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The Phi Beta Delta fraternity had almost collapsed the year before, because there were two different cliques that had split the fraternity in half. There was a group of socialite characters, who liked to have dances and fool around in their cars afterwards, and so on, and there was a group of guys who did nothing but study, and never went to the dances. Just before I came to the fraternity they had had a big meeting and had made an important compromise. They were going to get together and help each other out. Everyone had to have a grade level of at least such-and-such. If they were sliding behind, the guys who studied all the time would teach them and help them do their work. On the other side, everybody had to go to every dance. If a guy didn't know how to get a date, the other guys would get him a date. If the guy didn't know how to dance, they'd teach him to dance. One group was teaching the other how to think, while the other guys were teaching them how to be social.

They had wasted all their time memorizing stuff like that, when it could be looked up in fifteen minutes.

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.

My businessman friend Dudley Wright saw the drawing and I told him the story about it. He said, "You oughta triple its price. With art, nobody is really sure of its value, so people often think, 'If the price is higher, it must be more valuable!'"