Re: Mak or custom lens?

[Tom Droege <droege@wwa.com>]

Michael, and all

Ha!  At least this got a response.

At 06:45 PM 1/16/98 -0500, you wrote:
>  <BEGIN trouble-making mode>
>
>  Hey, Tom -- just who ARE "the scientists in the group?"   :-)
>
>  <END trouble-making mode>
>                                 Michael Richmond
>

Wild horses could not drag a name from my lips - or from the e-mail
either.   Seems to me we are all scientists on this bus - to paraphrase
an old Firesine Theater bit.  OK everyone does not endorse having a 
lens made, not even me.  But we shall see if I choose to take that 
risk.  

OK, I will define "scientists" as those who wrote me presenting a good
scientific argument re use of the better (?) lens.   So you can be a 
"scientist" (to me only) discussing one point, and a "goofball" discussing
another.  It all depends on the argument you make.  The best arguments
are those that I do not agree with but which have such persuasion that
they cause me to change course to a better plan.  One reason I put up
all this stuff is the hope of eliciting such an argument.

It is oversimplification to look at this as just a lens choice.  I am trying
to bring a big system together.  One that will take state of the art data
for a system of it's kind.  I am trying to get everything lined up so that
eventually I get a system that works out the door.  It is not too good to
try to stage it too much.  If I did, it would be easy to get 10 systems 
out the door, all different.  One charm of the present Mark III systems 
is that they are pretty much alike.  

Everyone always worries that I manufacture too much stuff from scratch.
This was a constant battle at Fermilab and previous high energy physics
jobs where I would set up little production lines to make stuff for common
use.  No one ever bothered me when I would make a one of a kind 
instrument at great effort.  But when I would find some common
denominator of need and produce a bunch of things, I would lose 
support.  No matter that the thing that I am famous for at Fermilab
is something that got produced in thousands. 

Of course my ego is involved.  I want to build a system that it won't be
easy to improve.  

Tom Droege