LNG tanker steel development for cryogenic service

1975. Tom developed a special steel for an LNG carrier and traveled to Bethlehem's Sparrows Point BOP shop to observe the heat. Highest-paid hourly employee (~$100,000/year, responsible for $100,000/hour of product) threw Tom out of the pulpit on discovering he had an MIT doctorate — incident triggered by Tom sitting in the operator's chair and asking whether he'd shoot for high or low end of the chemistry range. The heat came in off-chemistry.

And the guy doing it has, if he's lucky, a high school diploma. In 1975 I got thrown out of the BOP shop at the Sparrows Point steel plant, right next to the shipyard, when the guy found out I was from MIT and had a doctoral degree. He threw me out of the pulpit. They were casting a special heat of steel for an LNG carrier, and I had developed the steel and gone down there. When he found out that I actually had a degree that he didn't have, he threw me out of the pulpit. I couldn't be there while he melted the steel. And the steel came in off-chemistry. He was one of the highest-paid employees at Bethlehem Steel in the mid '70s. He was making probably $100,000 a year as an hourly employee, but he was responsible for $100,000 an hour worth of product, and getting it right. I still wonder if he got it wrong just to spite me. I hadn't said anything. I'll tell you what I did. There was no one there, it was a slow time after the oil embargo. We came in, there was one chair in the pulpit and there were three of us, and I went and sat in the chair. When he came back in I stood right up immediately and said hello to him. But he was very upset that I had been sitting in his chair.