16-hour days; and he has very
strong feelings about alternating current; and he feels like a suntan is a sign
of moral weakness; and he drinks lots of coffee; and he does his best work
sitting in his mother's kitchen in Zurich for hours in complete silence with
nothing but a slide rule.
