"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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fast!" We shake hands. Curly says, "Uh, pleased to meet you." Then the genius leans over to me and very quietly whispers, "Now get out of here "But they said they would. . ." "Just go!" he says. I got my coat and went out quickly. I walked along near the walls of the buildings, in case they went looking for me. Nobody came out, and I went to my hotel. It happened to be the night of the last lecture, so I never went back to the Alibi Room, at least for a few years. (I did go back to the Alibi Room about ten years later, and it was all different. It wasn't nice and polished like it was before; it was sleazy and had seedylooking people in it. I talked to the bartender, who was a different man, and told him about the old days. "Oh, yes!" he said. "This was the bar where all the bookmakers and their girls used to hang out." I understood then why there were so many friendly and elegantlooking people there, and why the phones were ringing all the time.) The next morning, when I got up and looked in the mirror, I discovered that a black eye takes a few hours to develop fully. When I got back to Ithaca that day, I went to deliver some stuff over to the dean's office. A professor of philosophy saw my black eye and exclaimed, "Oh, Mr. Feynman! Don't tell me you got that walking into a door?" "Not at all," I said. "I got it in a fight in the men's room of a bar in Buffalo." "Ha, ha, ha!" he laughed. Then there was the problem of giving the lecture to my regular class. I walked into the lecture hall with my head down, studying my notes. When I was ready to start, I lifted my head and looked straight at them, and said what I always said before I began my lecture but this time, in a tougher tone of voice: "Any questions?" I Want My Dollar! When I was at Cornell I would often come back home to Far Rockaway to visit. One time when I happened to be home, the telephone rings: it's LONG DISTANCE, from California. In those days, a long distance call meant it was something very important, especially a long distance call from this marvelous place, California, a million miles away. The guy on the other end says, "Is this Professor Feynman, of Cornell University?" "That's right." "This is Mr. Soandso from the Suchandsuch Aircraft Company." It was one of the big airplane companies in California, but unfortunately I can't remember which one. The guy continues: "We're planning to start a laboratory on nuclearpropelled rocket airplanes. It will have an annual budget of soandsomany million dollars. . ." Big num bers. I said, "Just a moment, sir; I don't know why you're telling me all this." "Just let me speak to you," he says; "just let me explain everything. Please let me do it my way." So he goes on a little more, and says how many people are going to be in the laboratory, soandsomany people at this level, and soandsomany Ph.D.'s at that
level. . . "Excuse me, sir," I say, "but I think you have the wrong fella." "Am I talking to Richard Feynman, Richard P. Feynman?" "Yes, but you're. . ." "Would you please let me present what I have to say, sir, and then we'll discuss it." "All right!" I sit down and sort of close my eyes to listen to all this stuff, all these details about this big project, and I still haven't the slightest idea why he's giving me all this information. Finally, when he's all finished, he says, "I'm telling you about our plans because we want to know if you would like to be the director of the laboratory." "Have you really got the right fella?" I say. "I'm a professor of theoretical physics. I'm not a rocket engineer, or an airplane engineer, or anything like that." "We're sure we have the right fellow." "Where did you get my name then? Why did you decide to call me?" "Sir, your name is on the patent for nuclearpowered, rocketpropelled airplanes." "Oh," I said, and I realized why my name was on the patent, and I'll have to tell you the story. I told the man, "I'm sorry, but I would like to continue as a professor at Cornell University." What had happened was, during the war at Los Alamos, there was a very nice fella in charge of the patent office for the government, named Captain Smith. Smith sent around a notice to everybody that said something like, "We in the patent office would like to patent every idea you have for the United States government, for which you are working now. Any idea you have on nuclear energy or its application that you may think everybody knows about, everybody doesn't know about: Just come to my office and tell me the idea." I see Smith at lunch, and as we're walking back to the technical area, I say to him, "That note you sent around: That's kind of crazy to have us come in and tell you every idea." We discussed it back and forth by this time we're in his office and I say, "There are so many ideas about nuclear energy that are so perfectly obvious, that I'd be here all day telling you stuff." "LIKE WHAT?" "Nothin' to it!" I say. "Example: nuclear reactor. . . under water. . . water goes in. . . steam goes out the other side. . . Pshshshsht it's a submarine. Or: nuclear reactor. . . air comes rushing in the front. . . heated up by nuclear reaction. . . out the back it goes. . . Boom! Through the air it's an airplane. Or: nuclear reactor. . . you have hydrogen go through the thing. . . Zoom! it's a rocket. Or: nuclear reactor. . . only instead of using ordinary uranium, you use enriched uranium, with beryllium oxide at high temperature to make it more efficient. . . It's an electrical power plant. There's a million ideas!" I said, as I went out the door. Nothing happened. About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says, "Feynman, the submarine has already been taken. But the other three are yours." So when the guys at the airplane company in California are planning their laboratory, and try to find out who's an expert in rocketpropelled whatnots, there's nothing to it: They look at who's got the patent on it! Anyway, Smith told me to sign some papers for the three ideas I was giving
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
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Preface The stories in this book we
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He Fixes Radios by Thinking! Part 1
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could act like a microphone, and yo
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whole afternoon to find a burnedo
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For logarithms it was a big L exten
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very sharp knife into the table at
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and be more relaxed, and vice versa
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One time I danced with a certain gi
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same waitress all the time. I notic
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"Cut it out, Feynman; this is seri
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could find. Before I tell you what
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observations were made while I was
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I decided there must be an "interpr
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company. His father was the one who
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we could do. Our process was pretty
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out of me, because I didn't like fo
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In the Princeton cyclotron lab they
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When it was time to get up and go o
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and animal, are made of little bric
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some other experiment. I said, "Hel
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We figured if we could get rid of t
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do?" I said I didn't know, and he s
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always something I could find in th
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Atlantic City, where they had vario
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though it was a microscope of forty
Page 53 and 54: lowing" it occurred. I followed eig
Page 55 and 56: I asked the Bell Labs if they would
Page 57 and 58: the fuse won't burn! I decided that
Page 59 and 60: that he wanted to try to develop. H
Page 61 and 62: Mexico," the man says, "Oh, so all
Page 63 and 64: meantime, what instructions go down
Page 65 and 66: said, "No codes." So I wrote back t
Page 67 and 68: I looked at it and said, "That look
Page 69 and 70: people that I wanted were there, an
Page 71 and 72: different where you go first t
Page 73 and 74: concentrate on this one. So they st
Page 75 and 76: it was very difficult. Now, us
Page 77 and 78: was radioactive. It was plutonium.
Page 79 and 80: One guy tries to make something to
Page 81 and 82: Everybody was amazed. It was comple
Page 83 and 84: it appeared, depends on the same li
Page 85 and 86: Hoffman is just the kind of guy to
Page 87 and 88: mathematical constant?" "Oh, no!" d
Page 89 and 90: of little cubbyholes that contained
Page 91 and 92: himself! So I turn around, and sure
Page 93 and 94: "No. Do you?" "Well, I'm keeping an
Page 95 and 96: partly in the strength of our futur
Page 97 and 98: have any room either. I say to the
Page 99 and 100: answered the questions. Everything
Page 101 and 102: around faster than the wobbling. I
Page 103: ar, with all its "temptations," and
Page 107 and 108: I liked to imitate being drunk, so
Page 109 and 110: you been?" At this moment the guy t
Page 111 and 112: "What?" "That's right," he said con
Page 113 and 114: After that, I tried to do those thi
Page 115 and 116: He was completely washed out, and l
Page 117 and 118: Monday, at the latest. I got all up
Page 119 and 120: The people from the airlines were s
Page 121 and 122: The boss said, "Where're you from?"
Page 123 and 124: eaches, where most people felt thei
Page 125 and 126: super: He answered everything nifty
Page 127 and 128: y first learning to pronounce the l
Page 129 and 130: Certainly, Mr. Big! I used to cross
Page 131 and 132: We were eating breakfast in the din
Page 133 and 134: "That must have been it," I said. I
Page 135 and 136: some kind of big pain, and it start
Page 137 and 138: the two piles of hay, with the extr
Page 139 and 140: I must refuse. The reason I have to
Page 141 and 142: hotel. I pushed open the doors and
Page 143 and 144: "Well, yes. . ." "Hoompf." And that
Page 145 and 146: something like, "May I observe your
Page 147 and 148: in fact, a prediction on top of wha
Page 149 and 150: "The one from SoandSo's book."
Page 151 and 152: government, or else I can't talk in
Page 153 and 154: et Jerry that he wouldn't be able t
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at the paper. Don't take your eyes
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She told me this story: She and her
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were these fluorescent colors on bl
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they came back and bought it. So th
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with the artists from time to time
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understand," and everybody else wou
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way to understand ethical problems
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families all the time, so that if a
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that they called "new math," and si
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awful! All it was was a game to get
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then there was something else. And
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one. Then the question came up, "Wi
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I got that shock about three or fou
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had been brought up by my father ag
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She turned to me and said, "Oh! You
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astronomy. *When I was a young prof
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After the colloquium at UCLA Profes
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So the fella who'd been talking to
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andleader said, "Geez! Who was that
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who had come out at the beginning o
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"This is the place," the receptioni
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my way down again. At first it took
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external to the internal psychologi
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people with commonsense ideas are i
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think to laymen. For example, I was
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to have such a policy in teaching
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