"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.
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level. . .<br />
"Excuse me, sir," I say, "but I think you have the wrong fella."<br />
"Am I talking to Richard <strong>Feynman</strong>, Richard P. <strong>Feynman</strong>?"<br />
"Yes, but you're. . ."<br />
"Would you please let me present what I have to say, sir, and then we'll discuss<br />
it."<br />
"All right!" I sit down and sort of close my eyes to listen to all this stuff, all these<br />
details about this big project, and I still haven't the slightest idea why he's giving me all<br />
this information.<br />
Finally, when he's all finished, he says, "I'm telling you about our plans because<br />
we want to know if you would like to be the director of the laboratory."<br />
"Have you really got the right fella?" I say. "I'm a professor of theoretical physics.<br />
I'm not a rocket engineer, or an airplane engineer, or anything like that."<br />
"We're sure we have the right fellow."<br />
"Where did you get my name then? Why did you decide to call me?"<br />
"Sir, your name is on the patent for nuclearpowered, rocketpropelled airplanes."<br />
"Oh," I said, and I realized why my name was on the patent, and I'll have to tell<br />
you the story. I told the man, "I'm sorry, but I would like to continue as a professor at<br />
Cornell University."<br />
What had happened was, during the war at Los Alamos, there was a very nice<br />
fella in charge of the patent office for the government, named Captain Smith. Smith sent<br />
around a notice to everybody that said something like, "We in the patent office would<br />
like to patent every idea you have for the United States government, for which you are<br />
working now. Any idea you have on nuclear energy or its application that you may think<br />
everybody knows about, everybody doesn't know about: Just come to my office and tell<br />
me the idea."<br />
I see Smith at lunch, and as we're walking back to the technical area, I say to him,<br />
"That note you sent around: That's kind of crazy to have us come in and tell you every<br />
idea."<br />
We discussed it back and forth by this time we're in his office and I say,<br />
"There are so many ideas about nuclear energy that are so perfectly obvious, that I'd be<br />
here all day telling you stuff."<br />
"LIKE WHAT?"<br />
"Nothin' to it!" I say. "Example: nuclear reactor. . . under water. . . water goes in. .<br />
. steam goes out the other side. . . Pshshshsht it's a submarine. Or: nuclear reactor. . .<br />
air comes rushing in the front. . . heated up by nuclear reaction. . . out the back it goes. . .<br />
Boom! Through the air it's an airplane. Or: nuclear reactor. . . you have hydrogen go<br />
through the thing. . . Zoom! it's a rocket. Or: nuclear reactor. . . only instead of using<br />
ordinary uranium, you use enriched uranium, with beryllium oxide at high temperature<br />
to make it more efficient. . . It's an electrical power plant. There's a million ideas!" I said,<br />
as I went out the door. Nothing happened.<br />
About three months later, Smith calls me in the office and says, "<strong>Feynman</strong>, the<br />
submarine has already been taken. But the other three are yours." So when the guys at the<br />
airplane company in California are planning their laboratory, and try to find out who's an<br />
expert in rocketpropelled whatnots, there's nothing to it: They look at who's got the<br />
patent on it! Anyway, Smith told me to sign some papers for the three ideas I was giving