The optics career and the serial obsessions: gamma-refractive lenses, cold annular fusion, the patented fortune, tennis-as-mathematics

pivotal · UNDATED (Federal interval G. Ford - early G. Bush, B.S. era; a "B.S. 1989" convention datum)

• When: UNDATED; his government science service spans "the Federal interval G. Ford-early G. Bush," then early retirement into the private sector; the founding-relevant meeting of minds with Schtitt is dated "a B.S. 1989 U.S.T.A. convention on photoelectric line-judging" (all B.S. era)
• What: The O.N.R. financed JOI's doctorate in optical physics ("fulfilling something of a childhood dream"); he became "more or less the top applied-geometrical-optics man in the O.N.R. and S.A.C.," designing neutron-scattering reflectors for thermo-strategic weapons, then at the A.E.C. developed the gamma-refractive indices for lithium-anodized lenses "commonly regarded as one of the big half-dozen discoveries that made possible cold annular fusion and approximate energy-independence for the U.S." After early retirement his optical acumen became "a patented fortune in rearview mirrors, light-sensitive eyewear, holographic birthday and Xmas greeting cartridges, videophonic Tableaux," etc. — the annulation legacy his sons reference ("Himself and annulation," scene 064) and an A.E.C. "coprolite plaque in Tavis's office" memorializes ("his final lasting contribution to state science after he quit designing neutron-diffusion reflectors for Defense" — a contribution to annular fusion / "the energy of waste," scene 114). He came to competitive tennis "more like a pure mathematician than a technician," carrying his hard-math-and-optics background — his "fierce flat serve-and-haul-ass-to-the-net" game "had carried him through M.I.T. on a full ride"; at the B.S. 1989 U.S.T.A. convention he and Gerhardt Schtitt found themselves "totally simpatico," JOI articulating in Cantorian terms ("Extra-Linear Dynamics") that tennis's beauty is an "infoliating" continuum of infinities bounded only by the self (the shared vision that later wins Schtitt to E.T.A., event 7). Hal's retrospective frames the whole arc as serial obsession: "he remained obsessed with something until he became successful at it, then transferred his obsession to something else" — "From military optics to annular optics to entrepreneurial optics to tennis-pedagogy to film" (scene 179) — and JOI as a watcher of crowds, "almost a scopophile about spect-ops and crowds" who "never once missed" Boston's annual pond-drainings when alive (scene 121), the scopophilia that feeds his later figurant aesthetic (event 21).