Given this optimistic approach to technological innovation, the American worker took readily to that special kind of nonverbal thinking required in mechanical technology. As Eugene Ferguson has pointed out, 'A technologist thinks about objects that cannot be reduced to unambiguous verbal descriptions; they are dealt with in his mind by a visual, nonverbal process... The designer and the inventor... are able to assemble and manipulate in their minds devices that as yet do not exist.' This nonverbal 'spatial' thinking can be just as creative as painting and writing. Robert Fulton once wrote, 'The mechanic should sit down among levers, screws, wedges, wheels, etc., like a poet among the letters of the alphabet, considering them as an exhibition of his thoughts, in which a new arrangement transmits a new idea.' When all these shaping forces -- schools, open attitudes, the premium system, a genius for spatial thinking -- interacted with one another on the rich U.S. mainland, they produced that American characteristic, emulation. Today that word implies mere imitation. But in earlier times it meant a friendly but competitive striving for fame and excellence.