Deep Dive: Patents, Patronage, and Processing Speed: Steamboats, Guggenheim, and the Brain - August 26, 2025
Kara Swift and Ethan Wells examine a 1791 patent showdown over the steamboat, unpack Peggy Guggenheim’s cultural and market influence, and translate neural processing into a striking physical metric: 120 meters per second.
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Show Notes
In this Deep Dive episode, our hosts discuss the federal patent resolution between John Fitch and James Rumsey over the steamboat, Peggy Guggenheim’s role in shaping modern art markets and institutions, and the striking fact that the human brain can process information at about 120 meters per second.
- 📜 On this day in 1791, two rival inventors—John Fitch and James Rumsey—each received federal patents for the steamboat, settling a fierce dispute. Kara and Ethan explore how simultaneous patents changed incentives for steam navigation, clarified legal leadership in a transformative transport technology, and influenced investment, engineering standardization, and the early republic’s role in intellectual property norms.
- 🎂 We celebrate the birthdays of Peggy Guggenheim (1898), Christopher Isherwood (1904), and Albert Sabin (1906), with a focus on Guggenheim’s outsized impact: how her galleries and patronage functioned as cultural and market infrastructure—helping artists survive wartime dislocation, converting speculative interest into lasting market value, and educating audiences in ways that reshaped collectors and institutions.
- 💡 Fact of the day: the human brain can process information at roughly 120 meters per second. Kara and Ethan discuss how casting neural speed in spatial terms clarifies the immediacy of cognition, highlights latency and competitive advantage in markets and tech, and makes the brain feel like an engineered network whose speed matters for decision-making.
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