Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–227
could control him. Well, the first thing anybody learns about Dan Goldin is that he is his own
man. He may be strange; he may have strange ideas; but he is not stupid, and he is not going to
be controlled by Edward Teller or Lowell Wood. So I’m sure the most disappointed people in
the whole universe with Dan Goldin were Teller and Wood. They had picked this guy out of
TRW, and they thought he would be their person, and he wasn’t anybody’s person except Dan
Goldin’s. Now, Dan became a fan of Total Quality Management [TQM]. Ed Stone tried to get
the whole lab to buy into it and insisted on it. But there was one critic of TQM that everyone
adored. His name was Charles Elachi, and he basically said to Ed Stone, “It’s bullshit. I’m
either going to do my job or do TQM. Ed, you choose.” [Laughter] So fortunately, at least one
person at JPL never bought into TQM, which was a pile of crap and drove the lab nuts. Elachi
won the hearts and minds of the lab at that point.
ASPATURIAN: Why do you think Dr. Stone went for this?
[PORTION TEMPORARILY CLOSED, pages 227-231]
[RESUMES, REMAINDER OF PAGE 231]
ASPATURIAN: That reminds me, were you involved at all in choosing the architect and the design
of the Cahill?
TOMBRELLO: Yes! Oh, you want to talk about the Cahill?
ASPATURIAN: Sure, since we were talking about architecture.
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