"Charles L. Harness-The Alchemist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

fifty different bench chemists, senior chemists, and group leaders. Con, we'll include one man in the
Patent Department, probably you. We will interview each of these people. As a result of these interviews
we will develop a further sampling of six or eight chemists who offer most in the way of a challenge to the
Gruen technique. We will then hope to be able to boil this list down to one man. This man, if our survey is
valid, will constitute a walking summary of all that we hope to recommend be corrected here."
Arnold Gruen looked over at Patrick. "You lawyers have your 'reasonable man'. We are looking for
the 'unreasonable man': a compendium of errors-- our Unit Profile."
"Profile?" asked Patrick. "You mean something like the Bernreuter or Thurstone personality profiles
for executives?"
"Something like that," said Gruen. "Except that the Bernreuter profile provides a positive model for the
up-and-coming executives of our large mail order houses-- a real inspiration, too, if I may say so!--
whereas the Gruen profile is negative. When we establish it, we offer it to the client as something to be
shunned by all right-thinking employees. Another difference is, the Gruen profile is personified; it is drawn
from one actual man, a case history. In fact, our main effort in the study is to find that man." He nodded
toward Bleeker. "And when we find him, our bill for services will follow shortly."
***


Patrick was eternally amazed by his women attorneys. Marguerite French was a case in point. Hired
fresh out of State U. with straight A's in chemistry, he had first put her on novelty searches in the Patent
Office in Washington. She had picked up the patter almost overnight. ("I'll be in the stacks tomorrow,
Mr. Patrick, flipping the bundles for that new polymer." But when she dictated her search report, she had
the good sense to call it "information retrieval.") She soon knew the Patent Office Search Manual by
heart, and better still, most of the chemical patent examiners on a first-name basis. They told her what
subs to check in the Search Room and pointed out unofficial "shoes" in their own offices that cut her
search time to a minimum. Examiners had been known to hover over her shoulder, helping her through
their soft copies, to find a "dead reference."
A couple of years after hiring her, Patrick learned by accident that she had passed the Patent Agent's
exam-- the dreaded patent Bar-- on her first try (Patrick had failed it the first time) and was halfway
through law school at night. That was when Patrick started her on writing patent applications. In good
time she had finished law school and had become a full-fledged attorney, in most respects as good as any
of his men, and in one particular respect she excelled any man in the department. This was her ability to
work with certain of the more refractory male chemists. Whatever their inability to write an intelligible
project report, she somehow was able to analyze, define, and summarize the most involved reactions that
any of them ever brought forth. When working with her, they suddenly became expressive, articulate,
even voluble. ("Maybe they're all in love with her," mused Patrick. But that was too simple. "She's a kid
sister to them," he thought once. No, that wasn't it, either. "She appreciates them." Yes, he felt he was
getting warm.)
Well, no matter what it was, he had made up his mind as to who was to be assigned to Pierre Celsus.
If Celsus could be persuaded to talk to anyone, he would talk to Marguerite French.
***


Patrick drew the structural formula on his office blackboard. "Silamine. As you probably know,
Celsus' new synthesis is somewhat analogous to the commercial process for making urea from ammonia
and carbon dioxide, except that we use SiO 2, instead of CO 2. In other words, we react ammonia and
silica, and we get silamine and by-product water."
"It's strange that it should react at all," said Marguerite. "Silica is one of the most unreactive oxides
known."
Patrick smiled. "That's the general impression, all right, and that's why we think we may have