"Ричард Фейнман. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!/Вы, конечно, шутите, мистер Фейнман! (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

the beans and your thumb, almost cutting yourself. It was a slow process. So
I put my mind to it, and I got a pretty good idea. I sat down at the wooden
table outside the kitchen, put a bowl in my lap, and stuck a very sharp
knife into the table at a forty-five-degree angle away from me. Then I put a
pile of the string beans on each side, and I'd pick out a bean, one in each
hand, and bring it towards me with enough speed that it would slice, and the
pieces would slide into the bowl that was in my lap.
So I'm slicing beans one after the other - chig, chig, chig, chig,
chig - and everybody's giving me the beans, and I'm going like sixty when
the boss comes by and says, "What are you doing?"
I say, "Look at the way I have of cutting beans!" - and just at that
moment I put a finger through instead of a bean. Blood came out and went on
the beans, and there was a big excitement: "Look at how many beans you
spoiled! What a stupid way to do things!" and so on. So I was never able to
make any improvement, which would have been easy - with a guard, or
something - but no, there was no chance for improvement.
I had another invention, which had a similar difficulty. We had to
slice potatoes after they'd been cooked, for some kind of potato salad. They
were sticky and wet, and difficult to handle. I thought of a whole lot of
knives, parallel in a rack, coming down and slicing the whole thing. I
thought about this a long time, and finally I got the idea of wires in a
rack.
So I went to the five-and-ten to buy some knives or wires, and saw
exactly the gadget I wanted: it was for slicing eggs. The next time the
potatoes came out I got my little egg-slicer out and sliced all the potatoes
in no time, and sent them back to the chef. The chef was a German, a great
big guy who was King of the Kitchen, and he came storming out, blood vessels
sticking out of his neck, livid red. "What's the matter with the potatoes?"
he says. "They're not sliced!"
I had them sliced, but they were all stuck together. He says, "How can
I separate them?"
"Stick 'em in water," I suggest.
"IN WATER? EAGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"
Another time I had a really good idea. When I was desk clerk I had to
answer the telephone. When a call came in, something buzzed, and a flap came
down on the switchboard so you could tell which line it was. Sometimes, when
I was helping the women with the bridge tables or sitting on the front porch
in the middle of the afternoon (when there were very few calls), I'd be some
distance from the switchboard when suddenly it would go. I'd come running to
catch it, but the way the desk was made, in order to get to the switchboard
you had to go quite a distance further down, then around, in behind, and
then back up to see where the call was coming from - it took extra time.
So I got a good idea. I tied threads to the flaps on the switchboard,
and strung them over the top of the desk and then down, and at the end of
each thread I tied a little piece of paper. Then I put the telephone talking
piece up on top of the desk, so I could reach it from the front. Now, when a
call came, I could tell which flap was down by which piece of paper was up,
so I could answer the phone appropriately, from the front, to save time. Of
course I still had to go around back to switch it in, but at least I was
answering it. I'd say, "Just a moment," and then go around to switch it in.