It’s a real story!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/charles-proteus-steinmetz-the-wizard-of-schenectady-51912022/
At the beginning of the 20th century Henry Ford’s electrical engineers had issues they could not solve with a gigantic generator. Henry Ford called Steimmetz, a genius mathematician working for GE to help them.
When he arrive at the factory he spent 2 days and night listening to the generator and scribbling on his notebook.
After that he asked for a ladder, climbed on it, put a chalk mark on a specific spot and explain to the engineers that they needed to remove the plate and replace sixteen windings behind the plate. After that the generator worked perfectly and Ford received a $10 000 bill.
Ford asked for an itemized bill and Steinmetz sent this
- Making chalk mark on generator $1.
- Knowing where to make mark $9,999.
Ford paid the bill.
It’s funny reading this, because the way I heard the story was as a railroad story.
The train engine wouldn’t run. The expert was called, he arrived, and after inspecting the train engine, knew exactly were to apply a little bit of oil to make it run again. His bill was challenged as being overly expensive, and he countered with them paying for the knowledge of where to apply to oil, not the oil itself.
There’s like all these different versions of the same philosophy of the story
