Word: smithsonian
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...less elegant spot, Ralph Solecki of the Smithsonian Institution was digging into an even more distant past. Shanidar Cave in northern Iraq is still inhabited during the winter months by about 40 Kurds and their flocks and herds. Last year Solecki became interested in the debris on the cave's floor. Back at Shanidar early this year, financed by a Fulbright grant and surrounded by fascinated Kurds, Archaeologist Solecki carefully dug a square shaft in the promising deposit. The top layers were modern. Just below, he found tools and fragments of pottery from the "historic period" when Shanidar belonged...
Andrew Kramer's first instrument shop was set up in the Smithsonian's stable, which he shared with a taxidermist and Dr. Langley's horse and buggy. There he set up his footpower lathe, forge, anvil and other primitive equipment; there he made metal parts for Langley's much-derided airplane (which almost but not quite flew, before the Wrights'); and there he built fine instruments as no one else could...
...world around him changed with dizzying speed. Science grew prodigiously, and its instruments-oscilloscopes, electronic computers, cyclotrons-enlisted superhuman precision and almost supernatural forces. But although Kramer's shop moved out of the stable after 27 years, it changed hardly at all. (The Smithsonian itself never budged from its first location, on The Mall in Washington.) Kramer's old lathe and grindstone still hummed their gentle songs, and his work went on. Almost no one came to visit him except the scientists who ordered his instruments. "I enjoyed my work," says Kramer. "It was very quiet." For amusement...
...Neutrons. When Kramer was 65, in 1934, Government regulations required him to retire, but the Smithsonian would not hear of it. No one else had his ancient skills. He agreed to stay on "for a while" and be paid out of the Smithsonian's non-Government funds. While gamma rays and neutrons invaded the other instruments shops, his work continued as before. Once a day he telephoned his wife (when he first went to work for the Smithsonian, the telephone was still a novelty...
Last week, as Kramer finally retired, the old Smithsonian gave him an old-fashioned farewell party with cakes and punch. It also gave him a valued present: the key to his workshop. The old belts and pulleys still whisper overhead. The old lathe can still turn out beautifully finished parts, and the old forge stands ready to give a fine temper to steel. These tools will die with Kramer, so the Smithsonian says he may enjoy their friendship as long as he is able...