[TheForge] Michelson's and Morley's experiment

[Andy Vida]

Mike Linn wrote:
> 
> What amazes me most is the depth of experience we find within the
> blacksmith/metalworking community.
> Clay Spencer (of Treadlehammer fame)was an engineer with NASA on the moon
> buggy.
> Jim Batson (knifemaker fame) was really and truly a "rocket scientist"
> Some of the things Steve Schwarzer (knifemaker) worked on with the US
> military would blow your mind.
> Bill Richardson (blacksmith) still consults for NASA... just to name a few
> off hand...
> 
> I am constantly amazed types of people who get bitten by the metalworking
> bug.

	I am also amazed by this.  One of our friends in NJ, Pete Engel,
	was also a rocket scientist at one time.  Bruce Freeman is a
	chemist.  Not only are the personalities accomplished professionals,
	blacksmiths are so uncommonly generous with their knowledge,
	especially in North America.  In a world that seems every day to
	slip a tad further into clannish, feudal proprietarianism, smiths
	stand as what I'm sure many people may regard as a backward lot,
	giving their secrets away to others who would make use of them,
	asking nothing in return.  When was the last time Microsoft or
	General Motors did something like that?

	Blacksmithing is the underpinning of EVERY extant technology that
	we know of, save a very few such as basket weaving.  I think this art
	touches some primeval chord in us.  To watch an oddly formed "blank"
	transmute into something useful and beautiful is an amazing thing
	to me.  The less the inital shape of the stock resembles the final
	product, the more amazed I am by it.  Honest to God, along with music
	I think this is the most profoundly beautiful art I've ever come
	to be familiar with.  Iron is so basic and the operations are so
	primitive, yet their skillful application can yield work of
	incredible strength, beauty, complexity, simplicity, delicacy,
	subtlety, and utility.  I believe that at least in part it is
	precisely the primordial nature of the art and its materials, along
	with the profound transformation of raw material that occurs
	in the process of working that holds me a willing captive.

	I also find it interesting to note that iron, one of the singly
	most useful materials in our world, also presents the brick
	wall dead end of your garden variety proton star such as our
	sun.  That is, once the core fuses from hydrogen up the ranks
	to helium and eventually to iron, it will fuse no further.  It
	is interesting that that end point material should be so 
	uncommonly and universally useful to us.