Vico E. Henriques, an interview by Daniel McCool, November 9, 2004: Saving the legacy tape no. 729

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0 . QUE I : It was p.m. And he would have two shot fb r come in. And he would say, "Sit down Vico. d it a - r h r And then when he picked his glass up and finished it- which isn t dri 1n obviously-it was my signal to finish mine, stand up, and say Permis ion t 1 1r. then we were back to sergeant major and colonel. But he talked to me about-we talked about philosophy we talked about mathematics th educational system, dependencies. And you get to realize that you don t need to be cowed by anyone, or awed by them. And then, I guess, the other thing was that if you use your smarts and the people you're with their smarts, which may be different from yours-and that was very important later, or something-but you find that there's very little that you can't do, you cant achieve. When I was at the Bureau of Standards, late in the 50's, I headed up an operations research section. And the whole secret behind operations research is you get 20 people to look at a problem. But the 20 people are not 20 mathematicians, chemists, or whatever, because they all think alike. But you get a botanist, a musician, a linguist, and somebody else, and whatever; then you can usually solve any problem. The other thing is patience. I learned a lot of patience. And tolerance you learn because everybody bleeds the same, the same color, and they hurt the same way. DAN: Did you spend your professional career then at the Bureau of Standards? VIC: No, I stayed there four years-three years, 3-1/2 years. And then I went to the General Services Administration as the Chief Planner for Computers and Communications. And then I 42