Talk:The Gadget Maker

Acquiring the Book

You can still find it at many libraries. It's also available in the "used & out of print" section of bn.com ✈ James C. 19:26, 2005 May 30 (UTC)

the explosion

"Probably as a result of carelessness on Rausch's part, there is an explosion, and his friend suffers terrible injuries"

doesn't the narrator at one point state that it was not Rausch's fault?

You're right. It seems too complicated to summarize briefly but I'll try to fix the description. Rausch is jittery, insecure, defensive, and overcautious. Brack's fiancée Ruth and Brack have the impression that he hasn't actually had much experience personally conducting rocket tests. He is not cool under stress and during the test in which the rocket explodes he is not behaving well, and Ruth believes he fiddled with something at the wrong time. But in fact it isn't Rausch's fault. Brack accuses Rausch to his face of screwing up, calls him a Nazi, there's a big blowup, the outcome is that not only is Ruth fired but another friend of Brack's is fired for standing up for Ruth. Furthermore, if I understand correctly, instead of giving the news to Ruth himself, he allows Rausch to be the one to give her the bad news.

There's also a scene where he visits Sim, the terribly injured engineer, in the hospital. Sim cannot move or talk. Brack is cheerfully telling him how great things are going and how the design, to which Sim made important contributions, is sound. As he leaves, he says "I can't understand you, Sim. You look like you're wired for sound, but I can't quite read you." Then "he noticed Sim's right hand. Scabrous flesh and a sheathe of wet yellowish gauze extending over the knuckles made it difficult for Sim to bend his fingers, but as best as he was able, Sim had clenched his hand into a fist. Only the middle finger was not bent. The middle finger was straight, stiff, eloqently erect."

I'd have to read through the book slowly and take notes, but it appears as if Brack eventually betrays anyone with whom he forms any close contact.

By the way, if you create an account it makes it easier to communicate... and when you create an account you have the option of including an email address which is not visible, but which allows people to send email directly to you. Conversely, you can send email to me via the "email this user" link on User:Dpbsmith.

book digitization

if anyone is familiar with how to digitize a book into a pdf or txt file, i'm all ears...

The big problem is the permissions issue. I've been trying in a dilatory sort of way, off and on, since 2001, to find anyone who can give me permission to put the MIT chapter of this book up on my personal website. This is unfortunately familiar territory. Copyright extensions have put a vast amount of interesting material into a terrible kind of limbo. When you try to contact the publishers, you find that they've undergone so many corporate mergers and re-organizations that sometimes they can't even find the record of the book. And permissions requests often go unanswered for long periods of time.

The Gadget Maker

Maxwell Griffith

Published 1955 by J. B.Lippincott.

Copyright: RE-145-540, renewed by Maxwell Griffith 1 Dec 82

Original Registration 22 Sep 54

Lippincott, William and Wilkins says "All of our trade publications were sold to Harper Collins in New York. We only publish medical books now." HarperCollins in New York has (so far) failed to answer three queries (or has answered them only in a runaround kind of way, e.g. an email address sent to their permissions office yields an autoreply saying to use a web link; the web link asks you to enter a pageful of details and then there's no response; etc.

I found a Maxwell Griffith listed in Raquette Lake, New York, but have finally managed to make contact with a member of his family and he is not the author of The Gadget Maker.

The Authors Guild says he is not a member and they have no contact information for him or any representative.

well, looks like someone will handle the digitization here. but of course, the copyright issue... cf. abandonware?

Removing the "plot" tag

I'm removing the "plot" tag--"This article's plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise."--for these reasons:

• I'm not sure what the criterion would be for being "too long or overly detailed." Wikipedia is not paper.
• This is a book that is long out of print and not terribly easy to obtain. It is not too easy to find information about it. A quick Google suggests that most of the information quickly available online is this Wikipedia article itself. Accordingly, it is reasonable to make the treatment complete and thorough.
• The tag has been up for eight months with no action and no discussion. The editor who inserted the tag, Whpq, did not start a discussion or leave a meaningful edit comment, suggesting that it was a hasty and casual action, and giving no reason to assume that it reflect anything but his personal stylistic preference.

Dpbsmith (talk) 00:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)