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

Andrew Bleeker's inquiries with, "It seems to have a good chance." "Certainly worth a try." "Something
similar worked at Du Pont."
Bleeker complained about it to Patrick. "Weasel words! Nothing but weasel words! You'd think they
were a bunch of patent lawyers."
Patrick grinned slyly. "Not all of them. Look up Celsus' Project Report on Silamine."
Bleeker did. His eyes nearly fell out of his head.
He read: "Yields were poor in glass because the process was necessarily limited by the heat input. The
reaction is extremely endothermic, requiring a thermal outlay heretofore attainable only in nuclear
reactions. In the existing setup the necessary heat cannot be supplied through the reactor walls because
of the low heat transfer coefficient available for a fluidized system. The same difficulty applies with
respect to internal heaters. Nor can the requisite heat be supplied by pre-heating the ammonia, since NH 3
cracks back to N 2 and H 2 at 600-700┬░ C. The only way to provide the necessary heat is to create it in
situ on the silica gel particles. This may readily be done by adding terbium oxide with a little xerion to the
silica. This system will, in fact, create a substantial thermal excess, requiring a cooling jackets on the
reactor. At the end of the run-- disappearance of terbium-- spent catalyst, while still wet must be
immediately discharged into alkahest. Yield of silamine, based on SiO 2, should be substantially
quantitative."
Bleeker shook his head vigorously, like a dog shedding water. He studied the report again, as if hoping
the words would rearrange into sentences he could understand. But there wasn't any change.
The Research Director reflected a moment. Should he ask Celsus to report and explain? Celsus, being
a senior chemist, had no group leader, and instead reported directly to him, Bleeker. Yet, somehow, he
felt that any such conference could only lead to further confusion. But now a crafty thought occurred to
him.
The Patent Department. It was the job of the patent attorneys to understand these new inventions.
They were supposed to file on important cases within a few days after the thing had been reduced to
practice. The application had to explain the invention in intelligible terms, or else the Patent Office in
Washington would rule the disclosure fatally defective. There was certainly no dishonor in asking the
attorney in charge of this invention to step into his office and explain Celsus' report. It would be like the
judge in a trial asking the court reporter to repeat some testimony the judge had missed. And no need to
bother Con Patrick.
He buzzed his secretary: "Miss Sally, look at the Patent Department organization chart and get hold of
the attorney responsible for Pierre Celsus' work. But don't bother Mr. Patrick."
As events developed, this was a mistake. While the Patent Department organization chart clearly
showed that Alec Cord handled the inventive affairs of Pierre Celsus, Cord happily informed Miss Sally
that all that had changed. Somebody else was now responsible. Additional phone calls established the
apparent fact that, for the moment, at least, nobody was writing cases for Celsus.
This puzzled Bleeker. He knew that Patrick loved order, organization, and the predicable flow of life,
and that when Patrick had taken the Patent Department of Hope Chemicals, he had drawn an
organization chart to define precisely the areas of contact of each of his attorneys with each group in the
Research Division.
This was all very true; in fact, during the early days Patrick had kept the chart current, showing every
assignment change. But Patrick had been in office less than a year when the Nitrogen Group had their
breakthrough in acrylonitrile, and it had been necessary for him to reshuffle all Patent Department
assignments drastically until he could get the Nitrogen docket back to normal. While the dust was settling,
Research formed the new Polymer Group, and the Budget Committee-- after much muttering and review
of Patent Department efficiency-- finally let Patrick hire two new attorneys for the new Group.
Meanwhile, Foams and Fibers were screaming, so one of the new polymer attorneys was assigned to
them. And then Nitrogen insisted that Cord be assigned to them permanently, because he was the only
man in the lab who could beat Dr. Fast at the chessboard-- it being well known that Fast would talk
about his inventions only in a losing position. The second new polymer man got clewed in to Mining and