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This is the Engines of Our

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Ingenuity, made possible by the friends

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of KUHF, Houston. Today,

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let's talk about American expansion and

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the Smithsonian Institution. The University of

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Houston's College of Engineering presents this

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series about the machines that make

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our civilization run, and

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the people whose ingenuity created them. What

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a year 1846 was, a watershed year. The

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year America turned from a struggling new

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nation into the new bully on the

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block. This was the year America claimed

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her manifest destiny to own the continent.

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We'd annexed the sovereign nation of Texas

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in 1845. Now

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we wanted present-day California, Arizona, New

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Mexico, Nevada, and Utah, so we

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went to war with Mexico. We

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lost 2,000 men in action, 12,000 more to disease, and got all

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that land. My

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great-grandfather set out on foot for Sutter's Fort

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in 1846, just

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when California was claiming to be a sovereign

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nation under a flag with a bear on

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it. As soon as he got there,

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he joined the army fighting Mexico. He

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owed money to his companions and needed the enlistment

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bonus to pay his debt. 1846

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was also the year the Mormons set out

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for Great Salt Lake. They would for a

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time claim Utah as a sovereign nation and

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call it deseret. While the

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West was in ferment, the rest of America was

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turning into a developed nation. By

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now, riverboats, railways, and canals were

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moving raw materials to new manufacturing

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centers. America was revealing a

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new inventive genius. Elias Howe

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patented his first sewing machine. The

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former slave, Norbert Rileau, patented the

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multi-stage evaporator, and we were just

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learning how to manufacture with interchangeable

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parts, all in 1846. Meanwhile,

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an English nobleman, James Smithson,

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had inexplicably left a half

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million dollars to support the

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increased diffusion of knowledge in America.

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Why? It wasn't at all clear, and

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Congress had sat on the money for 17 years. Finally,

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at the urging of people like

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John Quincy Adams, we took Smithson's

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money and set up the Smithsonian

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Institution. The Smithsonian celebrates it's one

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hundred and fiftieth birthday with a

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book titled eighteen Forty Six. It

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tells how the great Swiss naturalist

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Louis Agassi came to America that

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years, bringing a new scientific luster

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with him. Of course, it doesn't

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mention that Agassi never accepted Darwin,

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and on the eve of the

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Civil War, preached quite superiority. Agassi

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immediately. Met the famous electrical pioneer

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Joseph Henry, one of the few

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American scientists as well known as

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he was today. the unit of

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electrical inductance is called the Henry.

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Henry, the new head to the

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Smithsonian, set out his plans for

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the institution on the last day

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of eighteen Forty Six. It's purpose

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would be to do research, published

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papers, and educate Congress. It was

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to be the National think Tank,

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not a museum. The Smithsonian was

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small potatoes against the vast tapestry.

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Of Eighteen Forty Six. But it

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was part of the process of

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putting us on an international stage.

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This was a year America imperialist

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and racist claimed it's intellectual as

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well as it's territorial place we

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had a lot of growing up

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to do. Still, this was a

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year we left infancy. After Eighteen

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Forty Six, the game would not

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be the same again. I'm John

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mean hard at the University of

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Houston, where we're interested in the

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way inventive minds.