In 1881, the American neurologist George Beard proclaimed “there is very little in this world worth knowing”, and counselled, “Ignorance is power as well as joy”. Beard and a host of other turn-of-the-century observers, including business leaders, educators, students, and workers, all agreed that the rushing current of information carried by telegraph wires, telephones, newspapers, and railroads exceeded humans’ power to comprehend it. To produce such narrowly focused specialists, American businesses and government organizations increasingly turned to universities, which were taking on their modern form in the late nineteenth century. In these institutions, a new form of education emerged, one which emphasized research, advanced degrees, and intellectual specialization. In psychology laboratories in Europe and the US, investigators tried to understand the mental processes that enabled attention. The doctors who worried about cerebral hyperaemia, neurasthenia, and mental fatigue contended that human brain power was ultimately a finite resource.