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00:00America is a land of risk-takers, from the men who brought flight to the masses, to the
00:12woman who spent her life pushing the limits.
00:18It's a land of innovation, from a colony some hoped could exist on Mars, to a city others
00:25thought would be a blueprint for the future.
00:29This is a place where good ideas have made millionaires, and a good golf swing produced
00:37a billionaire.
00:43From self-made men to man-made products, these are the big thinkers, big dreams, and big
00:51things that could only be made in the USA.
01:21In the evergreens of Washington State is one company that's made America a computing
01:40superpower, Microsoft.
01:46This is the software giant's headquarters just outside Seattle, in Redmond.
01:53Bill Gates, a Seattle native, dropped out of Harvard in 1975 to start the company in
01:59Albuquerque, New Mexico.
02:01He relocated to Washington in 1979.
02:06A year later, Gates got a call about developing a top-secret operating system.
02:12It was for something unheard of at the time, an IBM personal computer.
02:24In Redmond, Microsoft's employees have perks, like a soccer field, baseball diamond, and
02:3025 high-end cafeterias.
02:36A few lucky workers even get to visit the boss's house, proof of just how much money
02:41can be made in the USA.
02:44Bill Gates' multi-million dollar estate on Lake Washington features a reception hall
02:49and conference facilities, in case he needs to take work home with him.
02:55One of the libraries contains a Leonardo da Vinci notebook, which Gates bought in 1994
03:01for more than $30 million.
03:09And while the home's exterior is traditional, the inside is, of course, state-of-the-art.
03:17A house computer can detect what temperature and music each resident prefers.
03:40Another major American brand was made in Seattle, Starbucks.
03:46The company started out as a small shop in nearby Pike Place Market, where it opened
03:51in 1971.
03:57In 1983, marketing director Howard Schultz went to Milan, Italy, and noticed the popularity
04:04of espresso bars.
04:06He convinced Starbucks founders to try out the coffeehouse concept, and now Starbucks
04:11is sold in 55 countries.
04:17Their signature Mermaid comes from a 16th-century Norse woodcut.
04:22It pays tribute to Seattle's seaport roots and the seafaring history of coffee.
04:38A Washington outdoorsman made it big in the U.S.A. after a near-death experience.
04:45In the 1930s, a man named Eddie Bauer was hauling fish he had just caught through the
04:49Olympic Peninsula.
04:51Soon, he started sweating in his wool clothes and developed hypothermia.
04:57Afterwards, Bauer came up with an idea for a goose-down, breathable jacket, an invention
05:04that revolutionized cold-weather outerwear.
05:08He hit it really big in World War II, when the down-filled bomber jackets he made for
05:13fighter pilots became the height of fashion.
05:18The war also made a fortune for another Washington businessman, named William Boeing.
05:25He flew as a passenger for the first time in 1914, just 11 years after the Wright brothers'
05:30virgin flight.
05:35Boeing had been running a successful timber company, but once he was airborne, decided
05:40he could build a better plane.
05:43In two years, he learned to fly, hired engineers, and took his new plane for a test flight.
05:54At first, the company struggled.
06:00Then, Boeing started flying letters from Vancouver to Seattle, America's first international
06:06airmail.
06:10Boeing also started repairing and manufacturing military planes, eventually building World
06:15War II bombers.
06:19The company is a top producer of passenger aircraft, many of which are made here, 25
06:24miles north of Seattle.
06:29This is Boeing's Mammoth Everett plant, the largest building in the world when measured
06:34by volume.
06:38Inside, it's the equivalent of 75 football fields.
06:49Behind massive bay doors, Boeing builds four models of planes.
06:58The aircraft emerge with a green mylar coating to prevent damage.
07:08This is also where Boeing builds the 787 Dreamliner, which offers passengers Wi-Fi, live TV, and
07:15cell phone use.
07:23After a few hundred tests, the plane is ready for delivery.
07:34But William Boeing certainly wasn't the only one fascinated by flight.
07:38His fellow flying mavericks just happened to be taking off in Kansas.
07:48In the mid-20s, Wichita resident Lloyd Stearman started designing biplanes like these, the
07:55main aircraft used in those early aviation years.
08:00The planes are still flying nearly 90 years later.
08:06A Stearman biplane even starred in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, where it was
08:11used to try and murder Cary Grant.
08:26While some businessmen were building planes, an American woman was making history with
08:30one.
08:37Amelia Earhart was born in Atchison, where Kansas artist Stan Hurd pays tribute to her
08:43with a one-acre earthen portrait.
08:57Growing up, Earhart spent much of her time here, in her grandparents' house high above
09:01the Missouri River.
09:04As a girl, she was independent, and even kept a scrapbook of accomplished women.
09:11In 1928, Earhart gained worldwide fame when she became the first woman to fly across the
09:18Atlantic.
09:21She was driven, in part, by a desire to help women achieve social and economic independence,
09:28often using her fame to advocate for female pilots and women's issues.
09:40But her attempt to be the first woman around the world came to a tragic end when she disappeared
09:45over the Pacific, a mysterious death that sometimes overshadows her lifetime of accomplishments.
10:07In the remote plains of western Kansas is a town that remade itself after a devastating
10:12tragedy.
10:17In 2007, a massive tornado leveled the small community of Greensburg.
10:25Half of the survivors decided not to come back, but the population here had actually
10:30been decreasing for years.
10:33Community leaders decided they didn't just need to rebuild, they needed to revitalize.
10:40Their idea was to make Greensburg the greenest town in America.
10:47It was a tough sell to residents, but they gradually began to rally.
10:55Soon, eco-homes like this rose, modeled after a grain silo that withstood the tornado's
11:05200-mile-per-hour winds.
11:15The 547 Arts Center was the first public building to go up, part of the town's decision to make
11:21the arts a priority.
11:26The Kansas architectural students who designed it named it after the date the tornado hit.
11:40The town's library and museum, which were also destroyed, now live in the award-winning
11:45Kiowa County Commons building.
11:48Its roof overhang, awnings, and trees control the amount of light and heat that enter, while
11:54solar panels generate power.
11:57But the building that may symbolize Greensburg's rebirth best is the spiral-shaped museum,
12:03the new entrance to the town's oldest attraction, the Big Well.
12:09The building sits atop the largest hand-dug well in the world.
12:25The structure is modeled after the Fibonacci sequence, a series of numbers that creates
12:29spirals found in nature, including tornadoes.
12:46Kansas has also helped make the USA more eco-friendly by harnessing the power of the wind.
12:55BP is behind this wind farm, called Flat Ridge II, in south-central Kansas.
13:04The wind industry has skyrocketed in the U.S., outpaced only by China.
13:10But to tap into the wind's potential, some assembly is required.
13:16The windmills arrive in pieces, which are then spread out on the prairie.
13:22Each one will sit on a concrete pad, where its transformer is located.
13:28Workers assemble the three tubes that will make up the windmill's tower, then attach
13:33the giant propeller blades to their hub.
13:40Once that's finished, a powerful motor goes on top.
13:45Finally, the propeller is ready to be installed.
13:50In this delicate dance between man and machine, each gear and part must be perfectly aligned.
14:08When the workers are done, 262 windmills will tower over the Kansas plains, generating enough
14:14electricity for 125,000 homes.
14:30In nearby Oklahoma is the birthplace of the Doppler weather radar.
14:37This is the National Weather Center in Norman, where the Doppler was born out of World War
14:42II technology to detect enemy aircraft and missiles.
14:53In 1964, the radar allowed scientists to measure motion inside a storm for the first time.
15:07More recently, Doppler radar advanced to this, called OU-Prime.
15:13It's one of the highest resolution radars of its kind.
15:17Researchers use it to help predict severe weather, a necessity in the middle of Tornado
15:22Alley.
15:27Fourteen hundred miles away is one of the sites that helped Google become a household
15:32name.
15:36This is the company's server farm in the Dalles, Oregon.
15:42Inside are tens of thousands of processors that are part of the Googleplex, basically
15:48the biggest collective computer in the world.
15:53And powering all that creates a lot of heat, which is why this server farm is near the
15:59Columbia River.
16:04The Dalles Dam Hydroelectric Station and its half-mile powerhouse supply Google with cheap,
16:10renewable energy, something the company says is a priority as it continues to expand.
16:32Western Oregon is home to the track that helped make a sportswear giant, Nike.
16:42This is Hayward Field, or Tracktown, USA, at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
16:54In 1949, a man named Bill Bowerman became the track and field coach here.
17:00Known for his attention to detail, Bowerman even cobbled shoes for his runners.
17:06Then in 1964, Bowerman went into the shoe business with former U of O runner Bill Knight.
17:13They started out selling sneakers from Japan, but in 1971 launched their own company, Nike,
17:20named after the Greek goddess of victory.
17:28At the company's Beaverton headquarters, Nike is still looking for ways to give runners
17:32an edge, inviting top athletes to train here.
17:46The campus' buildings bear the names of sports legends that have been sponsored by Nike,
17:51including Michael Jordan, Mia Hamm, and John McEnroe, all of whom were also made in the
17:58USA.
18:01Along the pristine waters of Jupiter Island, Florida, is the home of another athlete who
18:06made it big in America.
18:09This is Tiger Woods' 12-acre multi-million dollar estate, which he kept as his permanent
18:15residence after his messy split with wife, Elin Nordegren, in 2010.
18:22The house includes four greens, all with different types of turf to replicate real courses.
18:30On the second floor is quite the custom add-on, Woods' own personal driving range.
18:44Up the Florida coast is a city that's made the USA a leader in space exploration.
18:51Cape Canaveral is home to the Kennedy Space Center, a long-standing testament to the power
18:57of American ingenuity.
19:04Here at Pad 39A, astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blasted off,
19:12as did 135 space shuttle missions.
19:19Towering over this stretch of coast is NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building, the largest single-story
19:26structure in the world.
19:30Inside, engineers assembled every single space shuttle.
19:43Before launch, shuttles were rolled out and onto this 135-foot-wide path, called the crawlerway.
19:59The 17-million-pound spacecraft sat on giant crawler transporters that, because of the
20:05crushing weight, couldn't move faster than a mile per hour.
20:13Tracks from the last one to make this journey are still visible.
20:22This is also where America's astronauts return to Earth, aiming for two black strips on the
20:27tarmac.
20:38The space shuttle program ended in 2011.
20:42Now, NASA is looking for new ways to put its historic infrastructure to use.
20:55Florida may be famous for its made-in-the-USA oranges, but it turns out the fruit isn't
21:01actually native to the state.
21:06Spanish settlers brought it here from China in the 16th century.
21:15It took another few hundred years for oranges to catch on.
21:24The fruit ripens in the fall, and thousands of migrant laborers are hired to help with
21:29the harvest.
21:40Racing between the rows are trucks called goats that gather the fruit from workers and
21:45ferry it to nearby tractor trailers.
22:04The oranges then travel to nearby processing plants, like this one, owned by Florida's
22:09Natural.
22:12The company got its start in 1933 as a small co-op.
22:15Now, it's one of the biggest orange juice producers in the country.
22:29Open trailer trucks take the fruit from farm to factory.
22:37Inside, millions of oranges a year are turned to pulp, their juice pasteurized and bottled
22:45before it makes its way around the world.
22:57Thousands of miles away from Florida, another American product had more mysterious beginnings
23:03on the tropical islands of Hawaii.
23:08These are the Dole Pineapple Plantations on Oahu, and one of Hawaii's main sources of
23:14revenue.
23:18But no one knows exactly how the pineapple ended up here.
23:24What historians do know is that a Spanish adventurer successfully started raising them
23:29in the 1800s.
23:31Then at the turn of the century, a Harvard grad named James Drummond Dole came to Oahu
23:37and thought the fruit might have potential.
23:40Putting his business and agricultural degrees to use, Dole bought some land and started
23:45using the relatively new technology called canning.
23:50After some persistent marketing, the pineapple became a symbol of friendship and a staple
23:56in many kitchens.
24:03Thousands of miles away, California winemakers are busy producing made-in-the-USA reds.
24:11Vineyards in Paso Robles have been around since the 18th century, when Franciscan friars
24:16started making wine here.
24:24In the 1870s, commercial winemaking began with an Indiana rancher named Andrew York.
24:31He had a surplus of grapes, so he started the Ascension Winery, which eventually became
24:36the York Winery, among the oldest in the country.
24:47Paso Robles is now home to dozens of wineries that produce the region's signature Big Reds,
24:53including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah, and Zinfandel.
25:06In the 1870s, many men went west in search of gold.
25:12But one man dreamt of making a fortune on something else—beer.
25:19German-born Adolf Kurs hiked through the foothills of Golden, Colorado, looking for
25:24his key ingredient—sparkling, clean water.
25:28Kurs and a partner converted an old tannery into a brewery, then shipped their beer to
25:34thirsty miners.
25:36When Prohibition hit, Kurs stayed afloat by manufacturing cement and other products.
25:42And when Prohibition ended, his beer endured.
25:46In the 50s, Kurs unveiled the all-aluminum beer can, which quickly made steel ones obsolete.
25:53And it's rumored that Kurs was a favorite of President Gerald Ford, who apparently brought
25:58it aboard Air Force One.
26:00Four decades later, President Barack Obama would reach for a different American beer—Yingling.
26:09Before Kurs, German immigrant David Yingling started making his beer in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.
26:16There, the water was soft and clean, there were thousands of beer-drinking German immigrants,
26:21and the nearby railroad made shipping easy.
26:24Yingling did well locally for years.
26:26Then, in the 80s, it gained steam nationally.
26:31That's when Yingling's great-grandson solved the problem of how to pronounce the beer's
26:34name—by reintroducing an old brew and calling it simply lager.
26:43Today, Yingling is the oldest operating beer company in America.
26:51About an hour away from the brewery is one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in
26:56North America—Hershey Chocolate Company in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
27:02Founder Milton Hershey grew up on a nearby farm, where his father took on one failed
27:07venture after another.
27:12After his dad left, Hershey's mother taught him a strong work ethic, which saw Milton
27:17through years of failure, until he made a fortune on caramel.
27:27In 1893, he was fascinated by chocolate-making at the Chicago World's Fair.
27:34At the time, milk chocolate was a delicacy produced mostly by the Swiss.
27:42In 1905, Hershey opened up a factory in his hometown and started bringing chocolate to
27:48the masses.
27:56He also gave back, starting the Hershey School to give disadvantaged kids a good education.
28:06Another Pennsylvania entrepreneur made it big with ketchup.
28:12Pittsburgh native Henry John Hines started out selling horseradish, which did well until
28:18the economy collapsed.
28:21After being broke for a few years, Hines borrowed money from his brother and started bottling
28:26ketchup in 1876.
28:30One component of his success?
28:32A clear glass bottle.
28:34Consumers liked to see what they were buying.
28:39By 1900, Hines was the leading manufacturer of ketchup and other condiments.
28:50A Michigan businessman changed the USA forever in 1908 when he debuted the Model T Ford.
29:00Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he did make it affordable by drastically cutting
29:05assembly costs.
29:09Early cars were handcrafted by specialized workers, a long, slow process.
29:18With an assembly line, Ford managed to dramatically cut the Model T's production time.
29:25Once the automobile started selling, Ford put the money back into his business, lowering
29:30the car's price from $825 to $575 in just four years.
29:41By 1914, nearly half the cars on American roads were Model T's.
29:46And with those profits, Ford bought 1,300 acres on the banks of the nearby Rogue River,
29:52where he built the Fairlane estate.
30:00Ford was proud of his modest roots and told builders not to spend more than $250,000.
30:07But after two years and 56 rooms, the total bill was nearly $2.5 million.
30:25The home featured a hydroelectric power station, built with design help from Ford's friend
30:30Thomas Edison.
30:36Two generators on the river powered the estate, along with 2,000 other nearby homes.
30:56Ford paid tribute to Edison and other American inventors at a one-of-a-kind site, Greenfield
31:01Village in Dearborn.
31:05This is where Ford transported and recreated dozens of notable homes from around the world.
31:15Among them, Edison's Invention Factory, part of which came from Menlo Park, New Jersey.
31:24The village also features the Wright Brothers Workshop, and a courthouse where Abe Lincoln
31:30practiced law.
31:35Ford and Edison had something else in common, their visits to the Seventh Day Adventist
31:40Sanitarium in Battle Creek, health spa to the rich and famous.
31:49In 1876, a surgeon and inventor named Dr. John Harvey Kellogg took over the site, insisting
31:56patients follow a regimen of vegetarianism, colonics, and daily exercise.
32:04Dr. Harvey and his brother, Will, were always researching healthier food options.
32:14One day, while trying to make a bread substitute, Will left out boiled wheat too long.
32:20He rolled and baked it anyway, accidentally inventing what would eventually become corn
32:25flakes.
32:29Sanitarium patients loved it, even asking to have the cereals shipped to their homes.
32:36Will went on to found the Kellogg Company, creating a permanent rift between the brothers.
32:43By 1906, Kellogg's was a household name.
32:50More than five decades later, Michigan produced something else that would take the USA by
32:55storm, the Motown sound.
32:59In 1959, at the urging of his friend Smokey Robinson, a songwriter named Barry Gordy founded
33:06Motown Records in this modest Detroit house.
33:13One year later, the company had its first hit with Shop Around, written and performed
33:17by Robinson and his band, The Miracles.
33:26Gordy, a former auto worker, knew from the car business that to keep consumers happy,
33:31he had to produce fast.
33:37And for the next decade, he did, with talent like The Temptations, The Four Tops, The Supremes,
33:43and many more.
33:51The hit factory thrived through the 60s, until 1972, when Gordy set up shop in Hollywood.
33:58In 1988, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
34:05But the Motown sound might never have existed had it not been for Clarksdale, Mississippi,
34:13and the blues.
34:28The music has its roots in the Mississippi Delta, at juke joints where African Americans
34:33gathered in the early 1900s to dance, drink, and listen to music.
34:42Blues is said to have started south of here, in Tutwiler.
34:46A band leader named W.C.
34:48Handy heard a fellow traveler playing what Handy called the weirdest music he'd ever
34:53heard.
34:55Nine years later, Handy published Memphis Blues, the first song with blues in its title.
35:04Clarksdale is home to the Delta Blues Museum, housed in an old freight depot.
35:11It also celebrates musicians with close ties to the town, including Charlie Patton, Sunhouse,
35:18Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters.
35:23That said, Muddy boarded a bus right here, joining six million black Southerners in the
35:28Great Migration North.
35:29I'm gonna pack my suitcase, he sang, and make my getaway.
35:39The exposure Muddy Waters' music found in Chicago launched the Delta Blues into the
35:44mainstream, changing music forever.
35:57Another Southerner came up with something hot in the bayous of Louisiana.
36:06In the mid-1800s, a man named Edmund McElhenney moved to Avery Island after marrying into
36:12the Avery family.
36:20Their main staples were salt and sugar cane, but Edmund grew Tabasco plants as a hobby.
36:29When the Civil War started, the family fled.
36:34They returned to find the salt mines flooded and the sugar cane burned, but the red pepper
36:41plants were flourishing.
36:47Edmund, a talented cook, allowed the peppers to age and ferment so he could make a spicy
36:52sauce.
36:58In 1868, he sent samples in small cologne bottles to food distributors and called it
37:03Tabasco.
37:06These days, most of Tabasco's peppers come from Mexico, but every bottle is still filled
37:11at this factory on Avery Island.
37:26From Alabama to Texas are fields of white.
37:31These are cotton plants, a major source of income in the South since slaves painstakingly
37:36picked it in the 1700s.
37:40Then an inventor named Eli Whitney came South as a tutor and saw how hard it was to separate
37:46the seeds from the cotton.
37:57He created a cotton gin that, unlike its predecessors, could handle the short staple
38:02cotton commonly grown in the South.
38:05But before Whitney could profit from the invention, others illegally copied it.
38:10He left the South broke and frustrated.
38:15Whitney went North to pursue another idea, mass production.
38:20He started making something new, machine-made interchangeable parts.
38:27This model went on to help spur the Industrial Revolution.
38:31Other farmland in Alabama produced something far different.
38:36One of the fastest race tracks in America, the Talladega Super Speedway.
38:42It opened in 1969, the latest addition to the NASCAR circuit, one of the biggest spectator
38:48sports in the world.
38:53The first organized NASCAR race was in Daytona Beach in 1948 on the actual beach.
39:00Over the next two decades, stock car racing would explode, hitting the airwaves the same
39:06year Talladega opened and producing stars like Pete Hamilton and David Pearson.
39:16In the 80s and 90s, the track was dominated by Dale Earnhardt before his death during
39:21a 2001 Daytona race.
39:25The accident led to rigorous new safety measures in the sport.
39:32Nearly 600 miles from the speedway is a place that couldn't be more different, the very
39:37peaceful town of Green Bank, West Virginia.
39:41Home to the Green Bank Radio Telescope, the world's biggest land-based movable structure.
39:49Radio astronomers use it to learn more about outer space.
39:53But they need things to be very quiet.
39:56That's part of the reason they chose this town.
39:59The Allegheny Mountains protect it from much man-made noise.
40:03On top of that, residents can't use cell phones, digital cameras, or Wi-Fi connections because
40:10the signals would interfere with the astronomers' work.
40:25In the western part of the state is what some call a work of structural art, the New River
40:31Gorge Bridge, the longest single-arch steel bridge in the world.
40:37Before it was built, drivers had to take a 40-mile trip around the gorge.
40:46Bridge construction began in 1974, with engineers stringing cables between towers on either
40:52side.
41:01The challenge of a single-arch design is that the weight of the structure pushes outward
41:06from the arch, threatening to make the bridge sag.
41:11But in this case, the mountain provides rock-solid support.
41:27Some of the greatest architecture made in the USA came from the man behind this masterpiece,
41:33Frank Lloyd Wright.
41:36Wright and his students started coming to Arizona in 1933 to escape the bitter winters
41:40in Wright's home state of Wisconsin.
41:44In 1937, he purchased this land outside Scottsdale to build a permanent winter retreat and school
41:50of architecture.
41:52Wright's work focused on organic architecture.
41:57Taliesin's buildings are low, tucked into the mountains.
42:02Wright and his students would come back to Taliesin West every winter until his death
42:06in 1959 at the age of 91.
42:17Arizona is also home to one of the most unique structures ever made in the USA.
42:26This is Biosphere 2 in the town of Oracle, outside Tucson.
42:32In 1991, scientists sealed eight people inside it for two years to see if humans might be
42:40able to colonize another planet.
42:44Inside, they had a working farm, along with replicas of an ocean, savanna, and rainforest.
43:01Scientists learned a great deal, but that was largely overshadowed by infighting between
43:06Biospherians and some of their bosses.
43:14Biosphere 2 is now owned by the University of Arizona, which uses it to study climate
43:19change and ecology, among other things.
43:26Elsewhere in Arizona, another visionary has different ideas about how the future should
43:32look.
43:34Seventy miles north of Phoenix is the community of Arcosanti, the work of Italian architect
43:40Paolo Soleri.
43:46In 1970, long before going green was popular, he started constructing arcologies here, buildings
43:54that blend ecology and architecture.
44:02Soleri wanted to introduce a new kind of carless city living that could also save the planet.
44:11His urban experiment also incorporated green efforts like solar power.
44:26Over the decades, people have come from around the world to live and work at Arcosanti.
44:31But the total population never approached the 5,000 mark Soleri envisioned.
44:59From forward-thinking architects in the Southwest to resourceful townspeople in the Midwest,
45:07what's made in the USA has changed drastically over the decades.
45:15In the early 1900s, Americans were just beginning to take flight.
45:23Within 70 years, some were landing space shuttles.
45:29This is a country that went from driving the auto industry to powering the Internet,
45:37and from singing the blues to that groundbreaking Motown sound.
45:44Regardless of how the technology or landscape may change, one thing will remain the same.
45:51America will continue to reinvent itself.