Ditto for processors, he adds. "Five years ago you needed a high-end engineering workstation to digest a good-sized point cloud. Right now, I'm running all this off my laptop."
And here it comes: Its NURBS automatically produced in less than three minutes, the part spins on the screen in smooth, gleaming verisimilitude, accurate to within three-thousandths of a millimeter, ready for a range of design, manufacturing, and inspection applications. The part can be virtually redesigned, for example, and the new version (or versions, any number of them) compared in function with the original. It's possible even to age the part, to see how it will perform during years of use.
The engineer gazes into the monitor to admire the virtual turbine, whose existence is all the more amazing because it is not his handiwork.
She hoped her death would be fast and painless. Given her countrymen's taste for torture, however, and her own agonizing past, Ping wasn't optimistic.
In February 1981, without a trial or even a formal charge, the Chinese government locked 23-year-old Ping Fu in solitary confinement, in a wing of Nanjing prison reserved for political criminals. There was neither heat nor a latrine in Ping's cell, but most dreadfully there was no light, natural or otherwise. Ping sat in utter darkness. She slumped against the wall and waited to die, wondering, almost dispassionately, about the means of her execution. She hoped it would be fast and painless. Given her countrymen's taste for torture, however, and her own agonizing past, Ping wasn't optimistic.
When Ping was 7 years old and her sister, Hong, 3, the two little girls were taken from their home in Shanghai and delivered to a dormitory for the children of so-called "capitalist-road" parents in Nanjing. It was 1965, the dawn of the Cultural Revolution.
Ping was forced to watch the Red Guard tie a kindergarten teacher to four horses. The Guard members--just teenagers themselves--then startled the horses. Ping was forced to watch another teacher be dropped head-first down a dry well. She watched the Red Guard scald her little sister with boiling water because one day Hong made too much noise as she played. Another day, the Red Guard threw Hong into a river for the fun of watching her drown. Ping jumped into the river and dragged her out. The enraged Guard members then beat the girls, and raped Ping. Now that Ping was an adult, and condemned as an enemy of the people, what hope did she have for a quick death?
As the dark hours bled out, Ping considered her "crime." Five years earlier, in 1976, Chairman Mao had died and the Cultural Revolution had come to an abrupt end. Schools and colleges opened for the first time in a decade. Ping entered the university in Suzhou. She hoped to study business or engineering, following in the footsteps of her engineer father and accountant mother, but the Party directed her to study English as a second language. Any sort of learning was a glory for Ping. She read Anna Karenina in translation and grew interested in journalism. A professor suggested that she go out to the provinces and research a rumored epidemic of infanticide. Ping accepted the assignment.
For two years she traveled through rural China, visiting hundreds of towns and villages, interviewing hospital staffers, barefoot doctors, and citizens. The national practice of killing infant girls had long been tacitly acknowledged, but never fully investigated. Ping proved an able reporter--curious, meticulous, resourceful, compassionate. There was no explaining or forgiving the crimes she documented and often witnessed. Because the state had ordered that parents were permitted only one child, however, and because tradition enforced an ironclad, son-centered patrimony, Ping did not judge her compatriots.
In 1980, she delivered her findings to her professor. A few months later, in January 1981, Shanghai's largest newspaper published a report based on Ping's research. The report was widely praised, although credit, of course, accrued to senior government officials. The story was subsequently published nationwide in People's Daily, then picked up by the international media. Which was when the trouble started.
The global community was outraged. The United Nations imposed sanctions on China. Earlier, when the report had been deemed a success, it had proved convenient for Chinese officials to overlook the contributions of the student who had gathered the data. Now that the report had provoked an international human rights scandal, however, it proved convenient for the government to identify and condemn the student, and to throw her into Nanjing prison.
After a seemingly endless period of isolation and darkness, Ping heard boots drumming the corridor outside her cell, the lock turning. She was led to a room where the light blinded her. Through dry lips she asked how long she'd been confined, and was amazed to learn that it was just three days. Ping was weak and disoriented. She assumed her execution was at hand. An official sat behind a desk.
"You must never say a word about your involvement in this project," the official told her. "You are forbidden to engage in any political activity. You will never return to China, but your family remains here. If in any way you disobey these instructions, your family will suffer the consequences. Have I made myself clear, Comrade?"
