Harry Gatos platinum flute consulting (Attleboro precious metals tubing)

Personal aside — Gatos consulted Tom on how to fabricate half-million-dollar platinum flutes via the Attleboro precious-metals tubing maker.

There was a guy who'd been at the solid state division at Lincoln Lab. His name was Harry Gaydos [Gatos]. Anybody ever heard of [Gatos]? He's a professor in this department in the mid-60s. He had been a student in this department in the late 50s, went to Lincoln Lab, headed up the gallium arsenide program where NASA was throwing money at it, and he was known for many years as the father of gallium arsenide. I knew him when I was a student, I knew him well as a young faculty member, we battled over the Graduate Admissions Committee — he was chair of it — anyway, that's another story, nice guy. If you walked down the hall in building 13 you would hear him playing his flute. He was actually an outstanding flute player. He had brass flutes, he had gold flutes, and he was one of only four or five people in the world who had a platinum flute. He used to come to me for advice on how to make flutes, because he knew I worked with the precious metals company down here in Attleboro that made precious metals tubing. He would work with the artisans who were making these half-million-dollar flutes, and he would ask me how should we make this, how should we make that. I'd tell him how to braze them together or whatever.