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

Atlantic City, where they had various carnival things going on outdoors. While my father
was doing some business, I went to see a mindreader. He was seated on the stage with his
back to the audience, dressed in robes and wearing a great big turban. He had an
assistant, a little guy who was running around through the audience, saying things like,
"Oh, Great Master, what is the color of this pocketbook?"
"Blue!" says the master.
"And oh, Illustrious Sir, what is the name of this woman?"
"Marie!"
Some guy gets up: "What's my name?"
"Henry."
I get up and say, "What's my name?"
He doesn't answer. The other guy was obviously a confederate, but I couldn't
figure out how the mindreader did the other tricks, like telling the color of the
pocketbook. Did he wear earphones underneath the turban?
When I met up with my father, I told him about it. He said, "They have a code
worked out, but I don't know what it is. Let's go back and find out."
We went back to the place, and my father said to me, "Here's fifty cents. Go get
your fortune read in the booth back there, and I'll see you in half an hour."
I knew what he was doing. He was going to tell the man a story, and it would go
smoother if his son wasn't there going, "Ooh, ooh!" all the time. He had to get me out of
the way.
When he came back he told me the whole code: "Blue is 'Oh, Great Master,'
Green is 'Oh, Most Knowledgeable One,'" and so forth. He explained, "I went up to him,
afterwards, and told him I used to do a show in Patchogue, and we had a code, but it
couldn't do many numbers, and the range of colors was shorter. I asked him, 'How do you
carry so much information?'"
The mindreader was so proud of his code that he sat down and explained the
whole works to my father. My father was a salesman. He could set up a situation like that.
I can't do stuff like that.
The Amateur Scientist
When I was a kid I had a "lab." It wasn't a laboratory in the sense that I would
measure, or do important experiments.
Instead, I would play: I'd make a motor, I'd make a gadget that would go off when
something passed a photocell. I'd play around with selenium; I was piddling around all
the time. I did calculate a little bit for the lamp bank, a series of switches and bulbs I used
as resistors to control voltages. But all that was for application. I never did any laboratory
kind of experiments.
I also had a microscope and loved to watch things under the microscope. It took
patience: I would get something under the microscope and I would watch it interminably.
I saw many interesting things, like everybody sees ­­ a diatom slowly making its way
across the slide, and so on.
One day I was watching a paramecium and I saw something that was not
described in the books I got in school ­­ in college, even. These books always simplify