According to Stewart, in fact, the consultants based most of the report on material his company had given them.
By think-tank standards in his area, Stewart may have gotten a bargain. Dealing with consultants new to micro data bases, however, he was in effect paying their tuition.
“The federal government must like them immensely,” Stewart said, “because they do good, documented work in the fields they have expertise in. But a small businessman had no business using them. After two and one-half months we had nothing but recommendations on the data base—and a stack of bills”—$2,500 high.
But there was hope. Stewart’s corporate benefactors were sticking with him. If he could get his data base running, he could easily recoup his losses, offering clients a treasure trove of information about government policy-making affecting them. Although Stewart thought of himself as a truth seeker, his vice-president was bluntly a money man. “We would have sold our service for a million a year,” Hillard said, “and we would have netted $600,000. We were using four people to feed the articles into the computer, but that would have changed, because optical readers eventually could scan magazine articles and newsprint.”
So now Hillard shopped around for a new savior to unravel the complexities of the MDBS software that he had settled on.
He found three possibilities. One consultant, a micro expert, was snowed under with work, and another man had only mainframe experience. So Hillard and Stewart chose Fred Brown, a retired military officer who had worked not only on big computers but also little Radio Shacks and TeleVideos. In fact, Brown came recommended by the manager of a local computer store. The manager leveled with Stewart. He said he and Brown were together in a partnership developing software for lawyers’ offices. Hillard asked only two people about Brown. And both references came from the computer-store manager with the business relationship with the consultant. Inquiring about Brown, however, Hillard asked some good questions. Did Brown document the software properly? Did he, in other words, tell how to use or change it? Did his software work? Did he meet deadlines? Did he live up to all the specifications in his contracts? “I got affirmative answers to most of these questions,” Hillard said. One reference said a software project of Brown’s hadn’t come in on time but brushed off the problem as a hardware one.
Unfortunately, Hillard didn’t ask all the right questions. Brown had never before worked with the brand of computer that Stewart Research was using; nor was he fully comfortable at the time with the exact kind of software used at the company.
Brown, however, struck Hillard as “a very nice professional.” He wore three-piece suits, lived in a $140,000 home with several computers in the basement, and held a masters degree from an Ivy League school.
“No problem,” Brown told Hillard. “Listen, I charge——” He gave an hourly figure to the nearest cent; $30.02, we’ll say.
“What?” asked Hillard. “Why 0.02 an hour?”