Pelloux quote — "something won't fail unless it's been welded

Tom's first year on faculty; MIT mechanical engineering professor Reggie Pelloux's classroom remark, later delivered by Tom in the 1992 Houdremont Lecture to 500 welding engineers at the International Institute of Welding in Montreal. Used as both job-security joke and frame for §7 (why welds actually do fail).

The first year I was on the faculty we had a guy in fatigue and fracture named Professor Reggie Pelloux. Some of the graduate students came to me and said, do you know what Professor Pelloux was saying in his class? He says, "something won't fail unless it's been welded." I thought, I'm in welding. Then I thought another five seconds and said, oh, I will have a job for the rest of my life. Because they will fail if they've been welded.

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