"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam. "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" - unam.
can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing. I was asked to stop working on the stuff I was doing in my group and go down and take over the IBM group, and I tried to avoid the disease. And, although they had done only three problems in nine months, I had a very good group. The real trouble was that no one had ever told these fellows anything. The army had selected them from all over the country for a thing called Special Engineer Detachment clever boys from high school who had engineering ability. They sent them up to Los Alamos. They put them in barracks. And they would tell them nothing. Then they came to work, and what they had to do was work on IBM machines punching holes, numbers that they didn't understand. Nobody told them what it was. The thing was going very slowly. I said that the first thing there has to be is that these technical guys know what we're doing. Oppenheimer went and talked to the security and got special permission so I could give a nice lecture about what we were doing, and they were all excited: "We're fighting a war! We see what it is!" They knew what the numbers meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released, and so on and so on. They knew what they were doing. Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They improved the scheme. They worked at night. They didn't need supervising in the night; they didn't need anything. They understood everything; they invented several of the programs that we used. So my boys really came through, and all that had to be done was to tell them what it was. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did nine problems in three months, which is nearly ten times as fast. But one of the secret ways we did our problems was this. The problems consisted of a bunch of cards that had to go through a cycle. First add, then multiply and so it went through the cycle of machines in this room, slowly, as it went around and around. So we figured a way to put a different colored set of cards through a cycle too, but out of phase. We'd do two or three problems at a time. But this got us into another problem. Near the end of the war, for instance, just before we had to make a test in Albuquerque, the question was: How much energy would be released? We had been calculating the release from various designs, but we hadn't computed for the specific design that was ultimately used. So Bob Christy came down and said, "We would like the results for how this thing is going to work in one month" or some very short time, like three weeks. I said, "It's impossible." He said, "Look, you're putting out nearly two problems a month. It takes only two weeks per problem, or three weeks per problem." I said, "I know. It really takes much longer to do the problem, but we're doing them in parallel. As they go through, it takes a long time and there's no way to make it go around faster." He went out, and I began to think. Is there a way to make it go around faster? What if we did nothing else on the machine, so nothing else was interfering? I put a challenge to the boys on the blackboard CAN WE DO IT? They all start yelling, "Yes, we'll work double shifts, we'll work overtime," all this kind of thing. "We'll try it. We'll try it!" And so the rule was: All other problems out. Only one problem and just
concentrate on this one. So they started to work. My wife, Arlene, was ill with tuberculosis very ill indeed. It looked as if something might happen at any minute, so I arranged ahead of time with a friend of mine in the dormitory to borrow his car in an emergency so I could get to Albuquerque quickly. His name was Klaus Fuchs. He was the spy, and he used his automobile to take the atomic secrets away from Los Alamos down to Santa Fe. But nobody knew that. The emergency arrived. I borrowed Fuchs's car and picked up a couple of hitchhikers, in case something happened with the car on the way to Albuquerque. Sure enough, just as we were driving into Santa Fe, we got a flat tire. The two guys helped me change the tire, and just as we were leaving Santa Fe, another tire went flat. We pushed the car into a nearby gas station. The gas station guy was repairing somebody else's car, and it was going to take a while before he could help us. I didn't even think to say anything, but the two hitchhikers went over to the gas station man and told him the situation. Soon we had a new tire (but no spare tires were hard to get during the war). About thirty niiles outside Albuquerque a third tire went flat, so I left the car on the road and we hitchhiked the rest of the way. I phoned a garage to go out and get the car while I went to the hospital to see my wife. Arlene died a few hours after I got there. A nurse came in to fill out the death certificate, and went out again. I spent a little more time with my wife. Then I looked at the clock I had given her seven years before, when she had first become sick with tuberculosis. It was something which in those days was very nice: a digital clock whose numbers would change by turning around mechanically. The clock was very delicate and often stopped for one reason or another I had to repair it from time to time but I kept it going for all those years. Now, it had stopped once more at 9:22, the time on the death certificate! I remembered the time I was in my fraternity house at MIT when the idea came into my head completely out of the blue that my grandmother was dead. Right after that there was a telephone call, just like that. It was for Pete Bernays my grandmother wasn't dead. So I remembered that, in case somebody told me a story that ended the other way. I figured that such things can sometimes happen by luck after all, my grandmother was very old although people might think they happened by some sort of supernatural phenomenon. Arlene had kept this clock by her bedside all the time she was sick, and now it stopped the moment she died. I can understand how a person who half believes in the possibility of such things, and who hasn't got a doubting mind especially in a circumstance like that doesn't immediately try to figure out what happened, but instead explains that no one touched the clock, and there was no possibility of explanation by normal phenomena. The clock simply stopped. It would become a dramatic example of these fantastic phenomena. I saw that the light in the room was low, and then I remembered that the nurse had picked up the clock and turned it toward the light to see the face better. That could easily have stopped it. I went for a walk outside. Maybe I was fooling myself, but I was surprised how I didn't feel what I thought people would expect to feel under the circumstances. I wasn't delighted, but I didn't feel terribly upset, perhaps because I had known for seven years
- 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 and 30: company. His father was the one who
- Page 31 and 32: we could do. Our process was pretty
- 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: different where you go first t
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing.<br />
I was asked to stop working on the stuff I was doing in my group and go down<br />
and take over the IBM group, and I tried to avoid the disease. And, although they had<br />
done only three problems in nine months, I had a very good group.<br />
The real trouble was that no one had ever told these fellows anything. The army<br />
had selected them from all over the country for a thing called Special Engineer<br />
Detachment clever boys from high school who had engineering ability. They sent them<br />
up to Los Alamos. They put them in barracks. And they would tell them nothing.<br />
Then they came to work, and what they had to do was work on IBM machines <br />
punching holes, numbers that they didn't understand. Nobody told them what it was. The<br />
thing was going very slowly. I said that the first thing there has to be is that these<br />
technical guys know what we're doing. Oppenheimer went and talked to the security and<br />
got special permission so I could give a nice lecture about what we were doing, and they<br />
were all excited: "We're fighting a war! We see what it is!" They knew what the numbers<br />
meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released, and so<br />
on and so on. They knew what they were doing.<br />
Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They<br />
improved the scheme. They worked at night. They didn't need supervising in the night;<br />
they didn't need anything. They understood everything; they invented several of the<br />
programs that we used.<br />
So my boys really came through, and all that had to be done was to tell them what<br />
it was. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did<br />
nine problems in three months, which is nearly ten times as fast.<br />
But one of the secret ways we did our problems was this. The problems consisted<br />
of a bunch of cards that had to go through a cycle. First add, then multiply and so it<br />
went through the cycle of machines in this room, slowly, as it went around and around.<br />
So we figured a way to put a different colored set of cards through a cycle too, but out of<br />
phase. We'd do two or three problems at a time.<br />
But this got us into another problem. Near the end of the war, for instance, just<br />
before we had to make a test in Albuquerque, the question was: How much energy would<br />
be released? We had been calculating the release from various designs, but we hadn't<br />
computed for the specific design that was ultimately used. So Bob Christy came down<br />
and said, "We would like the results for how this thing is going to work in one month" <br />
or some very short time, like three weeks.<br />
I said, "It's impossible."<br />
He said, "Look, you're putting out nearly two problems a month. It takes only two<br />
weeks per problem, or three weeks per problem."<br />
I said, "I know. It really takes much longer to do the problem, but we're doing<br />
them in parallel. As they go through, it takes a long time and there's no way to make it go<br />
around faster."<br />
He went out, and I began to think. Is there a way to make it go around faster?<br />
What if we did nothing else on the machine, so nothing else was interfering? I put a<br />
challenge to the boys on the blackboard CAN WE DO IT? They all start yelling, "Yes,<br />
we'll work double shifts, we'll work overtime," all this kind of thing. "We'll try it. We'll<br />
try it!"<br />
And so the rule was: All other problems out. Only one problem and just