Chapter 23: Kepler's Assessment

Kepler assessed Van Cleef favorably on his second London visit. This was a significant development. Van Cleef had, in the intervening eighteen months, apparently learned something about presenting himself to cats — he arrived in the morning, when the light was good, and he brought a small piece of smoked fish, which was either a calculated approach or a fortunate coincidence. Crane suspected calculation. Van Cleef was an engineer. The London visit was for the Society's annual meeting, at which Van Cleef was elected to the membership committee — the body responsible for reviewing new member applications. He had, he told Crane over the dinner they had after the meeting, specific plans for improving the application process to better identify commercial interests that might misrepresent their nature. 'How do you identify them?' Crane asked. 'The same way you do,' Van Cleef said. 'You read what they build. What someone builds tells you more about their intentions than anything they say. Emmeline understood this. She wrote it in one of the early letters — she said she could always tell a true mechanist from a commercial opportunist by looking at what they chose to make and what constraints they imposed on themselves.' He looked at his wine. 'A true mechanist imposes constraints because the problem requires them. A commercial opportunist removes constraints because they reduce efficiency. The approach to constraint is the tell.' Crane thought about Harwick's automata, which had been designed for maximum commercial applicability and minimum mechanical sophistication. He thought about the chess player, which had been designed to solve a specific, irreplaceable problem and was more complex than anything Harwick had ever commissioned. 'I'll use that,' he said. 'She developed it,' Van Cleef said. 'Use her credit.'