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Short Stories of Science and Invention

A Collection of Radio Talks by
Charles F. Kettering

INDEX

Weekly, from September 1942 to July 1945, Charles F. Kettering gave five-minute intermission talks about Science and Invention during the radio broadcasts of the General Motors Symphony of the Air.

Kettering invented the first automobile self-starter, and for 31 years directed a research laboratory for General Motors.

These radio talks are a fascinating legacy from the mind of a prolific inventor. The obvious anachronisms now add a historical perspective of the war-time period in which they were written.

These web pages now preserve some of the most popular stories for a new generation to read The text and art come from a General Motors booklet of selected talks. (Reprint, March 1959)

48.  Pilgrim's Progress
A Radio Talk by
Charles F. Kettering

     Every year at this time [November, 19, 1944], we observe Thanksgiving - a day of thankful prayer initiated by our forefathers in New England more than 300 years ago. This year Thanksgiving is one of mixed joy and sorrow - joy because we are on the road to final victory - sorrow because this American holiday has always meant a family reunion but today so many are away in the camps and overseas.

     As the years have gone by, our knowledge of the Pilgrims and their early trials may be only the recollection of a chapter in an old history book. So on the eve of this Thanksgiving Day, let us take a look at the life of those hardy ancestors of ours - perhaps it may show us something interesting and helpful.

Pilgrims

     The trials and tribulations of the Pilgrims after they landed on Plymouth Rock in 1620 of course are very well known in New England - during that first bitter winter they suffered from cold and disease. But unlike the settlers in some of the other colonies, they had already conquered one thing despair. This spiritual enemy had been defeated long before they came here as the result of religious persecution in the Old World. England in the early 17th century had undergone a church reform and the Puritans and others had been forced to leave England and go to Holland. But this was not the solution to their religious problem, so when they heard of the colonies in the New World, they formed a company to finance an expedition to this new land, and while they faced terrible physical hardships, they found here something they had never known before - real religious freedom - so despair was gone.


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- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


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