Sticking to the Tar Baby
     
    In 1962 partner Paul Honore and I decided to broadcast a one hour radio report each
evening of the three days of the Spring Joint Computer Conference. We bought some air
time, got our hands on a fifteen pound Butoba tape recorder (then a marvel of
miniaturization), and arranged for press passes to the conference at San Francisco’s
Fairmont Hotel. We even took steps to find out what a computer was before we went to
the conference. Paul, who was then lead technician on the Mark IV prototype for the
two-mile linear accelerator at Stanford, knew a thing or two, but I didn’t know the
difference between an analog computer and a digital computer.
    I stuck my head into the office of Woody Bledsoe, one of our clients, and asked him
what I could read in the next couple of days that would explain what computers were all
about. I had already read the abstracts of all the papers that were to be delivered at the
conference, so I knew what those folks had to say, but had not a clue to what they meant
by it.
    A shadow crossed Dr. Bledsoe’s brow, and he paused a moment before saying
“Considering your condition, there’s nothing to read that would do you any good. Let me
tell you about computers instead.” He then gave a charming twenty minute tour of
computerdom, some of which has stuck with me these decades since. The key phrase
that persists is: “The information is the address; the address is the information.” I even
understood what he meant, and commented that it was basically pretty simple. Woody
smiled in satisfaction, and said:  “Yes, everything in science is simple when you come right
down to it.” He thought for another moment, then commented wistfully: “...except for
quantum mechanics. There’s nothing simple about quantum mechanics.”
    This was pretty much from the horse’s mouth. We didn’t realize at the time what a
distinguished figure Woody was in the burgeoning computer field. Indeed the Palo Alto
office in which we talked was right across the street from the Philco lab which featured the
astounding STRETCH computer. Woody had insisted that he be located where he had
access to that machine, then among the world’s most powerful...maybe as powerful as the
Apple home computer that came along about fifteen years later.
    More, he had worked with the likes of Stanislas Ulam and John von Neumann, and he
was reportedly one of the team to whom it occurred that if two or three trains carrying
nuclear weapons happened to park near each other inadvertently in a railroad yard in
Philadelphia or some such place not considered expendable, their cargoes might form a
critical mass that would cause unwholesome sizzling and blue flashes. The team’s calculations
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encouraged the Atomic Energy Commission to pay closer attention to plans for transporting
their products.
    Woody later held a number of distinguished posts, such as Chairman of the Math
Department at the University of Texas, and President of the American Association for
Artificial Intelligence. The last time we talked, in the mid-1990's, Jim Dowe and I had gone
to Austin, officially to demonstrate some of Jim’s software to the university, but chiefly to let
Jim and Woody meet for the first time, and chat.
    Woody had sentimentally booked us into the Driskell Hotel, a revered local institution,
where my room had a twelve-foot ceiling, and tattered drapes that must have been admired
by generations of cattle and oil barons before me.
    The meeting was prompted by the fact that Jim’s software was derived in part from work
Woody had done with Iben Browning many years before, and Dr. Bledsoe was consumed by
curiosity. “Now,” said Woody, once we were settled in the hotel dining room, “tell me how it
works.” Jim squirmed a bit. His company mistrusted university people, feeling that they tend
blandly to appropriate any ideas they come across, while lecturing on the moral superiority of
academia. Woody said “I won’t tell anybody.” He looked at me earnestly. “I won’t tell
anybody, will I?”  “Woody won’t tell anybody,” I said.
    So, Jim laid it all out, in complete and straightforward style. Woody beamed, and chatted
enthusiastically for a couple of hours, until the hotel closed the dining room. He was so excited
that he took us on a tour of Austin. It was pitch dark, and raining heavily. No matter, he told
us what we would be seeing if it were light and clear, pointing off to invisible landmarks in the
gloom, such as  the home of his friend and colleague, Admiral Bobby Inman.
    We made our formal presentation the next day, running to keep up with Dr. Bledsoe as he
strode the university halls. He must already have known that he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease, of
which he died a year or so later, having documented the course of the affliction in careful detail
so that others might learn from his experience. We later heard that he’d been on the short list to
receive a fatal package from the Unabomber.
    The 1962 radio series went well.
    The reasons for my involvement with technologists are by no means clear. My background
and training (BA in Studies of Russia and East Europe in 1956) didn’t suggest that. My dad was
the sort of guy who, if you asked him what time it was, would tell you how to build a watch, but
he wasn’t a technologist, not even mechanically inclined, merely fascinated by logic and mind
games. He was a big time advertising copywriter, a wordsmith who wrote, among other things,
the Kellogg’s Snap, Crackle, and Pop fugue, with musical help from my brother Jeff. A book
he wrote on Craps still shows up all over the internet. Mind you, he wasn’t often a successful
gambler, but he loved calculating odds in his head, and explaining them to any of his sons who
would listen. I wasn’t one of the better listeners. My mind wandered, sorely frustrating the
lesson-giver.
    While I have demonstrated the technical competence to replace faucet washers without always
causing floods, for example, I don’t know why I came to spend the last few decades working
with technical companies and individuals who have developed radically new technology, and have
tried to put that technology to work in society...with some successes, some failures.
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     Maybe it’s because the whole social structure around technology is so funny, and I was lured
by the entertainment. Things work or they don’t, for practical concerns like gravity and leverage,
not because of arbitrary rules and opinions. It’s hilarious to watch people acting serious and
important about things that work or don’t work, in spite of what they think should work.
    The first time really exotic technology came into my view, my then-college-roommate Paul
Honore was working part time on the Mark III accelerator at Stanford. I  occasionally tagged
along when he went to the lab in the evening. The first time I did that, he was in search of his
radiation badge, just a piece of unexposed film in a light-tight container that all employees were
required to carry while at work, usually clipped to a pocket. The film was processed every week
or so, to see if radiation had fogged it. An employee whose badge was too foggy had to lay out
for a while to keep the average dosage at a tolerable level. Paul couldn’t find his badge anywhere
at home, and decided he must have left it on his bench at work, so he’d better go fetch it before
it got much radiation exposure all by itself. 
    Mark III was mighty impressive to the ignorant visitor. A linear accelerator is an atom smasher
like a cyclotron, but instead of whirling particles in a circle of magnets to build up speed and
energy before the particles hit something, it spits a stream of particles (in Mark III’s case,
electrons) down a straight tube, pumping more energy into them along the way. When the
electrons hit their target, knocking off pieces, big magnets, BIG magnets, steer the knocked-off
bits to detectors of various sorts.
    These steering magnets can be moved around to accommodate different particles in different
experiments. Moving the monster magnets isn’t casual.  The Mark III magnets were mounted
on an immense gun turret platform taken from a ship the Navy didn’t need any more. A double
row of ten-foot klystron tubes marched along the two-hundred foot waveguide of the accelerator,
pumping in energy to hurry the particles along. The system was surprisingly noisy, with a lot of
clicking and banging.  Up on top, a red light flashed ominously, warning that radiation was being
 produced, and adding to the excitement.     
    Paul checked his workbench, and didn’t find his badge, but discovered that he’d forgotten to
add liquid nitrogen to his traps. What?
    Well, hard vacuums had to be maintained inside the waveguide and tubes (they didn’t call ‘em
 “vacuum tubes” in old radios for no reason) through which the electrons were flying. You don’t
want the particles bumping into atoms of air before they reach their targets. It’s easier to maintain
a vacuum at very low temperature, so the experimental rig on Paul’s bench, like most everything
else at the labs, was fitted with traps for air molecules that were cooled by liquid nitrogen at around
-196ºC. Paul had forgotten to fill the system with the cold stuff at the end of his work day. No
problem, he’d just do it while we were there.
    But, there was a problem. The tank of liquid nitrogen was about a hundred feet down a corridor
that ran alongside the accelerator. Unluckily, that area was hot, getting more radiation while the
machine was running than one wanted personally. Paul grumbled, then pulled out a slide rule (really,
a slide rule), and did some calculations, at the end of which, he said he’d figured out that he could
safely spend two and a half minutes in the hot area.
    He took his flask for transporting nitrogen, and crouched like an Olympic runner at the very edge
of the hot area while I held a stopwatch, and said “ready, set, go.” On “go” he ran down to the
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nitrogen tank, filled his flask, and ran back.  He was quick, and managed three trips within the
allowed time.
    With his traps full of steaming nitrogen, but without his badge, we headed back to San Mateo.
The next morning, when he put on his work shoes, Paul hurt his toe on the radiation badge he’d
stuck in one shoe so he’d be sure not to forget it on his way to work.
    Who could fail to be charmed by such an introduction to Big Science?
    A few years later, when I visited Mark III again, it had grown from 200 to 300 feet, Robert
Hofstadter had won a Nobel prize for his work with it, and the signal lights on top of the machine
had changed     from a simple red warning bulb to a Christmas tree of bulbs in various colors,
some painted with stripes and polka dots. I observed additional cable trays in which miles of
wires lay side by side in large piles, connecting one highly technical component to another. I
commented that it must be difficult to keep track of what went where.
    Paul said it was so difficult that they didn’t succeed in doing it. Successive waves of graduate
students used this research tool to run the experiments that were the subjects of their master’s
and doctoral theses. The students hooked into the system creatively, setting up experiments to
produce information...then they wrote their papers, and went away. Often they removed the
valuable instruments they had used, but left the incidental cabling behind. It became almost
impossible to trace a single cable through the maze, and nobody wanted to tug at an unidentified
specimen, for fear it might be doing something important. Cable accumulated like new layers
of city on Ancient Troy.    
    When we visited the big accelerator that grew out of this early system at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the late 1960's, the steering magnets, as big as a house, could
no longer be accommodated on a gun turret, but were mounted on railway carriages that rode
on circular tracks in the end station. 
    I’ve usually been a visitor, a professional outsider, in, but not of many organizations. One
advantage to that (there are stressful disadvantages also) is that the perpetually ill at ease
outsider tends to see things from an angle slightly different from that of the insiders. Sometimes
that’s helpful.
    Indeed, since I’ve never had a formal security clearance, I’ve been officially, not just
temperamentally, an outsider, to whom insiders were forbidden to speak about certain matters
of interest. After I had worked for some years with Iben Browning, hard bitten strangers began
to question my neighbors, relatives, and other contacts about me rather intensively, creating
uneasy suspicion. After three months of this, Dr. Browning took me aside, and said that he’d
been authorized to tell me what I needed to know about a project I’d be working on.
    He made it plain that I didn’t have “a clearance” as such, not Top Secret, not Q, or any
such thing. If anybody asked, I was to declare my non-cleared status forthrightly. If I told
anybody about the work, the people who were paying for it would be deeply offended,
perhaps enough to kill me. Well, OK.  Becoming an insider, even for brief spells, came with
certain hazards. After these many years, the threats associated with those interludes still
make me appropriately nervous.
    Most of what we did was fairly straightforward, chiefly covered not by explicit threats, but
by a sensible keep-quiet-about-this-because-somebody’s-well-being-could-be-at-risk policy.
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We worked often on odd little communications systems for people who didn’t want others to
notice they were communicating.
    In one case, we built some special equipment, and a nice man came to see if it actually
worked. One evening, he and I strolled into the vacant lot across from our office, and he tried it
out, looking back through our office window with specially adapted binoculars. After a couple
of minutes, he grunted in satisfaction, and said “Great, send us a bill.”
    As we walked back, he studied the binoculars more closely. “I really wish you hadn’t bought
new ones for this,” he said. “You should have bought old scuffed ones at a pawnshop.” That
comment struck like a bludgeon. Like most of us, I casually took it for granted that such things
were developed for actual use in sparkling James Bond style labs where large numbers of guys
in white coats worked efficiently under the fussy direction of Q in his blazer and tie. Until that
moment in the wet weeds across the street from 745 Distel Drive in Los Altos, California, it had
never occurred to me that some poor bastard might actually bet his life on use of these toys we
were making. These weren’t just prototypes on which finer minds than ours, better financed,
would  base actual instruments for field use; these things with our sweat and fingerprints all over
them were it.
    We were chronically poor, of course, paid more in entertainment than in money, and it was
important to move fast when somebody said “send a bill” for the pittance we’d agreed to work
for. In my excitement at the prospect of getting some cash in. I made a minor arithmetic error in
the invoice, amounting to a couple of bucks, but potentially disconcerting to bookkeepers who
were skilled at dealing with paperwork. The error occurred to me just after I mailed the bill,
and, concerned that it might delay payment painfully, I decided to call our customer, and explain
the problem.
    Studying the purchase order we had received from them for an item that was supposedly 
off-the-shelf from our catalog, I found the customer’s telephone number, and dialed it. “Hello”
said a voice after a couple of rings.
    “Hello,” I said, “have I reached Blankety Blank Trading Company? “
    ”Yes,” said the voice.
    “Good, may I speak to someone in Accounts Payable?”
    “I’m afraid they’re not here at the moment.”
    “How about any bookkeeper?”
    “I’m afraid they’re not here.”
    “How about the department that issues purchase orders?”
    “I’m sorry, they’re not here.”
    I paused to think, while the party at the other end waited silently.
    “Perhaps you can help me with my problem,” I said at last.
    “Yes,” said the voice.
    I explained things. Payment came through without a hitch.
    Getting paid was an uncertain matter, even when firm arrangements had been made.
We chipped away at one project, sending bills, and getting no payment for months, until
things grew desperate. The amount of money involved was only a few grand, but we worked
mighty close to the edge. At last Iben placed a phone call, working his way up through
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successively higher levels of authority until he found the Right Person. He stated the problem,
waited a couple of minutes, listened briefly, and then laughed.
    He asked the party at the other end to tell me what had happened, so I picked up another
phone, and listened. The chap apologetically explained that one of his people had just checked,
and come in with an explanation. Our invoices were directed to a post office box. A new clerk
had inadvertently been putting our correspondence to them in the box beneath the correct box,
so the mail hadn’t been getting picked up. Checking quickly, they found our invoices, and were
suitably embarrassed. The man on the line said that he had the checkbook in his desk drawer,
and would send us payment immediately.
    “Do you know who that was?” said Dr, Browning afterward.
    I didn’t, of course.
    “That was the head of the General Accounting Office of the United States Government.”
    Apparently, dealings with us were so hard to explain, though financially trivial, that the only
way to handle them was for the Chief Fiscal Watchdog of the country, who routinely dealt in
trillions, to pay us out of a checking account he controlled personally. The man was so intrigued
by our call that he dropped in a month later to see what things were like down at the bottom of
the food chain. He was a pleasant little round fellow wearing a porkpie hat and tweeds, a former
general, I gathered. On the whole, we’d have preferred simpler and better funded arrangements.
    Most of the budget for what we did was left over from well-funded research in big, well
equipped labs operated by famous organizations. Occasionally, when their research failed to
produce satisfactory results, its disappointed sponsors grew fretful. Sometimes they’d come to
Dr. Browning, saying “Iben, we just spent $245,300 dollars at a respectable research
establishment, and they say this task can’t be done. We’re waking up in the middle of the night,
worrying that it really can be done, and we have a lot at risk if the other side figures out how.
We’ve tried everything sensible, and now we’re reduced to talking to you. The original budget
for this was a quarter million, so that leaves $4,700 we can hand you in this brown paper bag
without having to explain anything.”
    So, we’d try odd ideas Iben came up with, and sometimes they worked. When they did,
the results couldn’t be credited to him or mentioned to the respectable labs, because they might
be embarrassed, even vindictive. If anybody made enough fuss, it would become impossible to
ask Dr. Browning for his odd thoughts, and he would be lost as a resource.
    One example: One of the good guys was seriously concerned that when sailors strolled out
on the fantail of a naval vessel to smoke and relax for a few minutes, the Russian ship trailing them
several miles back might be able to hear their conversation. It isn’t that the fellows were shouting
...not that the sound would carry far...but that they were smoking. As they spoke, their breath
would blow ever so slightly on the cigarette embers, causing them to brighten. That little bit of
flickering light carried the sound information. If the light could be detected, the information could
be converted back into audible speech. Even a few syllables of speech snatched from the flickering
cigarette embers might provide critically important information.
    Using modulated light to transmit speech wasn’t novel. The method was straightforward and
cheap, and these days people collecting laser light bounced off the windows of the room you are
in can hear you breathing. In that nautical situation long ago, the amount of modulation was small,
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the light was dim, and the effects of breezes, splashing waves, bird calls, engine noises, and the
like made for a mighty noisy signal. Still, the Good Guy felt there was so much at stake that he
couldn’t rest easy with the declaration that it couldn’t be done.
    We did it, demonstrating that we could pull a useful signal out of light collected from a distant
cigarette (the machine that smoked for us became such an ugly, foul-smelling mess so fast that
we all stayed away from it as much as possible) when the noise was a hundred times greater
than the signal. In the early 1970's it was a big deal to work with data in a situation of a 100:1
noise to signal ratio. Presumably, some qualified lab got a contract to carry the work forward
decently. We heard no more about it.
    Passing messages unnoticed was, and remains, a touchy problem. Dr. Browning suggested a
series of  ideas that actually worked in their time and place. One was what we later called
“The Voice of God.”
    A bit of technical explanation: when waves at two frequencies are generated in the same area
...radio waves, waves in a pond, sound waves in the air, light waves, whatever, we get an effect
called heterodyning, or beating. That is, where the frequencies are both present, we can detect
those two base frequencies, and their sum, and their difference...four distinct signals.
    Iben’s proposal was to set up a couple of very high frequency speakers, which put out fairly
narrow beams of energy, arranged so that the beams crossed. If one were driven at 100kHz, and
the other at 105kHz, anybody in the relatively small area where the beams crossed would be able
to hear the 5kHz difference between the frequencies. He suggested setting both speakers at
something around 100kHz, then modulating the frequency of one with a speaking voice, so the
difference would come through to the listener in just that small area as plain speech. The
arrangements were a bit clumsy, but potentially better than getting people killed, and losing the
information. It’s entirely possible that this technique had occurred to other people in other places
at other times, but Iben was prompted to come up with a solution for the specific situation.
    The folks who were concerned with the problem went away to try the idea, and reported with
enthusiasm that it worked. All was silence for a long time; presumably they used the technique until
the other side noticed, and began to look systematically for its use. Then public discussion of the
technology broke out, and it was made clear that we could use it commercially if we wanted to.
 Somebody looking at merchandise in a store window might, for example, hear a voice making
comments about its virtues, or people reaching the top of an escalator might be directed by a
quiet voice to various destinations. Nobody much likes having a loudspeaker shouting information
over and over, but a voice (or music or effects) audible only in a limited area could be helpful and
persuasive. We made some halfhearted efforts, but were unable to profit from the opportunity.
    A California company has for some years now been publicizing its applications for patents on
technology whose description sounds mighty familiar. Maybe they can do something with this at
last. While it’s hard to imagine getting basic patents, there must be a flock of clever ideas around
the basics that can be protected. Another recent report indicates that some university group has
reinvented this, and is optimistic about its value.
    The Voice of God was among the things I discussed with Iben a couple of weeks before his
death in 1991, and he left me with an intriguing notion. “I’m not sure that the frequencies have to
be in the same medium,” he said. One of the frequency generators might be an audio tweeter, but
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the other might be a device that generated a frequency at the receiving site, that reached the ears
via bone conduction, for example. A guy feeding pigeons from a park bench equipped with such
a generator might hear a message from somebody driving by with a tweeter aimed at him from a
car. One can invent variations on the theme at length.
    It wasn’t that technology provided the only entertainment available to me. Other sources were
also rich. For example, when the 10th anniversary of the UN was celebrated, many dignitaries
blew into San Francisco for the show. Among famous speakers like Romulo of the Phillippines
and Kleffens of the Netherlands, was the distinguished Paul Henri Spaak of Belgium. His speech
was a major event, and the Belgian Consulate took steps to translate and distribute it in English to
the swarming press.
    The first step was to give the French manuscript to my wife, Mado, who was then the secretary
of the Belgian Consul General, Willy van Cauwenberg. She and Andree Casey, another secretary,
clawed the script into interesting English. The second step was for Mado to bring it home, so I
could polish the English. Time being of the essence, I made wild guesses at what Spaak and his
interpreters had intended by phrases like “We have other cats to whip,” and quickly knocked out
an impressionistic third version of the man's oration. Skilled reviewers would, of course, check it
against the real views of the Belgian Foreign Minister.
    First thing in the morning, the secretaries typed my draft neatly, and handed it out as the official
translation of the speech. Review? What review? We don’t need no stinkin’ review. I have no
reason to suppose that any of Spaak's ideas were represented correctly in that document. At least
it didn't start a war promptly.
    The meeting was an inspiring spectacle, and Mr. Spaak’s real speech sounded impressive in
French. On the way out through the crowded lobby of the War Memorial Opera House, I stepped
back out of somebody’s way, and trod on somebody else’s foot. Looking around to apologize, I
discovered that Indian Ambassador V.K. Krishna-Menon was shaking his gold-headed cane at me.
I stared at this giant of diplomacy, whose saturnine image appeared regularly in the media. He
couldn’t have been five feet tall, but he looked mean enough for seven feet.
    The Time Magazine report of this UN meeting struck me as so outrageously inaccurate, that I
canceled my subscription. Years later, it occurred to me that Time's confusion might partly have
been my fault. Still later, it came clear that rampant confusion is the normal order of things, My
contribution was trivial.
    I could have stuck more tenaciously to writing and directing commercial/industrial films, where
I started. That was a lot of fun, because I got to see and study everything especially interesting
about all sorts of businesses, and I didn’t have to hang around to participate endlessly in the boring
parts.
     Why not make an endless series of beer and breakfast food commercials? The media biz is
pretty funny, too, and the Hollywood in which I worked as a production man in the early sixties
had its fascinations. It was fun to be around famous animators and performers. It was exciting to
drive around in the pouring rain in my Volkswagen, looking for props, while John Glenn orbited 
Earth for the first time. I could hear the commentary on the car radio, and every prop house I
went to had a little television set running where everybody could see it. Duty prevented me from
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lingering at Al Torf’s House of Props, which had the most beautiful array of rentable objects in
Hollywood ...handsome big globes, brass telescopes on wooden tripods, a desk set featuring a
ram’s head inset with an inkwell, holders for writing implements, and polished silver tips on the
horns. It was a wonderful place to visit and browse, and it was warm and dry on that cold, wet
day while our hero was soaring, but I had to keep moving. That day stays forever in memory.
Hollywood was really Hollywoodish.
     “Nels, we need stock footage of a guy wrestling an alligator, about six seconds worth for an
SOS scouring pad spot. The gag is that the guy is cleaning the alligator’s teeth with a scouring pad.”
    No luck. I hunted for hours, and couldn’t find a source.
    “Well, maybe we’ll have to shoot it. How much does it cost to rent an alligator for half an hour,
and have a stunt man pry his mouth open?”
    Back to the search. I found a source of alligators at a wild animal place out in the valley.
Unfortunately, this was the wrong season for them. The beasts were all hibernating in the pond out
back, and it would be a big hassle to drag one out, slap his wrists, and give him hot soup or
brandy to get him moving
    “I don’t care if he’s still asleep,” I said, “as long as somebody in a Seminole costume can open
his mouth to show his teeth prominently.” The man was scandalized. “If we just threw him in the
truck and hauled him to town, he’d die of a heart attack.” No deal.
    “Jim Dannelson has an alligator, said an informant, “and he wrestles it. I’ll check with him, and
get back to you. “I have bad news,” said the informant later. “Jim had him all right, but he rented
him to a production company a couple of months ago, and they left him in the garage overnight.
You know what the weather was like; the alligator froze to death. Jim is awfully upset.”   
    You’d think that alligator footage would abound in the homeland of the Tarzan movie, but I
couldn’t even find a stuffed specimen to throw around. Luckily the agency found appropriate
material in alligator-infested New York.
    “Nels, in twenty minutes I have to know what it will cost us to shoot a Brahma bull leaping
around in something that looks like a rodeo arena.” In twenty minutes, I had the information,
including the news that we couldn’t rent a single animal, but had to take two or three, because
a single bull tends to become so lonely and nervous that he kicks the truck to pieces on the
way to work. Giving him company keeps him calm.
    The next morning at six, I met a sleepy cowboy out at a ranch, to get some snapshots of
suitable Brahma bulls. He told me a lot about cattle as we walked through pens, climbed a
high fence, and walked a couple of hundred yards into a field. I wasn’t paying much attention
to the scenery, because I was opening the big old Polaroid camera, checking the bellows, and
loading film. We stopped.
    “You take all the pictures you want,” said my guide. “I’m going in for breakfast.” He paused
to give me some last-minute advice. “These bulls don’t like strangers.  If they start to chase you,
don’t be brave, and do anything stupid. You get over the fence as fast as you can. Just drop your
stuff if you have to, and get out.”
    As he climbed the fence himself, I looked around for the first time. I was in the middle of a
dozen large animals who were not impressed by their participation in this casting call. I pointed the
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camera at one, and clicked off a picture. All of the bulls snapped their heads around toward me.
They settled down, and I tried another shot. Same effect. By the third click of the mighty Polaroid,
the critters were all intensely interested, and evidently displeased. I sidled toward the fence, and the
herd followed..
    We all reached the fence about the same time, and I nipped over it as gracefully as possible while
they glared. No harm done, this was just part of an ordinary day’s work. It was more interesting to
me than tort law, to pick an example at random.
    “We need a photogenic Brahma bull for this Tony the Tiger commercial, because we’ll be looking
him full in the face as he says a few words,” said the agency producer.
    “A talking bull? I didn’t know I was trying to cast a talking bull.”
    “All he has to do is move his lips for three or four seconds, so it looks as if he’s saying something
along with the recorded voice-over.”
    “You want the bull to move his lips on cue.”
    “Yes. We could rotoscope it, and draw in the moving lips, but that’s obviously art work, and
we want it to look as if he’s really talking. Nothing to it. There’s an old trick a wrangler told me
about. You slap the animal in the mouth with a sock wet with urine, and he moves his lips for a
while, trying to get rid of the taste.”
    “Um, tell you what, Gordon. You hit the bull in the mouth with a sock of urine; I’ll be hiding in
the truck.” To my disappointment I wasn’t at the shoot, so I don’t know what went on...but we
rotoscoped it.   
    When I was first looking for a job in Hollywood, I called more than once on Gus Jekel at
FilmFair, a producer of television commercials. Once, defying past experience, Gus actually seemed
glad to see me, even relieved.  He promptly appointed me a volunteer judge for the International
Broadcast Awards, and introduced me to the two other somewhat sheepish-looking judges. One
was Daws Butler, the voice of countless cartoon characters, Yogi Bear for one. The other was
Maximilian Bryer, a distinguished figure with ad agency Benton and Bowles. Having weaseled out
of his spot as the third judge by substituting me, Gus left us in the dark projection room to pick
winners in various categories from two hours of competing television commercials.
    We agreed remarkably on our selections by criteria now forgotten, and we shared frustration
in one case. One virtually perfect television commercial among the competitors clearly deserved
an award, but we couldn't find a category for it.
    Picture it. The full minute commercial opened with the camera tight on the canvas back of a
director's chair on which was stenciled the name "Arthur Smith." The camera pulled back, and a
man in the chair turned to us, saying "Howdy, I'm Awrthur Smee-ith." Cut to Mr. Smith from
the front.
    "Frayinds," he said earnestly, "Iff'n you dip snuff..." He held up a small can next to his left ear,
and pointed to it with his right index finger, "think of Tube Rose Snuff." Tight shot of the product
as he listed its virtues. He explained that the product was not only satisfying, but came (like
Raleigh cigarettes) with coupons that could be traded for such premiums as toasters and portable
radios.
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    Mr. Smith and an attractive young lady showed us a display of those premiums neatly arrayed
on a large table under flat lighting on a small stage. As the lady beamed, Smith pointed to the
product next to his ear again, and exhorted us to try it.    
    The spot had everything, a celebrity endorsement, production value, a pretty lady, benefits
galore, classic demonstration technique, and sincerity, especially plain, heartfelt sincerity. The
producers of this spot did their work carefully, and felt so good about it that they submitted it
for international recognition as a fine selling tool, which it was, we supposed, for those who
dipped snuff in 1960.
    We three highly qualified judges, non-snuff-dippers, loved that spot. We looked at it three
or four times, studied the rules, and tried to find an excuse to give it an IBA award. It wasn't
witty or exciting, but it was fascinating. It looked like what Jethro Clampett would produce,
diligently following written instructions for making a television commercial, trying to do things
right, and accomplishing exactly what he intended. Perfect...but we were unable to applaud it
formally. This may be the first public recognition of its virtue, some decades later.
    Congratulations, fellows. You done good.
    Never encountered Max again, though I saw him on television when he appeared onstage
at the Academy Awards show once for some reason. I saw Daws in passing a few times over
the years. He was a solid professional, and gave many classy performances. When he died
a few years ago, it was odd to remember him especially in connection with an event at which
he did not perform.
    We once needed a large beer barrel carved out of ice, bearing the sponsor’s logo. The fellows
who did that sort of thing were based, reasonably enough, at the Union Ice Company warehouse
on Santa Monica near Highland, and I went there to meet a contact and give him the specs. It was
a hot day in Southern California, but I should have taken a jacket, because it was cold, cold, cold
in that icehouse. The guys didn’t bother with a warm office, but did most of their business there in
the chilly quiet. The chap leading me back commented that I shouldn’t be put off by the man I was
there to see; he was just somewhat depressed, because his daughter had been one of the U.S.
Olympic ice skating team recently killed in a plane crash outside Brussels, and he had a tendency
to sink into silence. Just be patient.
    The area where we met was brightly lighted, a circle of cheer in the midst of the gloom, a sort
of Technicolor North Pole. Big blocks of colored ice were stacked around us, ready for whatever
Hollywood required.
    My contact was subdued, but sufficiently communicative. He also had a bad limp that made
movement around his domain painfully difficult, and his vocal cords had been damaged somehow,
so that his speech was strongly affected. He led me to a table, where I laid out the drawings for
what we required. Shivering, with my teeth chattering, I explained our needs. He took it all in,
paused for a couple of minutes, and told me he’d call with a price. We were through, and I found
my way out, glad to get back to the warm sunshine. The carved ice beer barrel that eventually
appeared was all that we wished. The commercial we made came and went. The images of the
man in the ice house have persisted.
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    I found all sorts of interesting things to do to make a living...well, after some false
starts as the World’s Worst Major Appliance Salesman in a department store, and the Worst
Office Management Trainee Ever Employed by New York Life Insurance Company, and Credit
Manager for a semi-honest little publishing company, for example, but those were experimental
aberrations.
    Without resisting, I fell into the business of supporting people who were working with new
technology. I produced films and literature to document or help sell the work, wrote reports, books,
memos, manuals, white papers, newsletters, satires, and doggerel. As experience became a helpful
guide, I consulted to young technical companies set up chiefly by people who had no idea of what
they were getting into, and needed reassurance as much as specific knowledge.
    When I mentioned to a sometime client that I’d be in his part of the country, he said “As long
as you’re here, come spend a day with us for pay.” Well, great. When I showed up at his office, he
began to chat about stresses and strains in the business and his numerous problems. As an hour
passed, I began to feel guilty about frittering away the time in gossip, and I commented that I should
be earning my pay by doing something useful. “Shut up,” he said, “you’re doing it.” It was a surprise
to learn that just understanding what he was talking about, so he could talk freely, was worthwhile.
    Part of the fun was that the pursuit of new technology turned out to be just as ridiculous an activity
as everything else, full of ordinary, though often startlingly smart, people who get themselves into
pickles, and have to cope with improbable problems. Intelligence and silliness seem to be orthogonal
traits, completely unrelated. Smart people do just as many dumb things as the rest of us, frequently
in situations that are especially interesting. Further, technology seems to be important in human affairs
in this patch of history. That increases its intrigue.
    As Iben Browning and I sat reviewing a frustrating defeat, he asked “What have we learned from
year after year of effort, anything?”
    “I guess,” I said, “we’ve learned that we’re hard to teach.”
    He agreed.
    Even so, some lessons have got through, and my plan here is to tell a few stories, and make a
suggestion or two, based on several decades of rather peculiar personal experience.