WEBVTT

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- Entrepreneurial achievers
are very often outsiders,

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unafraid to try something new.

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Elon Musk came from outside
the space and auto industries,

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yet he achieved great advances

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in electric vehicles and space travel.

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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos
started out selling books

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and disrupted just about everything.

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Julia Morgan was another outsider:

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a woman who lived in
the early 20th century,

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when women did not have
the right to vote,

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and few worked in the professions.

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Yet despite that, or
perhaps because of it,

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Morgan became an architect

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whose innovations made
buildings safer.

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Morgan was born in 1872 and
grew up in San Francisco.

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She enrolled in the University
of California at Berkeley,

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intending to become an architect.

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Berkeley, however, had
no architecture program.

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Fortunately for Julia, one
of her college lecturers

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was the noted California
architect Bernard Maybeck,

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who informally mentored her in his home

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with a handful of other students.

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Maybeck urged Julia to study

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at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

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The prestigious school was
starting to admit women.

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Europe opened her eyes
to the castles

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that would influence her
building designs,

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and perhaps most importantly,

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she learned about a new
construction method:

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reinforced concrete.

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Europeans had discovered
that reinforcing concrete

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with steel bars greatly
strengthened piers and bridges.

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Julia returned home from Paris

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to become the first woman
in California

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to receive an architectural
license in 1904.

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One of her early projects was
El Campanil,

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a 72-foot tall bell tower
at Mills College in Oakland.

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She designed the structure

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using the reinforced concrete method

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she had learned in Paris.

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This was something new.

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In America, concrete back then

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was used mainly in foundations.

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Two years later, when the historic

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San Francisco earthquake
decimated the area,

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El Campanil was one of the
few buildings left unscathed.

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Word spread of her achievement.

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Morgan became a key figure

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in the rebuilding of San Francisco.

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Her brilliant reconstruction

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of the city's historic Fairmont Hotel,

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won her even more fame
and more clients.

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One of them was Phoebe Apperson Hearst

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of the Hearst mining family.

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Phoebe Hearst introduced Julia
to her son,

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publisher William Randolph Hearst,

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and Morgan embarked on the best
known project of her career.

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She would design Hearst's
Monumental Residence - San Simeon.

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Located high above the Pacific

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on what he called "the Enchanted Hill,"

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San Simeon known today as Hearst Castle

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was a massive undertaking.

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165 rooms, an indoor Roman
pool, an outdoor Neptune pool,

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and 123 acres of gardens,
terraces, and walkways.

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Morgan worked on the project
for more than 25 years,

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supervising everything: from the purchase

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of the estate's Spanish antiquities

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to the Icelandic moss at the castle's zoo.

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[elephant trumpeting]

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Julia Morgan designed a
total of 700 public buildings

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and residences in California,

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and several in earthquake-plagued Japan.

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Her success with reinforced concrete

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led to changes in California's
building code.

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The El Campanil Tower and San
Simeon survive to this day.

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I'm Steve Forbes.

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[gentle music]