nicola jones

Ten years ago, John Eiler couldn’t convince anyone to build him his dream machine. He wanted a mass spectrometer that could measure the mass of common gases with extreme precision and sensitivity, but such a device would cost more than a million dollars and might not find a market: The companies that could make it didn’t think they would be able to sell more than just the one to Eiler, which didn’t make it worth their while. Even Eiler didn’t know exactly what problems he could solve with the device, though he had a hunch it would be useful.