The Legend of Jake Einstein
By Deborah Layne

Jake Einstein was a physicist. There are more stories about Jake Einstein than electrons in a bucket of hydrogen ions, but they all tell how Jake was the smartest physicist who ever rode the range.

When America was a young country, physics was an important pursuit. The land was covered with mass, force, motion, velocity, and acceleration. No one knew quite what to expect when any of these things went to work. A new country needs to understand the physical world right down to the particle level. That's where Jake Einstein came in.

Most folks think Jake was born in Princeton or Cambridge. Although no one knows for sure where, or when, Jake was born, everyone does agree he was an insightful baby.

They say Jake was born talking - words and numbers. When the doctor slapped his bottom they say Jake pointed out that suspended by his feet he looked like a pendulum and made a fair model of a case of simple harmonic motion. Of course he was quick to point out it was only approximate and when the amplitude increased the departure from simple harmonic would be substantial.

Jake's Mama fainted and the doctor pretty near dropped him, but both agreed Jake was going to be someone special.

The Einsteins were simple folk who lived in a small cabin in the woods. As Jake grew, his parents wondered how their home was going to contain him and his work. Between the frictionless inclined planes rigged up with pulleys and blocks and the carts moving along straight tracks at constant acceleration, the cabin was filling up. Jake knew in principle he could do everything with a chalkboard and plenty of chalk, but he was the consummate experimentalist, too. When Jake's Papa saw the preliminary drawing for the giant pendulum on the chalkboard, he and Jake's Mama decided it was time Jake left home.

Early one morning, Jake packed up his extra socks and his slide rule, kissed his Mama, and struck out on his own.

Soon Jake came to a Mechanics camp. The foreman had the men working on projectile motion. Each man had a chalkboard, some chalk and a baseball. They were busy trying to predict where the baseball would land when thrown. Now Jake took one look at the problem and he had it licked.

"Hey boys," he called out. "Why don't you treat the baseball as a point mass without any shape, size or spin? You can ignore the buoyant force and air resistance. Makes it a lot easier to solve. You'll get close enough."

The men got busy on their chalkboards and the foreman walked over and shook Jake's hand.

"You're a damn fine physicist, son, what's your name?" said the foreman.

"Jake. Jake Einstein. I'm looking for work."

"Well, Jake, you found it. We can use a man that can simplify like that."

Jake felt at home at the Mechanics camp and before long he had worked out three good laws of motion. The trouble was Jake was so insightful, and good with the equipment, it became clear he was going to have the whole mechanics deal done in no time. Since the men depended on their work in mechanics to support their families, Jake knew the only right thing to do was to move on.

Times were good for a frontier physicist. Jake worked on theory while riding across the plain or sitting by a campfire at night. When it was time to test a hypothesis he rode into a physics ranch to grab some data.

Jake had a way of getting Nature to give up Her secrets. He single-handedly discovered the proportionality between pressure, volume and temperature in an ideal gas. Figuring the laws of thermodynamics didn't give him a lick of trouble either, although truth be told, he considered that to be chemistry, not physics. Nonetheless, refrigerators would be a far off dream but for Jake's theoretical work on heat transfer.

Naturally Jake was the first to realize how much time lone physicists wasted on problems somebody else had solved. One day in the Carson City Saloon he overheard two men arguing about the relationship between energy and work, which Jake himself had settled years earlier. Frustrated, Jake spoke to the crowd.

"Damn, Boys, you know how much time we're spending on solved problems? Some feller needs to collect all this information in one place."

It just so happened the bartender was a writer. He piped up.

"Mr. Einstein, sir, if you'll tell the boys to send in their results I'd be happy to edit them together. We could call it Physics Letters."

"That'd work," said Jake.

And that's how Jake invented the science journal and the editor in one day, work for which he is less well known.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, Jake knew Physics was changing. Experimental work required bigger, more expensive equipment, and more of the young physicists rejected a lonesome life on the trail. Jake figured a range war couldn't be far off. Early on a physicist could ride a fortnight without seeing a research ranch all fenced in. Not any more. Jake didn't see the advantage to digging in to one narrow area. Jake reckoned a physicist needed the freedom of the open range to keep him sharp.

Jake wasn't against change, mind you. In fact, he was a great physicist precisely because he wasn't afraid to accept new ideas when the data supported them. His transition from Classical to Relativistic Mechanics came easy. When the Michelson-Morley gang showed there was no luminiferous ether, Jake took it in stride. And everybody has heard how he was one of the first proponents of the atomic theory. But every man has a limit and soon Jake hit his.

One day Jake rode into Dodge to post some new physics letters. In the saloon was a man who was to become a legend in his own right - none other than Ned Bohr. Ned's strange ideas about particles were all the rage back in Copenhagen.

Jake and Ned huddled over a table in the Dodge Saloon for hours. Everybody else kept quiet. A few times the two physicists raised their voices. Once Jake even pounded his fist on the table. Ned called for portable chalkboard. The two took to scribbling on the chalkboard. Pretty soon they hit an impasse.

"Particle are particles, waves are waves, and nothing tunnels through a wall 'cept by magic," said Jake.

"But at the subatomic level, Mr. Einstein--."

"That's enough." Jake stepped back from the chalkboard, dropped his last piece of chalk and looked Ned straight in the eye.

"Ned Bohr, it's a hell of a thing to take a man's paradigm. You take away all he's got and all he'll ever have. I guess I ought to know. I've taken a few in my time. But you ain't taking mine. I mean to run you out of town."

Ned should've withered under Jake's sneer, but he stood his ground.

"Mr. Einstein, surely you cannot fail to see the future when it is before your very eyes. Your paradigm has become obsolete, sir."

Jake put one dusty boot against the bottom of the chalkboard and kicked it to the floor.

"Sorry, Ned. God don't play dice."

Ned lowered his eyes briefly, then turned to pick up his carpetbag from the floor.

"Well, Mr. Einstein, I see I have wasted my time. You are not ready to move ahead."

Ned walked toward the Saloon's swinging doors, then paused and looked over his shoulder.

"When you're ready, you can find me in New Mexico. Good day, Mr. Einstein."

Before the doors quit swinging a cheer erupted through the saloon. The party lasted all night. And Jake's legend grew.

Not long after Jake cleared Ned out of Dodge, he decided it was time to settle down. He found a good research ranch where he could work on his unified field theory in peace. He never did confront Ned again, but some say he had the last laugh. When Jake died, his grave was marked with a simple stone that read,

"No need to open the box, boys, I'm dead."

The End

Story copyright Deborah Layne, published by the Fortean Bureau
http://www.forteanbureau.com