quantum theory of halfadvanced, half-retarded potentials–and I worked on it for years.
————-
Mixing Paints
————-
The reason why I say I’m “uncultured” or “anti-intellectual” probably goes all the way back to the time when I was in high school. I was always worried about being a sissy; I didn’t want to he too delicate. To me, no _real_ man ever paid any attention to poetry and such things. How poetry ever got _written_–that never struck me! So I developed a negative attitude toward the guy who studies French literature, or studies too much music or poetry–all those “fancy” things. I admired better the steel-worker, the welder, or the machine shop man. I always thought the guy who worked in the machine shop and could make things, now _he_ was a _real guy_! That was my attitude. To be a practical man was, to me, always somehow a positive virtue, and to be “cultured” or “intellectual” was not. The first was right, of course, hut the second was crazy.
I still had this feeling when I was doing my graduate study at Princeton, as you’ll see. I used to eat often in a nice little restaurant called Papa’s Place. One day while I was eating there, a painter in his painting clothes came down from an upstairs room he’d been painting, and sat near me. Somehow we struck up a conversation and he started talking about how you’ve got to learn a lot to be in the painting business. “For example,” he said, “in this restaurant, what colors would you use to paint the walls, if _you_ had the job to do?”
I said I didn’t know, and he said, “You have a dark band up to such-and-such a height, because, you see, people who sit at the tables rub their elbows against the walls, so you don’t want a nice, white wall there. It gets dirty too easily. But above that, you _do_ want it white to give a feeling of cleanliness to the restaurant.”
The guy seemed to know what he was doing, and I was sitting there, hanging on his words, when he said, “And you also have to know about colors–how to get different colors when you mix the paint. For example, what colors would _you_ mix to get yellow?”
I didn’t know how to get yellow by mixing paints. If it’s _light_, you mix green and red, but I knew he was talking _paints_. So I said, “I don’t know how you get yellow without using yellow.”
“Well,” he said, “if you mix red and white, you’ll get yellow.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean _pink_?”
“No,” he said, “you’ll get yellow”–and I believed that he got yellow, because he was a professional painter, and I always admired guys like that. But I still wondered how he did it.
I got an idea. “It must be some kind of _chemical_ change. Were you using some special kind of pigments that make a chemical change?”
“No,” he said, “any old pigments will work. You go down to the five-and-ten and get some paint–just a regular can of red paint and a regular can of white paint–and I’ll mix ‘em, and I’ll show how you get yellow.”
At this juncture I was thinking, “Something is crazy. I know enough about paints to know you won’t get yellow, but _he_ must know that you _do_ get yellow, and therefore something interesting happens. I’ve got to see what it is!”
So I said, “OK, I’ll get the paints.”
The painter went back upstairs to finish his painting job, and the restaurant owner came over and said to me, “What’s the idea of arguing with that man? The man is a painter; he’s been a painter all his life, and _he_ says he gets yellow. So why argue with him?”
I felt embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I said, “All my life, I’ve been studying light. And I think that with red and white you _can’t_ get yellow–you can only get pink.”
So I went to the five-and-ten and got the paint, and brought it back to the restaurant. The painter came down from upstairs, and the restaurant owner was there too. I put the cans of
————-
Mixing Paints
————-
The reason why I say I’m “uncultured” or “anti-intellectual” probably goes all the way back to the time when I was in high school. I was always worried about being a sissy; I didn’t want to he too delicate. To me, no _real_ man ever paid any attention to poetry and such things. How poetry ever got _written_–that never struck me! So I developed a negative attitude toward the guy who studies French literature, or studies too much music or poetry–all those “fancy” things. I admired better the steel-worker, the welder, or the machine shop man. I always thought the guy who worked in the machine shop and could make things, now _he_ was a _real guy_! That was my attitude. To be a practical man was, to me, always somehow a positive virtue, and to be “cultured” or “intellectual” was not. The first was right, of course, hut the second was crazy.
I still had this feeling when I was doing my graduate study at Princeton, as you’ll see. I used to eat often in a nice little restaurant called Papa’s Place. One day while I was eating there, a painter in his painting clothes came down from an upstairs room he’d been painting, and sat near me. Somehow we struck up a conversation and he started talking about how you’ve got to learn a lot to be in the painting business. “For example,” he said, “in this restaurant, what colors would you use to paint the walls, if _you_ had the job to do?”
I said I didn’t know, and he said, “You have a dark band up to such-and-such a height, because, you see, people who sit at the tables rub their elbows against the walls, so you don’t want a nice, white wall there. It gets dirty too easily. But above that, you _do_ want it white to give a feeling of cleanliness to the restaurant.”
The guy seemed to know what he was doing, and I was sitting there, hanging on his words, when he said, “And you also have to know about colors–how to get different colors when you mix the paint. For example, what colors would _you_ mix to get yellow?”
I didn’t know how to get yellow by mixing paints. If it’s _light_, you mix green and red, but I knew he was talking _paints_. So I said, “I don’t know how you get yellow without using yellow.”
“Well,” he said, “if you mix red and white, you’ll get yellow.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean _pink_?”
“No,” he said, “you’ll get yellow”–and I believed that he got yellow, because he was a professional painter, and I always admired guys like that. But I still wondered how he did it.
I got an idea. “It must be some kind of _chemical_ change. Were you using some special kind of pigments that make a chemical change?”
“No,” he said, “any old pigments will work. You go down to the five-and-ten and get some paint–just a regular can of red paint and a regular can of white paint–and I’ll mix ‘em, and I’ll show how you get yellow.”
At this juncture I was thinking, “Something is crazy. I know enough about paints to know you won’t get yellow, but _he_ must know that you _do_ get yellow, and therefore something interesting happens. I’ve got to see what it is!”
So I said, “OK, I’ll get the paints.”
The painter went back upstairs to finish his painting job, and the restaurant owner came over and said to me, “What’s the idea of arguing with that man? The man is a painter; he’s been a painter all his life, and _he_ says he gets yellow. So why argue with him?”
I felt embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I said, “All my life, I’ve been studying light. And I think that with red and white you _can’t_ get yellow–you can only get pink.”
So I went to the five-and-ten and got the paint, and brought it back to the restaurant. The painter came down from upstairs, and the restaurant owner was there too. I put the cans of
Similar Books
