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

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Plastics magazine. A few things we metalplated were very pretty. They looked good in the advertisements. We also had a few things out in a showcase in front, for prospective customers to look at, but nobody could pick up the things in the advertisements or in the showcase to see how well the plating stayed on. Perhaps some of them were, in fact, pretty good jobs. But they were made specially; they were not regular products. Right after I left the company at the end of the summer to go to Princeton, they got a good offer from somebody who wanted to metalplate plastic pens. Now people could have silver pens that were light, and easy, and cheap. The pens immediately sold, all over, and it was rather exciting to see people walking around everywhere with these pens and you knew where they came from. But the company hadn't had much experience with the material or perhaps with the filler that was used in the plastic (most plastics aren't pure; they have a "filler," which in those days wasn't very well controlled) and the darn things would develop a blister. When you have something in your hand that has a little blister that starts to peel, you can't help fiddling with it. So everybody was fiddling with all the peelings coming off the pens. Now the company had this emergency problem to fix the pens, and my pal decided he needed a big microscope, and so on. He didn't know what he was going to look at, or why, and it cost his company a lot of money for this fake research. The result was, they had trouble: They never solved the problem, and the company failed, because their first big job was such a failure. A few years later I was in Los Alamos, where there was a man named Frederic de Hoflinan, who was a sort of scientist; but more, he was also very good at administrating. Not highly trained, he liked mathematics, and worked very hard; he compensated for his lack of training by hard work. Later he became the president or vice president of General Atomics and he was a big industrial character after that. But at the time he was just a very energetic, openeyed, enthusiastic boy, helping along with the Project as best he could. One day we were eating at the Fuller Lodge, and he told me he had been working in England before coming to Los Alamos. "What kind of work were you doing there?" I asked. "I was working on a process for metalplating plastics. I was one of the guys in the laboratory." "How did it go?" "It was going along pretty well, but we had our problems." "Oh?" "Just as we were beginning to develop our process, there was a company in New York. . ." "What company in New York?" "It was called the Metaplast Corporation. They were developing further than we were." "How could you tell?" "They were advertising all the time in Modern Plastics with fullpage advertisements showing all the things they could plate, and we realized that they were further along than we were." "Did you have any stuff from them?" "No, but you could tell from the advertisements that they were way ahead of what
we could do. Our process was pretty good, but it was no use trying to compete with an American process like that." "How many chemists did you have working in the lab?" "We had six chemists working." "How many chemists do you think the Metaplast Corporation had?" "Oh! They must have had a real chemistry department!" "Would you describe for me what you think the chief research chemist at the Metaplast Corporation might look like, and how his laboratory might work?" "I would guess they must have twentyfive or fifty chemists, and the chief research chemist has his own office special, with glass. You know, like they have in the movies guys coming in all the time with research projects that they're doing, getting his advice, and rushing off to do more research, people coming in and out all the time. With twentyfive or fifty chemists, how the hell could we compete with them?" "You'll be interested and amused to know that you are now talking to the chief research chemist of the Metaplast Corporation, whose staff consisted of one bottle washer!" "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" Part 2 The Princeton Years When I was an undergraduate at MIT I loved it. I thought it was a great place, and I wanted to go to graduate school there too, of course. But when I went to Professor Slater and told him of my intentions, he said, "We won't let you in here." I said, "What?" Slater said, "Why do you think you should go to graduate school at MIT?" "Because MIT is the best school for science in the country." "You think that?" "Yeah." "That's why you should go to some other school. You should find out how the rest of the world is." So I decided to go to Princeton. Now Princeton had a certain aspect of elegance. It was an imitation of an English school, partly. So the guys in the fraternity, who knew my rather rough, informal manners, started making remarks like "Wait till they find out who they've got coming to Princeton! Wait till they see the mistake they made!" So I decided to try to be nice when I got to Princeton. My father took me to Princeton in his car, and I got my room, and he left. I hadn't been there an hour when I was met by a man: "I'm the Mahstah of Residences heah, and I should like to tell you that the Dean is having a Tea this aftanoon, and he should like to have all of you come. Perhaps you would be so kind as to inform your roommate, Mr. Serette."
Page 1 and 2: "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
Page 3 and 4: Preface The stories in this book we
Page 5 and 6: He Fixes Radios by Thinking! Part 1
Page 7 and 8: could act like a microphone, and yo
Page 9 and 10: whole afternoon to find a burnedo
Page 11 and 12: For logarithms it was a big L exten
Page 13 and 14: very sharp knife into the table at
Page 15 and 16: and be more relaxed, and vice versa
Page 17 and 18: One time I danced with a certain gi
Page 19 and 20: same waitress all the time. I notic
Page 21 and 22: "Cut it out, Feynman; this is seri
Page 23 and 24: could find. Before I tell you what
Page 25 and 26: observations were made while I was
Page 27 and 28: I decided there must be an "interpr
Page 29: company. His father was the one who
Page 33 and 34: out of me, because I didn't like fo
Page 35 and 36: In the Princeton cyclotron lab they
Page 37 and 38: When it was time to get up and go o
Page 39 and 40: and animal, are made of little bric
Page 41 and 42: some other experiment. I said, "Hel
Page 43 and 44: We figured if we could get rid of t
Page 45 and 46: do?" I said I didn't know, and he s
Page 47 and 48: always something I could find in th
Page 49 and 50: Atlantic City, where they had vario
Page 51 and 52: 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 and 104:
ar, with all its "temptations," and
Page 105 and 106:
level. . . "Excuse me, sir," I say,
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
Page 155 and 156:
at the paper. Don't take your eyes
Page 157 and 158:
She told me this story: She and her
Page 159 and 160:
were these fluorescent colors on bl
Page 161 and 162:
they came back and bought it. So th
Page 163 and 164:
with the artists from time to time
Page 165 and 166:
understand," and everybody else wou
Page 167 and 168:
way to understand ethical problems
Page 169 and 170:
families all the time, so that if a
Page 171 and 172:
that they called "new math," and si
Page 173 and 174:
awful! All it was was a game to get
Page 175 and 176:
then there was something else. And
Page 177 and 178:
one. Then the question came up, "Wi
Page 179 and 180:
I got that shock about three or fou
Page 181 and 182:
had been brought up by my father ag
Page 183 and 184:
She turned to me and said, "Oh! You
Page 185 and 186:
astronomy. *When I was a young prof
Page 187 and 188:
After the colloquium at UCLA Profes
Page 189 and 190:
So the fella who'd been talking to
Page 191 and 192:
andleader said, "Geez! Who was that
Page 193 and 194:
who had come out at the beginning o
Page 195 and 196:
"This is the place," the receptioni
Page 197 and 198:
my way down again. At first it took
Page 199 and 200:
external to the internal psychologi
Page 201 and 202:
people with commonsense ideas are i
Page 203 and 204:
think to laymen. For example, I was
Page 205:
to have such a policy in teaching
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"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.

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