Monument

You've heard of it—now here it is at last. It's the Tale that wagged the Dog Star!
With his explanations to the reporters completed, Dr. King felt that when he pulled the switch he would automatically restore his good name and bring to a close a career of solid scientific achievement. Most of all, he would bring to an end the practice of referring to him as Side Effect Charlie.
Dr. Charles King was willing to admit that there were excellent reasons for his acquiring this hated nickname. The facts were that the bulk of his scientific achievements were made inadvertently—that is to say, his discoveries were all made through investigation of unexpected side effects of his experiments. In a career conspicuous for unusual, unanticipated side effects, two in particular stand out.
The first discovery resulted in rendering the entire heat-oriented metallurgical industry obsolete, and founding upon its corpse a new industry. This was based on the extracting of metal from ore and its subsequent shaping by first eliminating the bonds that hold the molecules of metal together, and then reversing the process when the desired shape was attained. Dr. King did not discover this process directly. He thought he had discovered a method of making metal surfaces self-lubricating and 100% friction free. It was not until several installations utilizing his lubrication method became pools of liquid metal that Dr. King bothered to discover how his method worked, and of course the means to reverse his process. The resulting revolution in metal-processing methods endeared him to everyone—except a few vested interests like the shareholders in existing metal companies, who were uniformly glum.
The second discovery, although monumental in itself, is important because it indirectly led to the special project which Dr. King was just completing. Dr. King succeeded in growing some crystals in a nutrient solution. What actually happened was that while eating lunch at a lab table he managed to knock something into something else and a crystal developed. Dr. King became fascinated with the odd structure of these crystals as revealed to him under an electron microscope. (He had incidentally placed the crystal under the microscope in error.) As a result, he took to investigating the properties of the crystals whenever he could find time. Despite his well earned reputation as an accidental discoverer, it should be pointed out that Dr. King is a very methodical man. This means he is capable of repeating the same mistake twice, or for that matter any number of times. Therefore, Dr. King produced all the crystals he needed.