We live in a 3-D world, Emerick reflected, but even a genius like Leonardo da Vinci drew in 2-D. The most sophisticated industries still hadn't progressed far beyond da Vinci. Why was it that a radiologist could use a scanner to sound the complexities of the human body, and Emerick couldn't use a similar process to inspect a plastic circuit-breaker cover?
The treatments succeeded. Emerick returned to work. But he remembered the question that came to him that day in the CAT tube, and began searching for effective 3-D inspection software. He found a number of products, but none had solved the fundamental problem of forging an accurate, efficient, affordable link between 2-D and 3-D. Finally, Emerick came across a small, two-year-old North Carolina-based outfit called Geomagic.
Geomagic, amazingly, had solved the problem. The company's software provided the missing link between the polygon and NURBS phases of the digital shaping and imaging process; instead of the 1,295 dimensions of the cover being inspected individually, they could now be processed all at once, and automatically. A Square D production worker could readily accomplish what used to be a major effort for a skilled designer. The three-week inspection process could be shrunk to just two days.
Besides offering a potentially industry-changing product, the company paid extraordinary attention to detail. In a similar vein, the company was unfailingly a pleasure to work with. Geomagic's service reps listened closely to Emerick's concerns, all the intricate, industry-specific issues, and responded in an almost intuitive way. It was as if someone from Geomagic had ridden into the CAT tube with Emerick, and been visited by the same thoughts.
Emerick knew that the style of a company, especially a smaller one, usually reflected the personality of its CEO. Geomagic's chief was someone named Ping Fu. Russ Emerick thought that he must be an exceptionally intelligent and insightful man.
One afternoon in the early fall of 1984, Ping walked the beach at Del Mar, Calif. She had arrived on the West Coast by an almost whimsical route. At the University of New Mexico, Ping had heard a professor muse that Asian graduate students, for all their achievement, rarely seemed to connect with American culture. The best way for them to learn about America, the professor suggested, was to enter a university as an undergraduate: Live in a dorm, eat greasy pizza in the dining hall, play foosball in the student union. Largely because of this offhand advice, Ping left the University of New Mexico without finishing her degree and enrolled at the University of California-San Diego--an undergraduate, this time, in computer sciences. She had come to the beach for a long, head-clearing walk.
After covering a mile or two she sat down on a driftwood log and looked out to sea. Lost in her thoughts, she didn't see the man approach. "Why so pensive, young lady?" he asked. They struck up a conversation. The man, whose name was Len Sherman, turned out to own a start-up software design company. Ping told him she was a programmer. Sherman hired Ping to write code on a part-time basis.
As a result of this quintessentially Californian encounter, Ping hit her stride in software design. As she designed a piece, she thought constantly about the needs and aptitude of the user. Her codes followed an organic, logical flow, forming a kind of narrative, and Sherman's customers loved them. In return, by working part-time at the beach, Ping earned a six-figure annual income. Sherman would go surfing while Ping worked up at his office, sitting at a computer monitor in front of the picture window.
Ping earned her baccalaureate and set course on another degree, a doctorate in computer sciences. She wanted to work for Bell Labs in Illinois, and continue her studies at the University of Illinois, which housed the federally funded National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Sherman begged her to stay in California. How could she leave the San Diego beaches for the gray Midwest? The two of them had a great thing going--they were making money by the bucketful. When Ping said sorry, she had made up her mind, Sherman offered her a 5% stake in his company. Ping turned it down.
Sherman looked at her closely. He planned to sell his company eventually; from that 5% stake, Ping could become a millionaire. Did she fully understand what she was giving up?
She did; or at least she thought she did. (And, in fact, six months after she left California, Sherman sold the company.) Money itself was of little interest to Ping. Thus far in the U.S., money had accrued to her almost by its own accord. She wanted something else. Exactly what she could not name, but that was part of America too. Perhaps the greatest part.
Ping moved in 1986 to Illinois, where she worked for four years at Bell Labs while beginning work on her Ph.D. Then, in keeping with her plan, she moved to the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, or NCSA, and while there completed her doctorate. She immersed herself in the field of computer visualization, which was opening an exciting new playground on the border between science and art. Ping quickly demonstrated a gift for applications, for crystallizing arcane theory into a range of viable products. Among other projects, she helped design the software animation for the movie Terminator 2. She eventually took a full-time staff position at NCSA, a mecca for talented computer science students. One of them was Marc Andreessen, a tall, fair-haired sophomore whose disheveled appearance belied his fierce ambition.
