Dressed in your suit, crisp white shirt, and neatly knotted tie, you look very important. And indeed, you are a significant player in the world of business. These men are no ordinary executives; they’re from IBM, which, during this time, is the largest computer maker in the world.

As you wait, a young fellow appears before you. He seems hardly older than a teenager, but there’s an air of confidence about him. You ask him for directions to Bill Gates’s office, and without hesitation, he leads you there. Much to your surprise, he takes a seat behind the desk. It’s then that you realize he is Bill Gates himself, the head of Microsoft!

Bill Gates is just twenty-four years old at this time, although he appears even younger with his tangled hair, much too-large glasses, a sprinkling of freckles, and his cozy pullover sweater. However, as soon as he begins to speak, it becomes evident that he possesses a deep knowledge of computers which would lead him to become the richest man in the world.

________________

William Henry Gates III was born on October 28, 1955, in Seattle, Washington. Due to being the third Gates with the name William Henry, his family called him “Trey,” which is another way to say the word three. However, to everyone else, he was simply Bill.

As a child, Bill was very active, spending hours rocking back and forth on his rocking horse. This habit of rocking back and forth would become something you’d often see during his important business meetings. He found it to help him think better.

On school nights, there was a strict no-TV rule in the Gates household. Instead, the family would have conversations, play games, and immerse themselves in books. Young Bill loved to read, even deciding at age seven to read the entire encyclopedia and World Book! That is a full shelf of books! 

His intelligence was obvious to all who knew him. There’s a memorable incident where the whole family was ready for a short trip in the car and suddenly realized Bill was missing. His mother found him inside the house, deep in thought. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “I’m thinking, Mother!”

Challenges always intrigued him, and he was known for looking for ways to test his abilities. He was naturally left-handed but would switch to his right hand if he found himself bored in school.

At the age of eleven, he participated in a contest at his church. The challenge was to memorize the Sermon on the Mount, a long list of Bible scriptures. He not only memorized the whole thing but also did it without making a single mistake, impressing the minister. When asked about his accomplishments, he replied, “I can do anything I set my mind to.”

Winning was also extremely important to Bill Gates, and he didn’t like losing. During summers, his family spent two weeks at a cabin named Cheerio near Puget Sound. There, young Bill’s competitive spirit shone as he excelled in many different sports, such as water skiing, ice-skating, swimming, and downhill skiing.

However, in the sixth grade his interest in school seemed to drop. This caused his parents, Bill Sr. and Mary, to make an important decision. They enrolled him in the private school Lakeside at the start of seventh grade, setting the course for a new chapter in his life.

___________

Bill was the smallest kid in his seventh-grade class at Lakeside School, but the teachers at Lakeside helped kids find what they loved. Bill Gates was good at math and science, but he hadn’t found his special interest yet.

Then, one spring day in 1968, a teacher took Bill and some of his friends to a place called “the computer room.” But guess what? There wasn’t a computer in there! You see, at that time, there were no small personal computers like we have today. Computers were huge devices as big as rooms that cost millions of dollars and were only used by the government, military, and universities. Even Lakeside, a fancy private school, couldn’t afford one. So, they got the next best thing – a Teletype machine. It looked like a large electric typewriter, and there was a telephone that connected it to a computer in downtown Seattle.

The teacher showed the boys how to type a special command, which made the teletype start making a lot of noise and punching holes in a long roll of paper tape. 

Then, that message went through the phone lines to the computer miles away, and it sent back an answer.

Bill Gates was amazed by what the computer could do! After that, he spent all his free time in the computer room. He read every computer manual he could find and learned computer languages. 

Some other kids at Lakeside got just as excited about computers, and they all learned from each other. It was funny because the teachers had planned to teach the kids about computers, but it turned out that Bill and his friends became the experts. They even taught the teachers!

At Lakeside, he discovered his true passion – computers! His genius brain now had a focus, and it was all about computers! 

A group of kids got together and created a computer club called the Lakeside Programmers. They loved writing their own computer programs. A Computer program is a set of instructions for the computer to follow. Think of a computer program as a set of commands that you give to a computer to make it do certain things. Like typing out words, playing a game, or doing math. When Bill was just thirteen, he wrote his very first program, and it was for playing tic-tac-toe!

For someone like Bill who loved a challenge, the computer was the perfect playground. Every program was like a puzzle. If he made one tiny mistake in the instructions, the computer would get all confused and make mistakes too.

Now, Bill was younger than most of the other kids in the club, and they thought he was using up too much time on the computer. So, they actually kicked him out of the club for a little while. But the other kids soon realized that Bill was smart and knew things that they didn’t. So eventually they asked him to come back to the club. 

Using the computer wasn’t free; it cost a lot of money. His parents paid for his school, but they told him he had to pay for computer time himself. So, Bill did what any smart kid would do – he got a job! There was a company in Seattle called Computer Center Corporation, and they had a computer. The boys at Lakeside made a deal with them: they could use the computer for free if they found mistakes in its programs. It was a dream job for Bill and his friends because they had control over this massive, million-dollar computer.

They had to work at odd times, like at night and on weekends when the company’s staff didn’t need the computer. Sometimes he and his buddies stayed up until midnight. If he missed the bus home, he had to walk three miles!

When he was fifteen, he teamed up with another Lakeside Programmer named Paul Allen. They created a program called Traf-O-Data, which measured traffic flow in Seattle. And guess what? They made $20,000 from it!

He and Paul were pretty different. Paul was quiet and shy, while Bill was more outgoing and liked to argue to make a point. But they both loved computers and respected each other’s ideas.

They believed that computers had the power to change people’s lives, and they talked for hours about all the amazing things computers could do.

In his junior year, Lakeside School asked him to create a computer program for their schedules because they had just merged with an all-girls school, and it was too complicated to do by hand. Bill did it, and in return, he got about $5,000 worth of free computer time. 

Finally, in 1973, Bill graduated from Lakeside School, and he was all set to go to Harvard University. Lakeside had been an incredible journey for him. He discovered his love for computers, started his first business, met Paul Allen, and they were about to do something no one had ever done before.

College life at Harvard University was already keeping Bill Gates on his toes with classes and campus adventures. But little did he know he was about to change the world forever.

Fast forward to the middle of his sophomore year, a time when Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen stumbled upon a magazine called Popular Electronics with the headline: “WORLD’S FIRST MINICOMPUTER KIT.” 

This was the birth of the Altair 8800. The Altair was unique because it was a small computer able to perform tasks that previously required large expensive mainframe computers. Do you remember the huge computers we mentioned in a previous episode that required large rooms of equipment? With an Altair 8800 at an affordable price, someone could own a computer small enough to have in their own home.

The Altair 8800 didn’t look like today’s sleek computers. It looked more like a black microwave with switches and lights. It didn’t even have a keyboard or screens. 

Bill and Paul quickly realized that the Altair 8800 had the hardware but lacked something very important: software. It was like having a car with no fuel – a machine ready to go but unable to move! 

The physical part of the computer like the hard drive and the motherboard is called hardware – but everything you use the computer for, what you see on the screen like games and pictures is called software. Many people call these apps today. The Altair 8800 was a computer with nothing to do with it. This is where Bill Gates and Paul Allen saw an opportunity! 

Bill Gates was not your typical college student. He and Paul Allen were brilliant programmers bursting with energy and vision. They knew what they had to do – create the missing software that would bring the Altair 8800 minicomputer to life. 

Bill called the company that made the computer. The company was called MITS and was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

He told the head of MITS, Ed Roberts, that he and his partner were writing language software for the Altair 8800. He asked if MITS was interested in seeing it.

Roberts said SURE! He agreed to meet with the boys in a little over a month. They had boldly declared that their program was almost completed … yet they actually hadn’t even begun!

For the next eight weeks, they started on a whirlwind of late-night coding sessions and intense problem-solving. With time running out and their dreams on the line, Bill and Paul had to pull off something extraordinary. A friend from Harvard joined their mission, and just in the nick of time, their program was ready.

Paul Allen journeyed to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to present their creation to Ed Roberts, the head of the company behind the minicomputer. Their software had never been tested on a real Altair 8800 before!

In a room filled with anticipation, Paul entered the command: “PRINT 2 + 2.” Then, the magic happened – the computer responded with a triumphant “4”! Success!

That moment changed everything. Ed Roberts, head of MITS decided to purchase their program, marking the birth of the very first programming language for a microcomputer. And Bill Gates was just a 19-year-old college student at the time!

After Bill and Paul made their deal with MITS, they needed an interesting name for their business. They picked “Micro-Soft” because they were making software for tiny computers (“micro” means tiny). In less than a year, they decided to drop the hyphen. Bill became the president of Microsoft, and Paul was the vice president.

They worked day and night and hired more people as Microsoft grew. As Bill Gates hired new people he expected everyone at Microsoft to work as hard as he did, even late at night and on weekends. Luckily most of the people there didn’t mind because they were young, smart, and excited about computers.

In 1980, Bill was about to sign a major deal with a giant company called IBM. IBM was the biggest computer maker in the world, known for those massive computers that took up entire rooms. But now, they wanted to make smaller computers, and they turned to Microsoft for help. It was a big deal!

At that time, Bill was just twenty-four years old, and Microsoft had about thirty-two employees. In contrast, IBM had well over three hundred thousand people working for them. At first, people at IBM might’ve thought Bill was too young, but they soon realized how much he knew about computers. So, they hired little Microsoft to create the software for their new small computers.

The software they needed was called an operating system, which is like the commander of the computer. It tells everything how to work – the keyboard, the screen, and all the other software. Without an operating system the computer wouldn’t be able to do much, especially not use software!

For nearly a year, Microsoft worked hard to create the software operating system, and in 1981, IBM released its first personal computer, called a PC for short and these PC’s used Microsoft’s operating system called MS-DOS. 

Soon, other companies started making copies of IBM’s small computers, called clones. Microsoft could sell versions of MS-DOS to these companies as well. MS-DOS quickly became the standard operating system for computers all around the world. 

With this success, Microsoft grew like crazy. By the end of 1981, they had 130 employees, and by 1983, nearly 500! Bill was no longer able to know everyone by name, but he was still very involved in everything.

At meetings, Bill expected everyone to work hard and he respected those who stood up for their ideas and defended them. What mattered most to him was finding the best solutions to problems.

Microsoft unveiled its latest software update in 1985 called Windows. What set it apart was a small, tool on the computer screen known as a “mouse.” This tiny device had been around for a while, but for most computer users, it was their first time seeing it. The mouse brought a big change in how people used their computers. 

Before Windows, PC users had to memorize complex commands and type them on a keyboard. But with Windows, things became much easier. They could simply point at pictures on the computer screen. By clicking the mouse on an icon, an entire program would pop up. 

The reason they named their software “Windows” was because it allowed you to have more than one “screen” open at the same time, just like having multiple windows in your room.

In 1986, Bill Gates made an important move by taking Microsoft public. Going public meant that anyone could buy small portions of the company, called “shares” of stock. These shares were bought and sold on what’s called the stock market.

Shares in Microsoft sold very quickly and suddenly overnight Bill Gates became a millionaire. By the following year, the value of Microsoft’s stock had skyrocketed so much that he became a billionaire! 

Eight years after becoming a billionaire, he earned the title of the world’s richest person! He held onto that title for many years, from 1995 to 2007, and once again in 2009. His fortune was worth well over $50 billion. 

When he was thirty-eight, he married Melinda French in Hawaii, and it became famous all around the world. In order to keep it private and avoid people coming to take pictures and watch, they rented out all the hotel rooms on the entire island and even hired all the helicopters so that photographers couldn’t fly over and take pictures.

Later on, they became parents to three kids: Jennifer Katharine, Rory John, and Phoebe Adele.

In 1997, he built a fifty-five thousand square foot home near Seattle Washington that sat on top of a hill with an amazing view of Lake Washington.

To be eco-friendly and save trees, they built the house mainly using old, reclaimed lumber. 

When guests entered the house they could wear a badge with a tiny microchip that contained information about their favorite things.” When a guest entered a room, their favorite music played. The lighting and room temperature are automatically adjusted to suit the person’s tastes. Even their favorite art was displayed on the walls! 

The house had everything you could ever dream of: a game room, a movie theater, and a fully equipped gym. The indoor pool, stretching sixty feet long, had music underwater, and you could dive beneath a glass wall to go outside. There was also a boathouse, a dock, and a guesthouse!

But his absolute favorite part of the house was the giant library. Inside that library, hidden behind a secret wall, was a notebook written by the genius Leonardo da Vinci over five hundred years ago. He paid $30 million to own it!

In the English language, there’s a special word for someone who donates a lot of money to help others: philanthropist. After making a ton of money for many years, Bill started giving away huge amounts of it.

He and his wife started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation where they donated billions of dollars from their fortune. Their main question was, “How can we use our resources to help the most people in the best way?”

Back in the early days, every office desk had a typewriter on it. But now, thanks to the computer revolution that Bill Gates led, almost every office desk in the United States has a computer on it … and there’s a computer in almost every home. 

So what do you think about the story of Bill Gates? Pretty fascinating, right? Now when you see a computer and the software (or apps) that run on it you’ll remember one of the geniuses who helped bring it into the world. The world is waiting for new ideas to be born. What are some of your big ideas? Or even little ideas? Big ideas have to start somewhere!

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Think of some of the objects you saw: family, friends, trees, maybe a pet, or the big blue sky and white moon in the dark of night. Maybe you saw a smile and objects moving, a car speeding by, or someone kicking a ball. Most of these objects are things you are used to. But when you were a baby they were very interesting! You were curious about everything because it was all new and fresh! As we get older many of these things to become familiar and perhaps not as interesting. Tonight we’re going to learn about Leonardo da Vinci, also known as one of the most curious and creative geniuses in recorded history. As we learn about him, think about how he saw the world differently and how you might see the world differently, too. 

When was Leonardo da Vinci born?

Leonardo was born on April 15th, 1452 in the country of Italy in a town called Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci means Leonardo of Vinci, the town where he was born.  He was born during a time that later became known as The Renaissance, which means “Rebirth” because the way people saw the world was changing dramatically during this time. The Medieval Times was over and people were beginning to see themselves as beings who had control over their life and the world and could think differently than those who came before them. 

Childhood & Early Education

Leonardo grew up with his father and spent much of his time exploring the land around their home. He loved to observe the birds and animals and get lost in the beautiful countryside. Around the age of 15, his father noticed he had an interest in and a gift for art. For this reason, his father had him become an apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, Italy. An apprentice is a student to a master artist. And at this time Florence was known for its gifted artists and sculptors. In Verrocchio’s workshop, Leonardo learned from his master how to paint and sculpt. Sculptors used materials like clay or marble to make grand sculptures.   

Leonardo studied and helped with paintings and sculptures in Verrochio’s workshop until he was 20 years old. The next step in an artist’s life was to join a guide and Leonard did just that when he was accepted into the painters’ guild in Florence. A guild was a group of skilled artists who worked and met together. At this time he created many pen and pencil drawings and technical drawings of weapons and other mechanical devices. He was very interested in how things worked and in creating new devices. He loved inventing things! 

Milan and Duke Sforza

In 1482, when he was about 30 years old Leonardo moved to the city of Milan where he worked for the city’s duke, Ludovico Sforza. There he created paintings and worked on inventions for the Duke. The ability to create and improve technical devices is called engineering — and Leonardo was a very gifted engineer. He worked for Duke Sforza for many years. There he painted two of his best-known works The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper depicting Jesus and his Twelve Apostles. He also helped design buildings and gave the Duke engineering advice for his army. 

One of Leonardo’s other biggest projects was a huge, 24-foot bronze horse for Duke Sforza. He spent 12 years designing it out of clay, which would be a mold to be turned into bronze. Unfortunately, before they could pour the metal into the mold to finish the horse sculpture, the project was stopped, because a war started and the metal had to be used for cannons instead of the horse! In our day, someone decided to get together the money to finally build the horse Leonardo always wanted. If you ever visit Milan, Italy you can see it today!

After the war Duke Sforza was no longer Duke, so Leonardo stopped working for him. Leonardo continued working in his workshop in Milan and soon had his own students and apprentices.

Florence

In the 1500s a French army invaded and took over Milan, so Leonardo left and went to Florence, where he had been an apprentice as a young man. In Florence, he painted his most famous painting, The Mona Lisa. Leonardo was a gifted artist, but he wasn’t afraid to learn new topics and never stopped learning. He was infinitely curious! Leonardo began to study math and science. He studied the human body, which is called anatomy. He also observed the flight of birds and studied the flow of air and water. He looked at everyday objects through different eyes. He wondered how bodies worked, how birds flew, and what gave living things their motion. He didn’t take anything for granted and saw the miracle in everyday life and studied deeply to try and understand it. 

Eventually, Leonardo moved back to Milan and continued his scientific studies, writing and creating many sketchbooks to help others understand the human body and how it worked. He came to believe that all bodies and living things worked according to certain laws of nature, which was very ahead of his time. 

Rome

In 1513, around the age of 60, Leonardo again moved to Rome where he lived in the Vatican and worked for Giuliano de Medici. At this time many of the popular Renaissance artists were living and creating amazing works of art in Rome. The famous St. Peter’s Cathedral was being built at the time and Raphael was painting walls in the Pope’s new apartments. One of the most famous artists of all time, Michaelangelo, was also in Rome working on the Pope’s tomb. 

By the age of 65, Leonardo was asked by the King of France to move there, where he became his main painter, architect, and engineer, which was a great honor. There he continued his sketches and consulted other artists in their works. He also helped plan a palace and garden for the king. He spent a lot of time arranging his writings and sketches about nature in his many notebooks, which fortunately we have today! Leonardo passed away at an old age while living in France.

Leonardo’s Influences

Today we’re lucky to have many of Leonardo’s paintings and notebooks. Many of the ideas he had were for machines that wouldn’t be invented for hundreds of years. For example, in his study of birds and flight, he had the idea for an airplane, a helicopter, and a parachute, which he sketched in his notebooks. He also had the idea for many military machines, such as an armored car, a giant crossbow, and a three-barreled cannon. When you get the chance you can find a book about Leonardo’s inventions at the library or look at them online. They are amazing!

What can you learn from Leonardo?

One of the most interesting things about Leonardo was his ability to take his artistic talents and engineering skills and combine them. He became known as a Renaissance Man because of his curiosity and ability to combine many different skills to invent amazing things. He believed artists were the best qualified to achieve true knowledge, because of the unique way they were able to view the world. Think about that as you observe the miraculous world around you. Never take for granted the little things. Even the smallest living things like a flower or a bee are extraordinary as you look at them closely and learn more about them. Think about what you might do to learn more about the world around you like Leonardo. You could take the time to study a rock or a leaf and sketch it into a notebook as Leonardo did. This is the way he came to better understand the world, one simple object at a time. 

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Augusta Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815, in London, England. Her father was Lord Byron, a world-famous poet — and her mother was Lady Anne Isabella Byron. Only a few weeks after Ada was born her parents separated and her father left England. When Ada was 8 he passed away, so Ada never met her famous father. 

Early Childhood

Many times during her childhood, Ada was sick. When she was eight she had lots of headaches, then when she was 14 she had measles and had to stay in bed for nearly a year! Eventually, she was able to walk with crutches, but during this time she continued to study and learn about her favorite subjects such as math.

Unlike most girls at her time, Ada was taught math and science by her tutors. A tutor is someone who teaches children individually, which means she didn’t go to a normal school like kids in our day. Ada’s mother insisted she learned math and science and made sure she worked very hard to be educated. Sometimes her mother made her lie still for long periods of time because she thought it would teach her to have self-control. Self-control is being able to control your emotions and behavior. But from a young age, Ada showed talent with numbers, meaning she was very good at math. 

When Ada was 12, she decided she wanted to figure out how to fly. Very carefully, she planned out how she would do this and first designed her own wings. She tried different materials of different sizes, she studied birds to figure out how they flew. She even wrote a book called Flyology with drawings and descriptions about how someone would fly. Her final idea was to use steam power to fly. She never attempted to fly herself, but her investigations were a good example of how curious she was and the passion she had for a single project.  

Famous Acquaintances

When Ada was young she met many different famous scientists, inventors, and authors due to her social position. She often went to court and became popular even at a young age due to her smarts. At parties, some of the famous people she met were Michael Faraday, Charles Dickens, and Charles Babbage, a well-known inventor. Charles Babbage became Ada’s mentor, which means someone who taught her personally. She began to learn advanced math at this time and was very interested in Babbage’s ideas. Babbage was one of the first people to have the idea for a computer. He imagined a machine that could do the math on its own and he eventually created this machine, which he called The Difference Engine (Learn more about the history of computer science). Ada was fascinated by this new machine — which became one of the earliest versions of a computer. Babbage went on to create another machine called The Analytical Engine.

Ada Publishes Her Ideas

Ada also knew many languages, so she was asked to translate an article about Babbage’s Analytical Engine. But while making the translation she added many of her own ideas. The notes and ideas she added ended up being three times longer than the article! Her article was later published in an English Science Journal. In the article, Ada shared her ideas about how codes could be used to handle letters and numbers. She also had the idea of how these codes could be used to loop computer programs. Because of all of her original ideas, many consider Ada to be the first computer programmer! 

William King

In 1835, Adam married a wealthy Baron named William King, who later became the Earl of Lovelace, so Ada became the Countess of Lovelace. They had three homes and lived in luxury, both sharing a love of horses. Together they also had three children. In 1837 Ada became very sick and due to some of the medications she was given suffered from other problems. At the age of 36, Ada passed away from cancer.

Ada’s Contributions

While she was alive not many people read Ada’s article about computer programming. It wasn’t until the 1950s that her article was found and people realized how brilliant her ideas about computer programming were. Her ideas were shared in new books about computer programming. In 1980 the United States military named their new programming language after her, calling it “Ada.” Also, the Association for Women in Computing has an Ada Lovelace Award each year and since 1988 the British Computer Society awards a Lovelace Medal, named after Ada.  

Like Ada, you can be curious about the world around you and take the time to study subjects such as math and science. Ada not only learned about these subjects, but she took what she learned and started her own projects, like investigating how to fly and writing her own book. Ada showed that it was important to meet lots of different people and learn from their ideas. This is another great way you can learn, too, by meeting new people and asking lots of questions! Have you ever wanted to create your own app or website? You can do this by learning computer programming. If you’re interested in learning more about coding check out code.org or Scratch, which is a website kids can use to learn how to code.

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Tesla Car Company

Have you ever heard of a Tesla car? Teslas are very fast cars, but unlike most sports cars, Teslas are electric-powered not gas-powered. Teslas are becoming very popular because they are one way to prevent carbon emissions and help the environment. Although you may be familiar with the name Tesla because of the famous car, you may not be aware of where the name came from. Tesla cars are named after an inventor named Nikola Tesla. Tonight we’re going to learn more about Telsa and why he became so well known.

Nikola Tesla’s Birth and Early Life

In 1865, Nikola Tesla was born to Serbian parents in what is now known as Croatia. His father was an Orthodox Priest and his mother never went to school but was a very intelligent woman. She was known for inventing her own electrical gadgets to be used around the house. Nikola later said his great intelligence came from his gifted mother.

Growing up Nikola went to school like most kids and studied German, math, and religion. They moved to a new town where his father was a priest and there he attended elementary and middle school. During high school, Nikola had a physics teacher who showed his class the power of electricity. When Nikola saw it he was amazed and wanted to learn more about this wonderful force. It was here that Nikola did so well in his math classes that the teachers thought he was cheating because he could do difficult math in his head, without using paper.

Nikola Tesla’s Education

Not long after graduating from high school, Nikola became very sick and spent nine months in bed, but finally, he got better. His father wanted him to become a priest like he was, but Nikola was more interested in engineering. Engineering is the science of designing and building things. 

Nikola went to the university in Graz, Austria for a time and did very well there. It was there that he first learned about a dynamo, which is used to generate electricity. He started to have ideas about how he could make it work better. Nikola worked very hard while in school. It was said he worked from 3 am to 11 pm and didn’t take breaks on the weekend. His friends and family worried if he didn’t slow down he would become sick from over-working himself.

After university Nikola moved to the country of Hungary and started working for a telegraph company. The telegraph was used to communicate by sending signals along a wire before the telephone was invented. While there, Nikola helped them improve the telegraph equipment! 

Thomas Edison

Nikola Tesla’s next job was in Paris working for one of Thomas Edison’s power companies. Thomas Edison was a famous American inventor known for designing the lightbulb among other inventions. From there Tesla moved first moved to America and got a job working directly with Thomas Edison. He was very poor at the time and arrived in America with only a few cents in his pockets and a few poems he had written. 

Alternating Current

Unfortunately, his work with Thomas Edison didn’t last long. Instead, Tesla took his ideas to Edison’s competitor, George Westinghouse, who bought his idea for the alternating current dynamo. Direct current is what Thomas Edison used and worked by sending an electrical current one way, but Tesla’s idea was to switch the directions in the current was sent. To this day Tesla’s alternating current is used more than direct current. 

Tesla’s Other Inventions

Next, Tesla started his own lab and experimented with ideas that helped pave the way for the x-ray. He also created the Tesla coil, which was later used for sending radio waves through the air or radios and televisions. It was around this time that the World’s Columbian Exposition was to be held in Chicago in 1893. This was an enormous world fair where people from all over the world would visit Chicago to see exciting new inventions and experience new things. This also started a competition between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla over whether AC (alternating current) or DC (direct current) would be used to power the huge world’s fair. In the end, Telsa’s alternating current won the match and it was used to power the World’s Columbian Exposition. 

Telsa went on to create the first hydroelectric power generator at Niagara Falls, New York. Hydroelectric means water power is used to create electricity. 

Telsa’s next big project was a huge electrical tower in Long Island, New York, which he planned to use to send radio waves all around the world. It was called the Wardenclyffe Tower. At this time a different tower was being built by Guglielmo Marconi to do a similar thing. Tesla got started on his tower, but Marconi beat him by sending a signal across the Atlantic Ocean first. This caused the people paying for Tesla’s tower to change their minds causing the project to fail.

Nikola continued to come up with new ideas, but most of his designs stayed in his notebooks and he didn’t get a chance to actually build them. 

For anyone who listened to the last Bedtime History episode about Mark Twain, you’ll be interested to know that Mark Twain and Tesla were friends. While growing up, Tesla read many of Mark Twain’s novels and so he was excited to finally meet him after moving to America. Twain was interested in Tesla’s inventions and often visited his lab and participated in experiments. He also gave him money to help with his new inventions.

Later in Nikola Tesla’s life, he won awards for his past inventions, and in 1937 when he passed away many around the world mourned his death. Someone was quoted as saying that he was “one of the outstanding intellects of the world who paved the way for many of the technological developments of modern times.”

Conclusion

Nikola faced many difficulties in his life, but he continued to learn and apply his mind to designing new things and improving the things around him. Like Tesla, you can be curious about the world around you. In school, he saw the power of electricity and wanted to learn how it worked. He found new ways to use it to improve the lives of people all over the world. Learning how to invent and improve things is a combination of learning how the forces in the world work, like physics, and what things are made up of, called chemistry — and then using creativity to apply that knowledge about the world. This is why it’s a good idea to pay attention in school and take the time outside of school to dig deeper and really understand how the world works.

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Imagine you are soaring above the earth in a giant airship…

This airship is filled with hydrogen gas that allows it to float in the sky. You’re inside the cabin of the airship with the other passengers who excitedly look at the surrounding clouds and land far below. You see mountains and villages and from above everything looks very small. Inside the airship, you have a bedroom, a dining room, and a common area where other passengers can gather, eat snacks and enjoy the voyage. Suddenly the airship starts to descend and everyone goes to the windows to watch as you move closer to the ground. Below is a crowd and news reporters waiting to interview you about the amazing flight in the airship. This airship came to be known as the Zeppelin after its creator Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin. 

Ferdinand von Zeppelin

Ferdinand von Zeppelin was born in Germany in 1838. His family was very wealthy, so Ferdinand was able to attend a good university and eventually joined the military, where he served for many years. While serving in the military, Ferdinand traveled to America and was part of the American Civil War. There he met a balloonist, someone who flew hot air balloons and took him on a balloon flight. Ferdinand was amazed that using a balloon someone could soar through the sky. This flight got him thinking about other ways he could use these technologies to fly. 

Zeppelin’s Design

In 1874 Ferdinand came up with the idea to build a large, rigid-body airship with gas bags inside to make it float in the air. His airship would be different than a balloon because it had a body made out of metal that would support the gas bags. This would allow it to be much larger than a hot air balloon. Ferdinand retired from the army and put all of his time and effort into building his airship. He hired an engineer to design it. They ran into many problems, but Ferdinand kept trying because he was determined to complete the airship he dreamed of. 

When they were finished designing it, the airship had a 420-foot metal body made of aluminum. The long tube-shaped body was covered with fabric, holding the bags of hydrogen gas inside. It was about the size of a football field and a half if you can imagine that. The airship had fins to stabilize and guide it and a propeller on the back to make it go. Underneath the ship were gondolas, the rooms where the captain and crew flew the ship. It also had cabins where the passengers could eat, sleep and hang out. The ship could carry up to 50 people. The airship was very expensive to build, but Ferdinand used most of his own money to pay for its construction.   

The airship came to be known as the “Zeppelin” which was Ferdinand’s last name. In 1900 the zeppelin took its first successful flight over Lake Constance, Germany. It flew at a speed of 30 miles per hour and was named LZ1. From 1900 to 1914 they built two more zeppelins, LZ2 and LZ3. Over those years they flew 37,000 people on 1,600 flights without any accidents. 

The Zeppelin and World War I

Sadly, amazing technology like the zeppelin, while useful and enjoyable at first, is often used for war. During World War I, the German army and navy used Ferdinand’s zeppelins to drop bombs on their enemies. But because zeppelins were so close to the ground they were easily damaged by shots from below. For this reason, the zeppelin was used in wars, but not very often. 

After World War I, Zeppelin and his company continued to build new airships. One of the biggest ships was named Graf Zeppelin and was famous around the world for its transatlantic flights — which means it flew all the way across the huge Atlantic Ocean. It was larger than two football fields (776 feet)!

Around the World

In 1929 they decided to fly the Graf Zeppelin around the world! Wealthy Americans such as newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst helped pay for the flight. It started in Lakehurst, New Jersey before setting off. One of the famous passengers on the voyage was named Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay. Quite the name, right!? Grace was born in England and loved writing. She ended up becoming a journalist, which is someone who writes for the newspaper. She wrote about her travels and was invited to fly on the Graf Zepplin and write about it. Grace became the first woman to travel around the world by air. Her articles about the voyage were read by people all over the world. People marveled at what it would be like to fly in a giant airship like Grace. Later Grace went on to become a war correspondent, which means someone who goes to places where wars are being fought and writes about them in the newspaper. She went to far-off places like Ethiopia and China. 

During the around-the-world flight, the airship Graf Zeppelin visited places like New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Germany and finally landed back in New Jersey. By 1937 Graf Zeppelin had made 590 flights, including 144 ocean crossings, and had flown more than 1 million miles!  

The Hindenburg

The other famous zeppelin was called The Hindenburg and finished construction in 1936. The Hindenburg was 804 feet, almost 3 football fields long! It was powered by four huge engines, giving it a maximum speed of 84 miles per hour. Most of its voyages were between Germany and the United States. 

In 1937 while the Hindenburg was landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey its gas bags caught fire and the zeppelin crashed to the ground. It was caught on film and shown on newsreels around the world. One reason the zeppelin caught on fire so easily was the gas used in it, hydrogen, is highly flammable. Sadly, the Hindenburg’s crash led to the end of an era of giant airships. 

Zeppelin’s in Popular Culture

For many years giant airships like the zeppelins were no longer made. They became a thing of fantasy and often you’ll see them in movies or read about them in books because they were such an amazing sight to behold. Many books imagine a world where people kept building zeppelins and they only became larger and more popular. If you’ve ever heard of steampunk, many steampunk books and movies include gigantic zeppelins as a common form of transportation.

Modern Zeppelins

More recently a new company called Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik built a modern version of the airship called NT airships or “New Technology” airships. These zeppelins are smaller, but built of safer materials and use an inert helium gas — so less likely to be damaged like the Hindenburg. The new zeppelins are used for things like tourism and for taking photos from the air. Often they have the brand name of a company on the side for advertising. 

Conclusion

Do you like to write like Grace Drummond-Hay? She toured all over the world writing about new places and events. Her interest started small then grew as she practiced and practiced. What is something you would like to write about?

If you could design your own airship what would it look like? Would it use gases to float in the air, would it have wings, would it fly fast like a jet or slow, and be used for tourism like the zeppelin? It’s fun to imagine, that’s how big projects begin — with an idea and then taking action to make that idea a reality just like Ferdinand Von Zeppelin did with his gigantic airships!

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Imagine you are floating in a spacecraft…

You are weightless! It feels so strange, yet amazing at the same time. You push off the wall and float down a long room. You feel like Superman flying across empty space. You duck your head and do a quick flip before landing against the other wall, then push off it to soar in the opposite direction. At the end of the next room, you grab a handle and stop to look out the round bubble window. Far below you see a glittering blue ocean, clouds, and brown land. You are 200 miles above earth on board the International Space Station.

Speed and Orbit

Have you ever heard of the International Space Station? Right now it’s circling the earth above you at 17,000 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour). It is going so fast that it orbits the earth every 90 minutes — that means 15 ½ times a day! That’s incredibly fast! Some people think the Space Station is floating in space, but it’s actually falling around the earth in what is known as an orbit. 

The International Space Station, also known as the ISS, is special because it’s not owned by a single country, but by many countries who worked together to build it. It started off as a single module and has grown piece-by-piece into the larger station it is now. In 1998 Russia launched the module Zarya into low earth orbit as the first piece. Low-earth orbit means it is still within the earth’s orbit, not far off in space beyond the earth’s strong gravitational pull. 

Construction

Two weeks after Zarya was launched, the United States launched its own space shuttle with the Unity module and its astronauts onboard. The next step was connecting the first two modules. The astronauts did this by floating out into space and attaching them. And that is how the International Space Station began!  After that other pieces were slowly added to the ISS until it grew and grew. In 2000 came the Russian module Zvezda, then NASA’s Destiny module. Canada’s space program contributed a robotic arm for spacewalks and to make remote controller repairs. The Harmony module came in 2007, then the European Space Agency sent up the Columbus module. Japan sent up its own module in 2008. Next came NASA’s Tranquility module, then Europe’s Leonardo module and finally the Bigelow module sent up by a private company. One reason ISS is amazing is that it is a team effort!

Space Station Activities

Usually, around 3 to 6 astronauts live and work on the ISS at a time. It was made for many reasons, but one of them was to do research. Since humans plan to go to Mars someday, they are using the ISS to see how space will affect the astronauts during their journey to Mars. For example, what will space flight do to their bodies? What kind of foods will they need to eat? What kind of exercise will they need? Will they be able to grow plants? They’ve also tried out the different devices they’ll need in space such as 3D printers and coffee makers.

On the ISS the crew’s days are very busy and besides doing experiments, they spend a lot of time doing maintenance — which means keeping the station running smoothly. Each astronaut has different responsibilities, sort of like you might have doing chores at home. Only by working together will the ISS continue to work properly. Often the astronauts climb into their space suits and space walk — which means going outside of the ISS and floating around to make repairs. This can be dangerous work, so they always attach themselves to the ISS for safety. The astronauts have also been testing a robot that they can use to fly around the ISS and make repairs for them.

The other important part of an astronaut’s day is taking care of themselves, making sure they eat the right foods, showering, brushing their teeth, and getting exercise. They also do things like video chat with schoolchildren and talk about what they’re doing with people around the world. They do this to get others excited about the space station and space research. 

Eating in zero gravity can be very tricky! Their food has to be strapped down to a table and utensils and water bottles have magnets on them to keep them from floating away. If you look on the internet you can find some funny videos of the crew doing flips, floating around and dancing, and playing with water. In zero gravity water floats around in blobs!

Space Station Crew

People from 19 different countries have visited the ISS. These include the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom. Now you see why they call it the International Space Station. International means “many countries.” At the ISS it’s exciting to see people from many different countries working together. It’s a perfect example of how working together with people across the world can accomplish amazing things! 

Space Tourism

Many people dream of visiting space someday and some companies promise that someday anyone who can pay for it will be able to do it. Right now it can be very expensive (and at times not even possible) to visit places like the ISS, but someday space vacations may be available to everyone. Can you imagine visiting a place like the ISS or a far-off hotel on the moon? This is called space tourism and a few very wealthy people have been able to visit the ISS by paying for it. It costs them many millions of dollars! 

Anousheh Ansari

One of these people was Anousheh Ansari. Anousheh was born in Iran and moved to the United States when she was little. She was interested in engineering and graduated from college to become an engineer. She and her husband later started a company that grew and grew until they were very wealthy. She’d always dreamed of going to space and became interested in visiting the space station. When she found out they were allowing some to visit the ISS if they paid, she jumped on the chance. First Anousheh trained for the journey, then took a Russian rocket up to the ISS and lived and worked there for a short while. There Anousheh helped do experiments and later wrote a book about her amazing journey. 

Chris Hadfield

One of the most well-known astronauts to live on the ISS is Chris Hadfield. Chris was born in Ontario, Canada. He grew up on a farm with his family where they grew corn. When Chris was little he became interested in flying and later saw the Apollo 11 moon mission, which made him want to be an astronaut like Neil Armstrong. Later, he went to college, then joined the Canadian Air Force. This eventually led to training as an astronaut for the Canadian Space Agency and working on the International Space Station. On the ISS Chris shared his day-to-day activities on Twitter and Facebook and later made a music video on YouTube while playing the guitar in space! This brought even more attention to the important work they were doing on the ISS. 

Records

Many records have been set by the crew of the ISS — such as most consecutive days in space by an American, which was 340 days by astronaut Scott Kelly. The other cool thing about Scott’s trip to the ISS is he is a twin, so they were able to study how space affected Scott versus his twin brother who stayed on Earth. 

Another record was the longest spaceflight by a woman at 289 days by Peggy Whitson. 

The ISS also holds the record for most people in space at once, which was a crew of 13 in 2009.

How do you see the space station?

Did you know you can see the space station from earth? With the help of your parents, if you go to spotthestation.nasa.gov you can sign up to receive text messages or emails whenever the space station is visible above you. Recently, my kids and I did this and it was amazing to see it float across the night sky like a star. 

It Takes Teamwork!

One of the best lessons we can learn from the International Space Station is that by working together people all over the world can do amazing things. Isn’t this so much better than focusing on our differences and fighting? One problem in the world is when people look at those who are different and think there is something wrong with them because they aren’t the same. But differences are what keep the world interesting and there is so much we can learn from each other, from our different experiences and customs, and beliefs. The space station shows that even though we have differences we have common goals, like visiting space and learning about space and the Earth. As we focus on what is common, we can work together to do great things. 

Conclusion

A couple of years ago I worked with a man from India. I’d never met someone from India, so it was very interesting listening to his homeland, what it was like to grow up in India, and his different beliefs. He celebrated different holidays and had different ideas about the world, but it fascinated me to try and see the world through his eyes. As we got to know each other we became friends and I look back on our talks with fondness.

Take a moment to think of someone you know who is different than you. They might be from a different country, look different, talk differently or act in a different way. Take the leap and ask them a few questions and try to get to know them better — because chances are you’ll learn something interesting and possibly make a new friend in the process!

Recommended Books

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Close your eyes and imagine you’re riding a motorcycle. The air is pulling at your clothes as you go faster and faster. You round the edge of the track, then speed up to 90 then 95 miles an hour. The people watching flash by. You push harder on the gas. 100 miles an hour! The crowd stands up and cheers! For another lap around the track, you hold that speed and finally cross the finish line. Everyone congratulates you. You beat the record of the highest speed around the track! 

This is the story of motorcycle racer and engineer, Beatrice Shilling!

Birth

Beatrice Shilling was born on March 8, 1909, in Waterlooville, England. As a child, Beatrice loved mechanical things. This means she loved to understand how devices worked on the inside. Have you ever seen household items like a microwave or refrigerator or your family car and wondered how they do such amazing things? Beatrice wondered, too, so she used her extra money to buy tools to take these devices apart and figure out what made them tick. She was especially interested in engines. In her time, cars and motorcycles with engines were still very new, so these wonderful devices that made vehicles fly down the road made her very curious. Curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something. 

When Beatrice was 14 she bought her first motorcycle and loved to ride it around. She spent many hours tinkering with the engine and figuring out ways to make it go faster. Early on Beatrice decided she wanted to be an engineer. An engineer is someone who creates devices like engines.

Electrical Engineer

After middle school, Beatrice got a job at an electrical engineering company, where she learned more about how electricity worked and was able to practice her new skills by installing wires and generators. A generator is what creates electricity and wires are what allow it to move around. Beatrice’s boss saw how talented she was and encouraged her to go to school to become an even better engineer.

Beatrice followed her advice and enrolled at the University of Manchester. In her day it was very unusual for a woman to become an engineer, but Beatrice was determined to do it anyway. She worked hard at math and the other subjects until she was able to pass all of her classes and become an even more skilled engineer. She even graduated with honors, which means she did very well in engineering school. Beatrice went on to get a Master’s Degree.

World War II

After university, Beatrice got a job with the Royal Aircraft Establishment. She had many different roles there, but eventually became a Senior Technical Officer and worked on airplane engines. At this time it was very important to be an engineer working on airplanes because England and its Allies were fighting against Germany in World War II. The German Air Force had very powerful fighter planes that were faster and therefore more dangerous than England’s fighter planes. To fight back against these powerful planes, England designed a plane they called the Spitfire, which was also fast and could maneuver quickly through the sky to dodge bullets and get in a position to fight back. But even though the Spitfire was an amazing fighter plane, it had a serious problem. When pilots flew downward too fast the engines stopped working. This was a serious problem during a dogfight. A dogfight is when planes are fighting each other in the sky. Many Spitfires crashed as a result of this problem with their engines. 

As an engineer, Beatrice was determined to solve this problem. She thought long and hard about this and finally came up with an idea to add a diaphragm and hole inside the engine that only allowed some fuel to move across it when the plane was diving. This solved the problem! Once Beatrice’s new device was added to all of the Spitfire fighter planes they were able to dive and outmaneuver the enemy planes and win more battles! Her device saved many pilots and helped win the air war against Germany.     

Motorcycle Racer

Beatrice loved to work on hard problems, but she also loved to have fun. Over the years she kept tinkering with her motorcycle and riding it fast. Her knowledge of engineering helped her have one of the fastest motorcycles around. She even started racing! She often rode her motorcycle faster than 100 miles an hour. During one race she rode around the entire track at over 100 miles an hour and earned Brookland’s Gold Star for her achievement. She broke a record and became the fastest woman racer at this track reaching 106 miles an hour. 

Beatrice married a man George Naylor, who she met while working at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, and continued to work there until she retired in 1969. Her biographer said about her: “Her idea of relaxation was to drive a fast car at full throttle, and if the car was not fast enough, her workbench was there in the back room to machine new parts to make them faster.”

Conclusion

Spend some time thinking about what drove Beatrice to accomplish what she did. First, she was curious. Everyone is born curious, we all have the desire to learn more about the world around us. But we may all be curious in different ways. What are you curious about? What do you like to ask questions about? Next time you have a question, instead of just being curious and wondering, take it a step further and try and figure out the answer. This might mean looking up a video or searching for the answer in a book or online. The more you learn, the more you’ll understand the world around you. And when you figure out one thing, you can figure out the next and you’ll continue to build your knowledge and grow and the world will become more exciting and interesting. 

And even though most girls weren’t engineers, it didn’t stop Beatrice from doing it anyway. Jobs like engineering and coding are becoming very important in our day as more and more jobs are becoming automated. Automated means being done automatically by devices like robots. This means the future will need more engineers and coders. Take the time to figure out if this is the kind of job that interests you!

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Do you know what a judge is or a lawyer? Judges and lawyers are jobs people have where they work to make laws. Laws are used to keep us safe and keep order in the world, but sometimes laws are made that are unfair. And sometimes new laws need to be made to help people be treated equally. In this episode, we will talk about one of the most important people in the fight for women’s equality: Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ruth was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1933.  When she was born, her name was actually “Joan Ruth Bader” but when she was in first grade, there were many “Joans” in class. Her mother told her teacher that everyone could call her “Ruth” instead.  So from then on “Joan Bader” was called “Ruth”. 

Her parents were hard-working, but they were not rich.  They were Jewish and brought her to the synagogue, or Jewish temple, regularly to study the Torah or Jewish holy book.  From a young age, Ruth was annoyed to learn that women were not allowed to read from the Torah, only men could. She was unhappy that she was treated differently.

Ruth’s mom was a very independent woman.  Independent means to do things on your own. She was very close with Ruth and taught her that it was important for Ruth to get a good education and be independent, too.  She took a close interest in her education. Although her mother had gotten excellent grades in high school, she finished when she was 15 and wasn’t able to go to university.  Instead, she had to go work in a clothing-making factory to help pay for her brother to go to college.  Ruth’s mother wanted to help Ruth get into university and study to become a high school history teacher. 

Ruth liked studying with her mother and it helped her to excel, or do really well.  She was also inspired by what her mother had done for her brother.  Working in a factory to help pay for his education was an act of selflessness that stuck with Ruth.  An act of selflessness is something that someone does to help another person without any thought of what it will do for themself. 

Ruth worked very hard in high school and got excellent grades. Sadly, Ruth’s mother got sick with cancer when Ruth was in high school and died the day before Ruth graduated. 

Ruth had studied so hard and gotten such good grades that she got into Cornell University.  This is one of the best universities in the United States so it was a huge accomplishment.  

While she was at Cornell, Ruth studied government.  Very early in her time there, she met a young man named Martin Ginsburg. They started dating and fell in love.  Martin was studying law and he told Ruth about what he was learning.  She started thinking that she might also want to study law.  First, however, she needed to finish her other degree.  She did so in 1954 and graduated at the top of the class, which means that she had the best grades of anyone in her entire university class that year.  

Martin and Ruth decided to get married and they had their wedding one month after Ruth graduated. Ruth added Martin’s last name to hers and her new name became “Ruth Bader Ginsburg”.  

Shortly after they got married, Ruth got pregnant and had a baby girl named Jane. Very soon after, Martin was drafted into the US military.  Drafted means when someone is told that they have to join the army.   Martin served for two years in the army before he was allowed to go back to regular life. 

After Martin was finished with the army, Ruth and Martin returned to Harvard so that he could complete his law studies.  Ruth continued to be interested in studying law as well, so she also started law school at Harvard. 

When Ruth started law school, it was a difficult time for her.  She had to find time to study and she also had to take care of her baby Jane.  It was hard to do both!  But Ruth was very hard working and found a way, together with Martin’s help.  

Ruth also had to deal with challenges at law school.  She was one of only 8 women students in a class of more than 500.  All the other students were men and many did not like that there were women joining the program. They tried to make it uncomfortable for the women students that were studying with them by teasing them and making it harder for them to do well in class. Back then, many people thought that only men should go to law school, so they directed their anger toward Ruth and her female classmates.

But Ruth pressed on and studied very hard.  And it all paid off in the end!  As always, Ruth did very well in her courses.  She also became the first female member of the Harvard Law Review, which is one of the most famous legal journals in the world.  This was a very difficult role to get.  

In 1956, Ruth’s husband was diagnosed with cancer.  He needed to go to the hospital for surgery and Ruth needed to take care of him.  She was at a crossroads, or the point of a big decision, in her life.  Should she stay in law school or take time off with her family? Should Martin take time off as well, even though he had already had to take time off before?  They talked it through and decided that they would both stay in school and finish their degrees together, even when Martin was sick.  Ruth continued to go to class and she took notes for Martin in class.  Martin started doing more around the house to help out, including doing the cooking.  This was not common at the time: for the man of the house to be at home full time caring for children and taking care of the housework.  But it helped to shape how Ruth thought about equality and what is expected of women in society. 

With medical treatment and Ruth’s help, Martin got better and he was able to return to school and finish his studies.  He graduated from law school and got a job as a lawyer in New York.  Because Martin’s job was in New York, Ruth moved to Columbia Law school in New York and finished her degree there.  Ruth graduated first in her class in 1959. 

Next, Ruth looked for a job, but she found many law firms didn’t want to hire her because she was a woman.  It is hard to believe now, but back then in America, it was not common for women to work outside of the home.  And there were really not many women in professional jobs like law.  So Ruth was really doing something new and when that happens, often people resist or fight against, it.  Big changes in society, like women’s equality, take years to change. 

Eventually, Ruth found a job as a law clerk, which is a researcher who works for a judge.  After two years in that job she became a university law professor.  Despite being very busy, as a professor and mom, Ruth also volunteered her time to the Women’s Rights Project.  To volunteer means to do something for free because you want to make a difference.  Ruth’s volunteer work for this project involved winning 6 very important trials in U.S. courts on cases about women’s equality. 

In 1980, Ruth was awarded a very important job: President Jimmy Carter appointed her to be a Judge with the Court of Appeals.  She continued to work very hard and to work for equality for women and others.  In 1993, she was appointed to be a judge on the U.S. Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton.  The Supreme Court is the highest level of court in America and makes decisions about the most important cases from around the country.

As a judge, Ruth’s decisions favored a moderate approach.  She was a big supporter of equality between men and women and of the rights of workers and the separation of church and state.  This means that she believed that the government should not be influenced by religion.  She wrote an important decision that said that the military could not refuse to allow women to join.  She won awards for her work and what she did to help defend peoples’ rights.  She worked hard in the coming years to be an excellent judge and to provide lots of reasoning that have been very influential on American laws. 

In 2016, Ruth released a book about her life memories called “My Own Words.”  She became famous for her thoughtful attitude and her style, as well as her famous expression, “I dissent.”  Later in her life, people made t-shirts with her image and this expression and she became an icon, or symbol, for her beliefs.  People began calling her RBG, her initials for Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ruth’s health started to get worse in the later years of her life.  She had cancer a few times and had surgery for each.  However, she continued to fight each time and grow healthy so she could continue her important work.  

In July 2020, Ruth revealed that her cancer had returned. She died in September of that year. She was laid to rest in the state in the Capitol on September 25.  She was the first woman and the second Supreme Court Judge to have this honor. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is remembered for her hard work throughout her life, arguing for the fair treatment of women.  There are many things we can learn from Ruth, including hard work and resilience.  Resilience means the ability to carry on even when life is hard.  She was also determined, which means that she was focused on her goal and positive that she would make it happen.  Once she decided she wanted to become a lawyer, she worked very hard to make that happen, even though she had to take care of her husband and her young child.  She was also brave.  At law school, she was teased and sometimes bullied by her male classmates.  But she still worked hard to finish and become a lawyer.

What are some things in society that you think are unfair?  Who are people that you would like to see helped more by society or treated with more fairness and kindness?  Becoming a judge or a lawyer is one way to support others who need help.  What are some ways you can spend time helping others who need help?  

Spend some time thinking about the things that others have done that are good and help others. Think about some of the things Ruth accomplished in her life.  What can you learn from her life about your own future path? No matter what you decide to do, Ruth would encourage you to work hard, stick with what you believe and treat everyone with equal respect. 

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Rosa Parks was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. When she was a child she was often sick and sadly had to spend a lot of time in bed. Then when she was two their family moved to live with their grandparents on a farm in a town called Pine Level. Rosa loved being on the farm with her family. It gave her and her siblings lots of room to play and spend time with each other. They explored the woods and streams nearby and she enjoyed the school there. 

Rosa was safe in Pine Level, but this wasn’t the case in other places in Alabama. Rosa and her family were African American and this was a time when black people were treated poorly in Alabama. They were forced to attend separate schools, used separate bathrooms, and to drink from different drinking fountains. This is called segregation. They were often called mean names or abused.

When Rosa was eleven, she moved to Montogomery, Alabama to go to a better school. It was called the Montgomery Industrial School for Girls. The head of the school was a white woman named Alice White. She didn’t go easy on the girls, but this wasn’t because she was mean, it was because she wanted them to learn and grow. Often people who love you, do this because they want to see you be your best you. This motivated Rosa to try her best in school and learn as much as she could. She wanted to become a teacher like Ms. Alice someday. 

Rosa stayed at the school until her grandmother became sick, so she moved back to Pine Level to help. There she found jobs to help earn money for her family. She worked very hard to support them. 

When Rosa was 28, she met a young man named Raymond. Raymond inspired her to take even more interest in the problems black people were facing in Alabama and other places in the South. He was part of the NAACP, the National Association of the Advancement of Colored People. Rosa was proud of Raymond’s interest in helping this cause. He often put himself in danger for it. Rosa and Raymond fell in love and were married in 1932.

In 1934 Rosa finished high school, then started working as a nurse’s assistant and later at an army air force base. On her way home from work she rode a bus, but like all African Americans at the time she had to ride in the back of the bus. It made her very upset to be treated differently. She didn’t say anything at the time, but she was very angry deep inside. 

Around this time Rosa joined the NAACP and helped as a secretary for several years. She also registered to vote. At the time the government in Alabama made it very hard for black people to vote. Rosa had to take a difficult test and pay a tax that was very expensive. When she was finally able to vote she was very happy but also upset that so many of her friends and family were prevented from voting.

Rosa worked very hard for her family through these years and continued to help the NAACP. She was never able to have her own children, but helped the youth through the NAACP. She wanted them to have good lives and took the time to care for them. 

To get to and from work, Rosa rode the bus every day. Like other buses in Alabama, this one was segregated which means anyone who was black had to enter the bus from the back and sit at the back of the bus. This day, Rosa took courage and got on the bus through the front. The driver told her to get off and get on through the back. Rosa refused! The driver told her to get off again. She said she would not. The driver grabbed her by the coat and pulled her toward the front of the bus. She sat down again. The driver continued to yell at her. Rosa finally got off the bus, but she had stood up for herself and made her point.

In 1954 Rosa made friends with a white woman named Virginia Durr, who wanted to help her and other African Americans. Virginia encouraged Rosa to attend a workshop in Tennessee that trained people to fight for equal rights for blacks and workers who were treated unfairly. People of all races and different states came together to learn how to make the world a better place. There she met Martin Luther King and Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. a black congressman from New York City. There she began thinking about ways to fight racism in her own city.

On December 1st 1955, Rosa left home to catch the Cleveland Avenue bus to go to work. When she got on the bus she realized the driver was the same one who had forced her off the bus a few years earlier. Rosa went to the back of the bus and sat down. As the bus went drover further and more people got on the bus, the bus driver told Rosa and the others in the back to stand up so the white passengers could sit down. Rosa refused to get up. The driver yelled at her to get up, but she did not. The driver threatened to have her arrested. “You may do that,” Rosa replied. Soon, the police officers arrived and took Rosa to jail! She was very afraid. Fortunately, her friends at the NAACP were able to pay to have her released until her trial. She was going to be put on trial for not giving up her seat. Can you believe that?

Rosa and lawyers at the NAACP decided they would sue the bus company for not letting her sit down. Suing is when lawyers use the law to try to punish a company like the bus company by getting money from them. If they won the lawsuit then hopefully the unfair laws would be done away with. 

Rosa and her friends also decided to boycott buses that treated them unfairly. A boycott is when you refuse to use something and pay for it, so it punishes the company. If no one paid for bus rides, the bus company would see how much it cost to treat African Americans unfairly. During the days leading up to the boycott, Rosa and others passed out notes urging others to not ride buses on December 5th. If enough people didn’t ride the buses it would send a message to the bus companies. Rosa was nervous about whether it would work.

On December 5, 1955, to Rosa’s excitement, she saw that the buses were empty and thousands of people were walking to work and school instead of riding the buses! They were inspired by Rosa’s actions! Rosa set the example by refusing to give in to the unfair treatment of the city and bus companies. And the boycott didn’t only happen for a day — it went on for an entire year! Never before had so many people in the community come together to fight for civil rights. And the bus companies lost money because very few people rode the buses. 

Rosa’s trial also started on December 5, 1955. She lost the trial, but didn’t mind because they wanted it to go to a higher court. People around the country were watching the boycott and knew about Rosa’s trial. They started to send money to her and to the NAACP to support their fight for equality. She began spending all of her time writing and speaking about civil rights. She met other famous leaders and Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was also believed in her cause. 

On November 13, 1956 Rosa’s trial went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, the most important court in the country. The Supreme Court is located in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court judges ruled that not allowing people sit where they want on a bus because of their race was against the Constitution — and not legal. Rosa Parks and her friends had scored a huge victory!

Soon after the trial, Rosa rode in the front of the bus and a famous photograph was taken of her to memorialize the event and her bravery in standing up to an unfair system. 

While there was still much work to do, Rosa’s act of courage and the result of the trial is often considered one of the first big events in the Civil Rights Movement. In August 1963 over 200,000 people marched in Washington, D.C. to show their support for Civil Rights. There Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.” Rosa was excited to see so many others speaking out about Civil Rights. Then in 1964, the President signed the Civil Rights Act that made it illegal to treat people differently because of their race.

Eventually, Rosa and her husband moved to Detroit and lived a quiet life there. In 1966 Rosa was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. She received many other awards over the years for her bravery. She wrote books and spoke about her life and passed away at the age of 92. 

Spend some time thinking about Rosa and her decision to stand up for herself and for her rights. She was afraid and knew that she might get in trouble for it, but doing what was right was more important than her feelings. She refused to move when the driver told her to move. She knew it was wrong and didn’t back down. There will be times in your life when you will have the chance to stand up for yourself and others. Take courage even when you are afraid. Speak up when something wrong is happening! If not you, then who? You can make a difference in the world by speaking up and taking action. 

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But if someone had asked a young Frederick Douglass these questions, he wouldn’t have been able to answer some of them.  Frederick was born into slavery in the early 19th century, in the state of Maryland. Not only was he considered the property of his white master, but many other things were also denied to him and his fellow enslaved workers. Frederick never knew his birthday, or exactly how old he was. He never knew his father, though there were rumors that his master was his father. He barely knew his mother: she was forced to work on a farm miles away from Frederick. She wanted so badly to see her son that, whenever she could, she would walk for miles after a long day of fieldwork to visit him late at night. Sadly, these visits stopped when Frederick was seven. He would only learn later that his mother had died.

This was how life looked for millions of enslaved people at the time. Birthdays and close family members are important parts of who we are, but slave masters didn’t want their slaves to have these connections. They didn’t want them to learn to read or write. Family, birthdays, and books might give the enslaved worker things to care about and hope for that had nothing to do with working for their master from dawn til dusk, and work was what the master wanted.

Not long after his mother passed away, Frederick’s grandmother took him to a different plantation. Once there, the master made her leave. Frederick stayed. At 8 years old, he would get a taste of what life as an enslaved worker was like. He was given two long shirts to wear, but no pants, shoes, or even a blanket. He slept on the floor, sometimes stealing a flour sack to keep warm under. He saw the grown-ups go off to the fields to work before dawn, and not return until it was dark, so tired they were ready to collapse. He saw his aunt whipped for talking to a man she liked.

But soon, Frederick’s enslaver decided he’d be of better use elsewhere. He sent Frederick to live with his relatives in Baltimore, Hugh, and Sophia Auld. There, he would live in a house and be given better clothes to wear. But this wasn’t exactly a privilege: Frederick was going there to be a servant to the Auld’s son. 

Still, for a brief time, Frederick got a glimpse of a better life. But the nice house, the big, bustling city, and the real clothes were just a small part of that better life. His new mistress, Sophia Auld, gave him something far more valuable than those things..in fact, more valuable than even she realized. She taught him to read. 

Sophia Auld did not come from a family that kept slaves. She didn’t know it was illegal to teach them to read, and maybe she didn’t realize what a powerful thing reading was. But she was delighted to see how quickly Frederick learned, and he loved his lessons. 

Hugh Auld was not so pleased. He scolded Sophia that reading would ruin Frederick as a slave. He thought, like many other slaveholders, that if slaves knew how to read they might learn about ideas that made them question slavery. They might start thinking about freedom and democracy. They might rebel or run away. 

Sadly, Sophia came around to her husband’s way of thinking. She stopped teaching Frederick. She became distant and cold. Frederick wrote later that “slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me.” It made her less kind and less human.

Hugh Weld was right about one thing though. Reading gave Frederick power.  Like many enslaved people, Frederick had wished for freedom even before he could read. But in books, he found people who argued that he deserved freedom, who said he was just as human as any white person. He learned about people and ideas that gave him the strength to keep hoping – for his own freedom and that of all enslaved people. 

Frederick didn’t want to stop learning. He befriended white children in the streets of Baltimore. He convinced them to help him with his reading and writing. Like Sophia, they didn’t know that they weren’t supposed to. They saw Frederick as just another little boy. Many of these children were hungry and poor, so Frederick would take a little extra bread from the Auld’s kitchen to share with them. By the time he was 12, he convinced many of these children that he should be free when he grew up, just like them. They could see what the grown-ups all around them couldn’t: Frederick was a child just like them, and he deserved the same freedom they had. 

Eventually, Frederick was sent to work on Hugh’s brother’s farm. Thomas Auld was far more strict than Hugh, and he and Frederick clashed from the beginning. Frederick would sometimes let Thomas’s horse run off. He knew the horse would always wander to a particular neighbor’s house, and that neighbor would give Frederick a good meal when he went to retrieve the horse. But maybe he secretly wished that escape could be so easy for him. Thomas soon got tired of this behavior. He thought he knew how to teach Frederick to be obedient and meek. He sent him to live with a man named Edward Covey. 

Covey was the worst person yet. He wasn’t a new master, who just wanted Frederick to work and obey his orders. Covey’s job was to break slaves who weren’t behaving the way their regular masters wanted. He worked Frederick harder than any other master had, and punished him more cruelly. He whipped and beat him almost daily. But Frederick stayed strong. He never gave in, and finally, one day, he had had enough. He fought back. The two fought with each other for hours, but finally, Covey gave in. From that day on, Frederick knew he could stand up to even the worst treatment. More than that, he knew he could escape.

Frederick was sent back to the Aulds in Baltimore. He had one goal now: to free himself. To go north, where he could make his own decisions and fight for the rights of others to do the same. 

In Baltimore, he met a free black woman named Anna. The two fell in love, but Frederick didn’t want anything to get in the way of his goal of freedom. He told Anna he would marry her when he was a free man.

Finally, he found a friend who was willing to help. The friend was a free black sailor in Baltimore, and he let Frederick use his identification papers. Wearing a rumpled sailor uniform that didn’t quite fit, Frederick got on a train to Delaware, then a ship to Philadelphia and freedom. He settled in New York and sent word to Anna to join him.

Freedom for himself wasn’t enough though. Frederick knew that millions of other enslaved people still suffered – children without mothers who didn’t have enough to eat or wear; grownups who worked every moment of the day with no pay and no choices in life. He began to speak against slavery, and in August of 1841, he traveled to a meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Someone in the hot, crowded meeting hall had heard him speak before and urged Frederick to address the meeting. 

Frederick was nervous because he’d never spoken in front of such a large group. His voice shook. But soon after he began, he saw the sympathetic expressions on the faces in the audience. He told about his struggles to learn to read and about the harsh treatment he’d endured under Edward Covey. How he didn’t know his age or birthday, and never really knew his mother.

After that, Frederick joined the Anti-Slavery Society and began to tour the free states, speaking about his experience. His perspective was valuable since many in the North had not witnessed slavery up close. He wrote his autobiography, revealing the terrible things he and other enslaved people experienced every day.

None of this was safe or easy. Having his name in newspapers and pamphlets, then on a published book, meant that people in the south might realize who he was, and Frederick’s old master might send slave catchers to kidnap and bring him back. After his book came out, Frederick traveled to England. In England, all people were free. Frederick spoke to groups there about American slavery, convincing many British people to speak out against the system. Two English friends raised money to buy Frederick’s freedom. For 710 dollars and 96 cents, the Aulds officially gave Frederick the freedom he’d known all along was his right. 

Frederick returned to America as a free man in 1847. By this time, many Americans were starting to think that they would never be able to resolve their differences about slavery peacefully. Civil War broke out in 1861 between the Northern, free states, and slaveholding states in the South. Frederick knew this conflict would determine the fate of the millions of people still enslaved in America. 

Frederick was one of the most famous men in America by now. He met with President Lincoln in the White House and helped convince him to allow black men to fight in the Union army. He then recruited black men to fight, including two of his sons. He attended Lincoln’s second inauguration, and when he was turned away at the door for a reception afterward, Lincoln insisted the guards let him in. Lincoln asked Frederick his opinion of his speech, saying there was “no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours.” Frederick told the president that it “was a sacred effort.”

Frederick lived three more decades after the civil war. He kept working to help black people get to vote, get their education, and enjoy the rights that had been denied them for so long.

Frederick was born enslaved–denied a mother, a birthday, and his freedom. He was taught to read almost by accident, and that one forbidden activity opened a world of ideas–of freedom, justice, and opportunity to him. He discovered that words were powerful. With his speeches and writing, Frederick opened the minds and hearts of masses of people, even a president, to the experiences of enslaved people. He made them see these people as people, made them care, and made them act. Frederick’s voice may have shaken at first, but it grew strong and clear and deep. And it could never be broken. 

Sources

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/features/frederick-douglass/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7716878/

https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/confronting-a-president-douglass-and-lincoln.htm

Douglass, Frederick. (1845) Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Anti-Slavery Office, Boston. 

Pinkney, Andrea Davis. (2012) Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men Who Changed America. Disney, New York.

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