The Builders
A Nation of
Builders
Founders, inventors, scientists and explorers. Some were born here and many came from far away, but all of them built something the world had never seen.
Benjamin Franklin
Printer, diplomat and scientist. His kite experiment helped prove that lightning is electricity, and he invented the lightning rod and bifocals. He signed both the Declaration and the Constitution.
Well done is better than well said.
George Washington
Led the Continental Army to victory, presided over the Constitutional Convention, then gave up power after two terms and set the standard for peaceful transfer.
Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.
Abraham Lincoln
Born in a one-room log cabin and largely self-taught, he held the Union together through the Civil War and pushed the 13th Amendment to end slavery.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Thomas Edison
The phonograph, a practical electric light, the first central power station and the modern industrial research lab. He held more than 1,000 U.S. patents.
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Nikola Tesla
Arrived in New York in 1884 with little money. His alternating-current motor and power systems helped electrify America and the world.
The Wright Brothers
Two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, with no college degrees, solved the problem of controlled flight on December 17, 1903.
It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.Wilbur Wright
Henry Ford
His moving assembly line (1913) changed manufacturing worldwide, and his $5 workday (1914) roughly doubled typical factory pay.
George Washington Carver
Born into slavery, he became a Tuskegee scientist who taught Southern farmers crop rotation and developed hundreds of uses for peanuts and sweet potatoes.
Grace Hopper
Built one of the first compilers and helped create COBOL, making it possible to program computers in words instead of machine code.
The most dangerous phrase in the language is "We've always done it this way."
Jonas Salk
Developed the first safe and effective polio vaccine (1955) and declined to patent it.
There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
Norman Borlaug
His high-yield, disease-resistant wheat helped end famine threats in Mexico, India and Pakistan. He is widely credited with saving hundreds of millions of lives.
Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world.
Katherine Johnson
Calculated trajectories for the first American human spaceflights. Before John Glenn's 1962 orbital flight, he asked for her to personally verify the computer's numbers.
Neil Armstrong
Test pilot, engineer and commander of Apollo 11. On July 20, 1969 he became the first human to walk on the Moon.
That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Steve Jobs
Started Apple in a garage with Steve Wozniak and later led the Mac, iPod and iPhone, which changed personal computing twice.
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
The Ones Who Came
More than half of America's billion-dollar startups have at least one immigrant founder. The American dream keeps drawing builders from every corner of the world.
Source: National Foundation for American Policy, 2022"Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations."Walt Whitman · Preface to Leaves of Grass · 1855