Kaiser building thousands of miles of roads in the west. Early adopter of innovations. Steve Ballmer type seems like. Hard driving and hard working but subtler than Ballmer... not a bull type. Seems like he elevated roadwork from mostly manual labor to mostly machine.
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Now we have Kaiser orchestrating the Six Companies to build Hoover Dam. He spent most of the time in DC managing the political bosses.
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Huh, Kaiser apparently pioneered the internal competition model with Grand Coulee dam, which he later used in WW2 work. I guess that’s where the X/Y flyoff model originated perhaps?
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Okay. Chapter on 1939-40 world fairs as transition, and we’re finally into WW2. Knudsen meets FDR.
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Interior secretary Harold Ickes skeptical of Knudsen; “I have heard that Knudsen even makes his own notes in handwriting” (presumably as opposed to a secretary transcribing shorthand into typewritten notes)
Moron. If you aren’t taking your own notes you’re not thinking.
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Knudsen pulls together a sort of fellowship of the ring from across industry. They have to figure out what the military needs and tell them, because the military if 1940 doesn’t know.
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Finally into the war production story proper. We’re talking tanks, airplanes, engines. Building for US, British, and French needs all at once, 1939-41. Just a vast amount of action getting underway.
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Lessons and anecdotes at every level from rivets vs welding through contract laws to amortization regulations, to foreign policy. “Reality has a surprising amount of detail” is a good side read here. This is that times a million. johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/real
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Nice anecdote: a banker who has to transfer top secret Merlin engine plans meets the battleship bringing them from the UK with an empty suitcase. The captain laughs: the plans occupy a whole railroad-car sized crate of paper (would be a container today... or a largish USB stick)
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