It was cool in the lab and the air smelled faintly of solvents. I liked the smell, and I sniffed it deeply and tried to distinguish one from the other. My chemistry professor had often told me that I had the best nose he had run across in twenty-five years of teaching. I picked out the pungent, aromatic odor of toluene and the hospital smell of diethyl ether, and I thought I could detect the heavy odor of lauryl alcohol. Underneath them all was a rich, sweet smell that I had smelled before, but I couldn't tell what it was. I decided it was a lactone, and let it go at that. I nodded as I went past the receptionist, and her smile made me feel uncomfortable again, just as it always did; there was too much of a leer in it. I never stopped to tell her where I was going; I just went in unannounced.

I went up the stairs and down the hall to Callahan's lab, next to Dr. Marchare's. I went in. Henry Callahan stood at a bench pouring a colorless liquid down a chromatographic column. He looked over at me and said, "Well, Carl Saddle. How are you, man? Nice to see you."

Callahan was a big man, heavy-set, with bright blue eyes, and a shock of light-brown hair. For all his bulk he moved lightly as befitted a former stroke on the Penn crew. I was fond of Callahan, even with all the trouble his inventions caused me; I knew he couldn't help it. I said, "Hello Henry. How have you been?" And we exchanged some more amenities.

Finally he said, "Carl, we have quite a problem here, and we don't know what to do about it. Here's the situation."

I swallowed, and took out my notebook and pencil, and laid my pocket slide rule in front of me. I always put the slide rule out where the inventor can see it to remind him that he is talking to another technical man, not just a lawyer. This helps make him stick to the facts. I didn't need the rule with Callahan, but habit is hard to break.

Callahan said, "Some time ago I made a polyester, used adipic acid and an amino alcohol. On a hunch I dropped in an aluminum alkyl, and then pushed the polymerization along with both ultraviolet and heat. Got a stiff gel out of the pot and drew it into a quarter of a pound of fibers. I only had time to determine that the fibers were amorphous—no time to draw them further to see if they would develop crystallinity. I put them in an open-mouth jar which I later found had been used to store mercury. One evening I took them out and found they had developed crystallinity on standing. Furthermore, the fibrous ends had split, and the split ends seemed to be tacky—seemed a natural to me to make a sheet of paper out of it."

I nodded as I worked furiously on my notes. All of Marchare's people talked that way. They did the most fantastic things sometimes, and then talked about them as if anyone would have done the same thing. I had complained about this oddity to Mr. Spardleton when I first came to work for him; I was used to inventions that were made in understandable ways. He had smiled and asked me to quote the last sentence of 35 U.S.C. 103, the statute that set forth the conditions for patentability. It was a good thing I had memorized the statute. I recited the last sentence, "Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention is made." Well, here it was again.

I asked Callahan, "Did you make a sheet of paper out of it?"

"Sure did. Made a hand sheet in a twelve-by-twelve inch mold. Pressed it out, dried it, then got busy again so I couldn't test it for a week. When I did I started working nights to see if I could duplicate my results. Just finished this morning. Here's the hand sheet, the second one."

He handed me a sheet of paper, snow-white in color. I put aside my pencil and notebook to examine it. As I took it in my hand it was obvious that it was something unusual. It was softer than a cleansing tissue, and probably even more flexible. I rubbed it between my fingers, and it had the most remarkable feel of any paper I had ever felt—soft and clinging and cool, and exceedingly pleasant. I knew the paper chemists called this property "hand." Callahan's paper had the most remarkable hand I had ever seen.

"Tear it in half," Callahan said.

I took the sheet between my thumbs and forefingers and gingerly pulled, expecting the light and soft sheet to part easily. Nothing happened. I pulled harder, and still nothing. I smiled at Callahan, got a better grip, and gave it a yank. Then I twisted opposite corners around my fingers and frankly pulled at it. The absurd sheet refused to tear, and I realized how ridiculous I must look to Callahan to be unable to tear a flimsy sheet of paper. I suppose I lost my temper a little. I gathered as much of the paper as I could in each hand, bent over to put my hands on the inside of my knees, and pulled until I heard my back muscles crack. I let out my breath explosively and looked helplessly at Callahan.

He said, "Don't feel bad, Carl. Nobody has been able to tear it."

"You mean it?" I asked. I found myself puffing; I had not realized I was straining so hard.

"Yup. That paper has a tensile of 2,800 pounds per square inch, and a tear strength equally unbelievable."

I looked at the little sheet and great possibilities began to occur to me. "Clothing," I said. "Great heavens, think what this will do for the clothing industry. No more weaving. Just run this stuff off on a paper machine at five hundred feet per minute." I stopped and looked at Callahan and said, "You will be able to make it on a paper-making machine, won't you?"

"As far as I know."

"Good," I said. "When can we try it in the pilot plant."

"Well, that's where the problem comes in, Carl. I have to leave for the West Coast tomorrow, and I'll be gone for six months. There's nobody else around here to take it through the pilot plant. What's worse, one of my technicians left this morning to take a job with Lafe Rude Consultants, Inc., up in Boston. The technician is an ethical man, and all that, but I'm afraid the word will be out on this paper now."

My heart sank. Callahan said, "I've already started another of my technicians, John Bostick, on the process to make certain he can repeat my work. But that's all we can do for a few months around here. The laboratories have never been so busy. What do you think we ought to do?"

The answer was obvious. "We've got to file a patent application right away. It isn't ready to file, but we've got to do it anyway."

Callahan said, "Oh, we're in good shape. We know it works."

I nodded and said, "What acids other than adipic will work?"

"Oh, azoleic, sebacic, a few others, I suppose."

"What else other than amino alcohols? What other catalysts? Do you really need mercury vapor? Will some other metallic vapor do? What about temperature variations in making the polyester? How long a cure time? How much ultraviolet? Will the fibers be better if you draw them more? Can you get those tacky fiber ends in any other way? Can you improve them? What about the sheet-making conditions? Does oxygen in the air catalyze...?"

Callahan held up his hands and said, "O.K., O.K., we don't know anything about it. But we're not going to find out these things until we open a research program, and we can't open a program for at least six months. In the meantime that technician may ..."

I held up my hands this time, and he fell quiet. We stood silently until I asked, "All the information in your notebooks, Henry?"

He nodded, and I continued, "Well, I'll be back tomorrow to talk to you and Bostick. We'll just have to file a patent application on what we have."

We chatted a while about his work on the West Coast, and then we shook hands and I left. I had a few moments to think in the cab before I talked with Mr. Spardleton. Here I was in that situation that a patent attorney dreads. I had an incomplete invention, one that required a great deal of work before it could be filed, yet I had to file now in the incomplete condition. With it all, here was a