🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1196@lsuc.UUCP> msb@lsuc.UUCP (Mark Brader) writes:
>Peter S. Shenkin (peters@cubsvax.UUCP) writes:
>> The chemist Kekule ... described his 1857 discovery of the structure
>> of benzene as having come to him in a a vision, while gazing at a fire.  
>> ...  he "saw" the ancient alchemical symbol of the ourobouros,
>> a snake swallowing its tail.)
>
>I can't let this go uncorrected.  It was 1865, and more important,
>he wasn't gazing at a fire; he was riding a bus.  Really now!
>
>Mark Brader, transit fan

This is all and well and not unlike the peculiar mathematical solutions by
Ramanujan that Douglas Hofstatder relates in GEB:an EGB.  But then again,
what does this have to do with his computational ability?  Did he suspect
that benzene was a ring?  Is this really closer to saying "the brothers
Montgolfier discovered the hot-air ballon while watching clothes dry over
a fire" than it is to say, "I discovered the structure of the modern high-
performance jet fighter by gazing at golf-balls", or maybe "I saw the
structure of the 32-bit processor while gazing at a 1960 map of Manhattan"?

-dave
-- 
David Hsu  (301)454-1433 || -8798  <insert fashionably late disclaimer here>
Communication & Signal Processing Lab / Engineering Computer Facility
The University of Maryland   -~-   College Park, MD 20742
ARPA:hsu@eneevax.umd.edu  UUCP:[seismo,allegra,rlgvax]!umcp-cs!eneevax!hsu

"No way, eh?  Radiation has made me an enemy of civilization!"