Great Meetings in 20th Century Science & Tech
At Doodle we work to bring you a product that makes getting together effortless and fast. Collaboration is key to great outcomes: we believe every meeting has the potential to be a Great Meeting. In this series, we explore the meetings that shaped the 20th century.
In 2018, science and tech are all about collaboration. In labs, start-ups, and co-working spaces from Berlin to Beijing, teams of people search for the next great idea, the next groundbreaking innovation. It’s hardly surprising that this approach is so popular — great scientific breakthroughs and world-changing tech concepts have been proven to come from great collaborations. Here are three partnerships that paved the way for today’s collaborative culture.
The Original Silicon Valley Tech Bros
Before they were Hewlett Packard, the computer company valued at $113 billion, they were Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, and they were classmates at Stanford University who shared a love of camping, fishing, the great outdoors — and electrical engineering. Their mentor, Professor Fred Terman, encouraged them to harness their shared enthusiasms and talents by setting up their own business, which is exactly what the pair did. In 1938, they set up shop in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California, with a grand total of $538 in start-up capital. All that remained was to choose a company name. Unable to decide whether they should be known as Hewlett Packard or Packard Hewlett, in the end it came down to a coin toss: and so, Hewlett Packard was born. From these modest beginnings, they engineered their first great success, producing an audio oscillator, known as the HP200A, designed for use in testing sound equipment. Why HP200A instead of H0001? Apparently, the pair chose the name to give the impression that HP was a well-established company. The gambit worked on Walt Disney, who went on to order eight HP oscillators for use in the production of his film Fantasia.
In 1968, HP reached a milestone that would define the company and secure their legacy, when they released the Hewlett Packard 9100A, the world’s first personal desktop computer. More innovative products followed, including the world’s first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972. The company has been a consistent entry on the Fortune 500 list since it first debuted there in 1963, and, even 80 years after it was first founded holds an impressive 17% market share in computing. All in all, Dave and Bill only spent two years working out of that Palo Alto garage but they never forgot their humble beginnings there — and no-one else has, either. Not only has the ‘founded-in-a-humble-garage’ story become a cornerstone of start-up mythology, the Palo Alto council has even awarded the Hewlett Packard garage the status of California Historical Landmark.
From one-room garage to the Fortune 500: there’s no limit to where a good collaboration can take you
The Enigmatic Women of Bletchley Park
During WWII, both the allied and axis forces communicated vital strategic information through code — cracking the other side’s codes, therefore, took on paramount importance. In England, Bletchley Park, headquarters for British wartime cryptanalysis, was the nerve-centre for these efforts. While plenty of women worked there in auxiliary roles, translating axis documents, operating cryptographic machinery, and providing administrative support, the bulk of Bletchley’s analytical and mathematical work was done by men. Hardly surprising, when you consider that women were actively discouraged from pursuing STEM careers at the time — Oxford university, for example, didn’t confer women’s degrees until October 1920. But as the war progressed, and soldiers were drafted, male mathematicians and code-breakers grew to be in short supply. Dilly Knox, chief cryptanalyst, was soon recruiting women and men in nearly equal numbers. Some dismissed the women as mere dilettantes. Even Churchill was reportedly none too impressed with this unorthodox hiring strategy. On a visit to Bletchley, he is said to have remarked, “I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I had no idea you had taken me so literally.”
Despite the skepticism, the women of Bletchley Park got on with one of the most pressing jobs of the war: cracking the Enigma code, a German cipher generated by the Enigma machine. The British cryptanalysts devised the Bombe, an electro-mechanical device by which the British eventually cracked the code. Instrumental in the collaboration to build the Bombe and break the Enigma? The women that some had initially sneered at. Working in Hut 6, see above, Jane Fawcett was among the first to crack a snippet of Enigma code — this enabled the British to determine the whereabouts of a German warship. It was codebreaker Mavis Batey who cracked a message that enabled Knox’s team to work out the Enigma machine’s wiring. And Jean Valentine was one of the few member’s of Bletchley staff deemed capable of operating the Bombe itself. Knox’s unorthodox hiring strategy, it seems, paid off.
Don’t overlook or underestimate your partner’s talents: there’s power in diverse teams.
Steve Jobs’ Iconic Collaborator
And no, before you say anything, we’re not talking about Steve Wozniak. When you think of partnerships at Apple, co-founders Jobs and Wozniak spring immediately to mind — and for good reason: the two changed the course of personal computing forever. But a spirit of collaboration underpins the design and development of all Apple products. One of Apple’s most iconic — if little-known– collaborations is the one between Jobs and the artist and graphic designer Susan Kare.
It’s no secret that Jobs, a font nerd and graphic design enthusiast, was demanding — even nitpicky — about the look of his products: when designing the original Apple Mac in 1984, he visualised a machine that was as beautiful as it was simple, right down to the desktop. He imagined a graphic interface with an easy-to-grasp visual vocabulary. He wanted to make computing intuitive. To achieve all that, he not only needed to find someone who shared his vision, but someone with the talent to bring it to life. That’s where Kare came in. In 1982, the fine arts graduate joined the Apple team and changed the aesthetic of personal computing forever.
Between them Jobs and Kare came up with the system of icons now used on every computer desktop. Kare sketched them on graph paper, using one square for one pixel, because the application for onscreen pixel design hadn’t then been developed. The paint-bucket, the lasso, the command key logo: all are Kare’s designs. She also developed the Mac’s groundbreaking, visually appealing range of fonts — though not without some input from Jobs. Kare initially named the fonts for stops on Philadelphia’s Main Line train: Ardmore, Rosemont, Overbrook. When Jobs came in to check on her progress he suggested they should be named after world-class cities — which is how, among others, the Geneva typeface came to be.
Creative vision can be meaningless without a collaborator who can realise it.
Whether you’re working in tech, in the arts, in politics, or in any other field, the collaborations you begin today can lead to exciting and innovative ideas for tomorrow. Next up, we’ll take a look at three creative partnerships that revolutionised 20th century art and culture.
Jessica Miller is an Australian writer currently based in Berlin.
