¶ More With Less: Sea Technology (2)
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Index Entry
More With Less: Sea Technology:
“and you careened your ship and put in much stronger, longer fiber masts. No knots. Then you came to a country like what we call the Phillipines today and we find that the fibers were much stronger for your ropes; so you put on a lot of that rope and make some more rope at home. And you get to a place like Egypt and they had much longer fibers for their cotton and you make your sails out of that. And you found that by the time your ship came home-- the same ship, weighing exactly the same-- could way outperform the other ship that was the same. So when it came to the great battles of the sailing ships, a man who had really been around the world and had got his ship into a very high performance out of the same amount of material-- you would close with the other man when it really was blowing hard; the other man was going to have to take off sail or else his sails would blow out, or his ropes would break, or his mast would break. Whoever did the most with the same, or more with the same, was the one who stayed on top of the ocean. And this was the most highly classified thing, which never showed up. So that when the other man went to the bottom, he couldn’t tell about it; so it was kept as a really great secret. I’m really amazed that it’s never gotten into the book of economics-- about doing more with less!.. And from your own accounting viewpoint, just think what I’m saying.”
¶ Citations
- RBF to Arthur Anderson & Co., (p.6), New York, 13 Mar’74
