Chapter Review: Alan Turing: How the Father of the Computer Saved the World for Democracy

from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.

This is the only individual featured in this book who was not a citizen of the United States.  Alan Turing was a mathematician, and a marathon runner.  It was while running that he thought of the idea of machines being used to solve problems.  The machine he imagined could read instructions, it would scan a tape with numeric code which would tell the machine what to do.  He thought this machine may solve complex mathematical problems.  
And so the beginnings of the computer where hatched.  This idea of a problem solving machine became a necessity during WWII.  The Nazis were using a sophisticated coding machine, enigma it was called.  Only a machine would be able to decipher the code fast enough to have a chance at breaking the Nazi codes.  Turing worked on this through a good part of the war, but finally had developed something which would help them crack the code, by using known words or frequent words.  Turing was especially prominent in the work against the U-Boats.  Who knows how many lives he saved by being able to pinpoint the location of submarines.  His work was part of the strategy to eliminate or reduce the threat from the Nazi U-boats.  
During his time in the deciphering business, he visited America where he again helped with developing the computer, while taking ideas home.  
After the war Turing became known as a homosexual, which was against British law of the time.  He was subject to hormone therapy,and later took his own life via one bite form a cyanide laced apple.  Beck wonders if that may be the reason behind the Apples with one bite missing on all i-phones and Apple computers.

Chapter Review: The CIty of Tomorrow: Walt Disney's Last and Lost Dream

from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.

Epcot Center was Walt Disney's last and great dream.  Previously he had proved critics wrong when he insisted on creating Disneyland as a different kind of park.  However Epcot was suppose to be much more than a display of technology.  Walt Disney envisioned it as a self enclosed city.  EPCOT, Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.  Disney had seen suffering in the world, and poverty, and this was his plan to counteract such issues.  He had also seen the riots in Watts, and knew there was a better way.  However Disney's health did not allow him to finish this dream.  He made his older brother, Roy, promise to finish the work.  However Roy could not quite see Walt's dream.  Sure Walt Disney World (Roy insisted on the Walt) opened as a great amusement park, but it never quite was what Walt envisioned, nor did it have the impact Walt had hoped for.  Epcot is an exhibit acknowledging technology, but is only a sad compromise of Walt's original dream, EPCOT.

Roy Disney

Walt Disney

Chapter Review: The Spy Who Turned to a Pumpkin: Alger Hiss and the Liberal Establishment That Defended a Traitor

from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.

Alger Hiss was a rising star in the Democrat Party.  He accompanied President Franklin Roosevelt to Malta for Roosevelt's last visit with Churchill and Stalin before the end of WWII.  At this meeting, the Allies basically gave up the Easter European countries to the Soviet Union, including Poland.  Alger Hiss was identified as a spy by Whitaker Chambers.  Hiss had left the State Department, and was no at the Carnegie Foundation.  He approached this information by facing the House Un-American Activities Committee.  He denied ever knowing Chambers.  One of them was lying.  
His challenged Chambers, saying he would sue him if he made his accusations public.  When they were made public, then Chambers turned over to the government evidence of Hiss' spying activities.  Papers that Chambers had matched the typewriter that Hiss kept under his bed.  He was tried and convicted of perjury.  The Democratic controlled justice department did not try him for espionage.  
Hiss maintained his innocence.  In fact after the Soviet bloc fell, a Soviet leader said he had never seen evidence Hiss was a spy.  However he later admitted he only had access to a small percentage of documents. However Hiss became the first person to be restored to the Massachusetts Bar after having been removed.   Later a note about Hiss recruiting another spy was found among Hungarian documents.  Further damning evidence was found by the State Department who apparently forced him out because of his ties with espionage.  The government knew all along about Hiss' spying but chose to look the other way.  

Chapter Review: "Make it Great, John": How Steve Jobs and John Lasseter Changed History at Pixar

from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.
During the time when Steve Jobs had been forced out at Apple Computer, he purchased from George Lucas a his computer graphics division which had about 100 employees and was named for their computer, Pixar.  John Lasseter was one of the employees there.  Lasseter was the artist, animator among the computer technicians.  He had previously worked for Disney, and been let go because of his ideas about using computers to do animation.  
Before Pixar found it self if cost Jobs millions of dollars; 5 million to purchase it, another immediate investment of 5 million, and over the next couple years another 10 million.  They were bleeding money.  It was unclear how long Jobs could continue.  At a meeting to see how they could save money, Lasseter proposed making a short film, for $300,000.  When money is tight asking for more is not always a good thing.  However Jobs gave Lasseter this one instruction, "Just make it great."
The short he had in mind was called Tin Toy.  It was a precursor to Toy Story.  The short won an Academy Award for animation.  The bigger project followed, However they needed financing, so they invited Disney to oversee the project.  They had evolved the character to Woody and Buzz Lightyear.  However Disney insisted on Woody being cantankerous so they could attract an adult audience.  The movie lost its focus and was not going well.  Tom Hanks, the actor for Woody said, This guy is a real jerk."  Initial previews did not go well.  Disney shut own the project.  However Jobs convinced them to give it another shot, and they rewrote the script.  The movie was on its way.
Jobs did not want to be dependent on Disney in the future.  He made plans for Pixar, a company with successive years of loss, to go public as soon as the movie came out.  And that is what he did, against everyone's better judgement.  Pixar gained financial independence, and went on to make many more movies; A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monster Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and more.  
Jobs was welcomed back at Apple, and Pixar became a subsidiary of Disney.  The original Pixar Computer is now in the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Chapter Review: The Muckraker: How a Lost Letter Revealed Upton SInclair's Deception

The Muckraker: How a Lost Letter Revealed Upton Sinclair's Deception, from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.

Upton Sinclair is best known for writing the book "The Jungle."  However this story is not about that book so much, but a subsequent book Sinclair wrote entitled "Boston."  This book is about two Italian immigrants, Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco, who were put to death by the electric chair in Massachusetts after they killed two payroll clerks, and stole a parole to help fund their terroristic organization which was fighting against the elite in the Boston area.  Mostly they would set of bombs, but they needed to purchase dynamite to do this.  The two men had alibis, but they were also identified as being the killers.  Sinclair, always for social justice, had a point to make with his book.  He challenged the verdict and the trial feeling it had been unfair.  Besides the men maintained their innocence.  Sinclair however saw some inconsistencies in the men's testimony, and sought out a lawyer who had worked on the case.  Despite the lawyer proclaiming them guilty, that he had trumped up the alibi witnesses, Sinclair still published the book maintaining the trial was unfair.  Many years later a letter about this meeting would come to light which indicated that Sinclair knew the men were guilty.  Sometimes the truth just gets in the way of a good story or cause.

Upton Sinclair

Chapter Review: Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball

This chapter is entitled : He Loved Lucy: The Tragic Genius of Desi Arnaz, the Inventor of the Rerun.  It is from the book Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Theshold Editions, New York, 2014.

Desi Arnaz escaped with his family from Cuba when he was a teenage.  The went from having three homes, to having nothing.  His father barely escaped with his life, and slowly arranged for other family members to join them, starting with Desi.  Desi had a dream to never be in that situation again.   And the slowly rebuilt their life.   However when Desi told his father he ws going to pursue msic, playing the bongos and singing, his father resisted.  In the old country this was not good work.  However Desi would prove successful.
When Desi began to pursue movie deals as part of his career, he met Lucille Ball.  When he first met her she had a black eye (make up) and Desi was not impressed.  However that soon changed.  Lucy and Desi were married, and because of the different nature of their personalities, except for their stubbornness, the marriage was not expected to last.  With individual lives in entertainment, which took them different ways, it had a rocky start; especially due to Desi's drinking and womanizing.  However they had hopes of doing a show together, a television show.  Lucy already had a radio show.  However when they pitched it to studios it was rejected.  The said people wouldn't belief they were married.  SO they created their own production company, Desilu Industries, and became the first independent T.V. producers.  They were able to sell their t.v. show, filming in Los Angeles, close to their home.  Desi negotiated that they would maintain the rights to the programs they produced, and thus when they became popular, reruns were born.  DesiLu actually sold the rights for millions of dollars.  They would produce many more programs, including Star Trek and Mission Impossible.  However their marriage would not last.  Desi and Lucy would have two children together, but eventually Desi's drinking and womanizing would take its toll.  However Desi and Lucy continued to love each other, even when Lucy moved on to subsequent versions of her t.v. shows.

Chapter Review: Streets of Gold: Charles Ponzi and the American Scheme

I am familiar with the term, Ponzi Scheme, but was not familiar with the man who prompted this term.  That man is Charles Ponzi, was born Carlo Ponzi in Italy.  He flunked out of university, and so set his sights on America as a place to win his fortune.  He had heard the streets in America were made of gold.  He eventually drifted north, where he became involved in  a scheme to pay back loans (self loans made to yourself illegally from people giving you money to wire to relatives).  It eventually tumbled, and Ponzi was jailed for writing a forged check to himself.  He then landed in Federal prison in Atlanta, Georgia for helping people enter the United States illegally.  While there he met Charles Morse, and from him learned more about speculation schemes.   He thought about returning to Europe, to fight for Italy in the war, but changed his mind  He met a woman, fell in love and married Rose Gneccco.  Rose contended they didn't need to be rich to be happy.  However Ponzi had other ideas, and began promising incredible returns to his investors in a scheme to buy International Reply Coupons abroad, and sell them in the United States.  The idea being they were accepted for postage any where in the world, but were sold more cheaply in Europe.  This he used as his draw, but what he was really doing was paying investors back with the money from new investors.  In fact the Post Office had written him a letter saying such a scheme was not allowed.  No matter if he made believe this was his method, and besides, he was paying people back with incredible interest.  We are all gamblers.  We all crave easy money.
Working upon this crave Ponzi kept his scheme going for several years.  He bought a large mansion.  He brought his mother from Italy.  He had made good.  When the paper ran an article about his investment program, he made even more money.  However, eventually in such a scheme, the debts our weigh the assets, and when that happens it comes crashing down.  Thousands of people lost millions of dollars.  When it collapsed, and he was audited, his scheme was up.  After serving five years in prison he was deported.  He died in Brazil a broke man, but he had given the people of America quite a show for a time.

Chapter Review: Woodrow Wilson: A Masterful Stroke of Deception

This chapter is from the book: Dreamers and Deceivers by Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe.  It is subtitled True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America.  Published by Threshold Editions, New York, 2014.
Woodrow Wilson was a progressive educator, President of Princeton.  However when offered the chance to run for governor, as a jumping point to run for president he jumped at the opportunity.  There were concerns about his health, arteriosclerosis, but he did not let that stand in is way.  In fact, during his first term as president, it was not his health, but his wife's that was a concern.  His wife died of liver disease, and her passing devastated him.  However he remarried while in the White House.  He married Edith Bolling Galt, a woman who shared his political views.  Wilson was a racist from the South.  He did not support women's suffrage and felt women were inferior, and should compliment men.  He also allowed segregation to take place int eh federal government, and supported Jim Crow laws.  He also agreed with the movie "Birth of a Nation" which during his presidency, was the first movie screened in the White House, with its reference to the Ku Klux Klan as saviors of the South.  However he won reelection on the theme, "I kept us out of War," referring to WWI.  However it wasn't long into his second term that the United States entered the war.  Woodrow Wilson's biggest push was to negotiate a treaty not too harsh on the Germans, and to establish the League of Nations.  However, in the end of his presidency, Wilson was absent.  He had a stroke, which left his face droopy, and his arm paralyzed.  He was also afflicted by paranoia and anger.  It was his wife, Edith, who in essence ran the country.  She was able to pass him off as running the country to two senators, but still he was ineffective as an actual world leader.  The final treaty at the end of WWI was punitive to the germans, requiring war reparations and taking territory from them.  Resentment over this treaty lead to the rise of the Nazi Party and Hitler, and played a real part in continued hostilities.  The League of Nations was only a shell of what Wilson envisioned, as a result of his stroke he could not pursue it vigorously, and only after compromise was it acceptable to the United States.
Of course as it happened, knowledge of WILson's stroke was not common knowledge.  It was only over 40 years later at the death of his doctor, Cary Grayson, and release of his notes, that the serious nature of his health problems was known.

Chapter Review: I Did not Kill Armstrong: The story of Edwin Howard Armstrong: Radio Pioneer

Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America, Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Threshold Editions, Mercury Radio Arts, New York, 2014.

“I Did Not Kill Armstrong”: The War of Wills in the Early Days of Radio.

Edwin Howard Armstrong was a genius.  Radio was his passion, that and heights.  But it was radio where he made his mark.  He developed an oscillation system which advanced radio.  This used putting the sound through the radio many times to increase the sound.  It worked.  He was using however an Audion tube, Which was the invention of another party, Lee DeForest. 

Armstong shared his invention with David Sarnoff of the American Marconi Company.  This company would eventually evolve into RCA.  Armstrong helped solve many problems with reception and sound, which resulted in RCA being able to sell hundreds of thousands of radios.  However he also became embroiled in legal issues.  DeForest claimed he was the inventor of radio. 

When WWI started, Armstrong loaned his patents to the military, and volunteered himself.  He was a major and helped greatly with communications.  DeForest also helped the war effort, if he was paid. 

After the war the court case went through the courts all the way to the Supreme Court, who ruled for DeForest. 

However by this time, Armstrong was developing the next thing, FM radio.  This was an attempt to make radio more clear, and less subject to environmental conditions.   He was successful.  He developed radio which was much clearer.  At this time he worked for  Sarnoff and RCA.  When the idea was introduced, which Sarnoff had requested several years earlier, it was an obvious success.  FM Radio was much clearer with less interference from the elements.  However, Sarnoff had gone the way of AM radio.  There were hundreds of thousands of people listening to, and networks producing to AM radio.  Sarnoff suggested putting FM aside.  This was not acceptable to Armstrong.  At this time they split company, Armstrong being kicked out of his office within a day. 

Now Armstrong plowed ahead on his own, with only the support of his wife, and developed a network of FM stations on the east coast.  In the meantime, Sarnoff tied Armstrong up in court in legal battle after legal battle, and claimed RCA was the legal owner of FM radio.  WWII was a reprieve, as both Sarnoff and Armstrong participated in the war effort.  However the legal battles continued after the war.  Sarnoff at one point offered $1,000,000 to buy Armstrong out, but this wouldn’t even pay for the equipment. Sarnoff, in court, later denied ever making such an offer. When Sarnoff could not win, he lobbied the FCC to change the frequency of the FM signal, and overnight all the FM radios were obsolete.   

Armstrong finally gave in, and began smashing his awards, as the tyrants would never let him be.  His wife was struck in this episode, and he never saw her again.  Two months later he jumped out of his apartment to his death.  Upon hearing this, Sarnoff instinctively said, “I did not kill Armstrong.”  (He must have felt guilty.)  Armstrong’s name is enshrined by the International Telecommunication Union. 

Chapter Review: Grover Cleveland: The Mysterious Case of the DIsapearing President

Dreamers and Deceivers: True Stories of the Heroes and Villains Who Made America, Glenn Beck with Kevin Balfe, Threshold Editions, Mercury Radio Arts, New York, 2014.

Grover Cleveland: The Mysterious Case of the Disappearing President.  I am sure if this is not the first time a president had lied about their health, and it definitely wasn’t the last time.  In this case, presumably President Cleveland wanted to keep his health out of the public eye to not interfere with his chances of negotiating through Congress legislation to change the silver standard.  He felt this was contributing to depression.  Of course it was also felt the president’s health was important so as not to instill panic or fear in the general populace. 

President Cleveland had cancer, a tumor in his jaw.  He went aboard a boat, and had surgery at sea.  He was basically overdue by four days, and people began to notice his absence.  He was out of touch with people for five days.  The story given is that he went on a fishing trip, had rheumatism, and had teeth extracted.  His health was fine.  Rumors abounded, but this was the official story and it stuck.

However a reporter uncovered the truth.  Two months later E.J. Edwards reported for the Philadelphia Press,  “The President a Very Sick Man.”  He had discovered the story from one of the doctors, an anesthesiologist.  However the president continued to deny, and none of the five doctors who attended the president came forward.  Instead of the reporter having a scoop, he became a fall guy as the president and his staff questioned his integrity. 

It wouldn’t be for twenty-five years, and after President Cleveland’s death, that the truth would finally come out.  E.J. Edwards was an honest man and reliable reporter, while it was President Cleveland who was not truthful. 

This is a very short version of this story.  The Glenn Beck version has many more details.  I also understand there is a book about the same story, “The President Is a Sick Man” by Matthew Algeo.