Here's how I sell a Klein bottle: somebody goes to my website, buys a bottle, comes down into my
office. I print out a receipt and a packing slip; okay let's send it out. This has nothing to do
with mathematics, everything with running a home business. Whoever buys a Klein bottle from me, I
figure I'm going to meet them, they're going to bump into me. And so I'm going to make sure that
when they when they see me I hope they'll be my friend. Okay somebody's ordered a Klein bottle,
ask my robot, robot delivers a box of bottles, I bring it over here. I go weigh it; step one, take a
picture of it. All these mathematicians are smiling at it. Weather permitting I'm going to walk outside,
take a picture of the guy against the sky, against whatever is blossoming - whatever leaves there are.
How about - hey!
Okay, come on in. Just spent all of what? A minute walking through the garden, and oh
wait a second - ah check this out, fall color is here. Again, why am I going to do? This has
nothing to do with mathematics, it's because if somebody buys a Klein bottle I celebrate by
walking through our little backyard garden. Come on back in. Let's wrap this up.
Well bubble wrap, not yet out the door, but hey,
here's what's coming.
Almost getting there. First before we pack everything up:
throw in some sheets of unimportant information, a calibration decal,
runs from 0.0 milliliters all the way up to zero hundred to
zero thousand milliliters. Start some bubbles, come on Mr machine.
It's a bottle, it's a glass bottle, that I hope means fragile.
Mr fragile or maybe Miss fragile or Mrs fragile or fragile them. Fragile!
The pictures, they're for two purposes: purpose one
is to fix my mistakes. If I forgot something, if I screwed up, it shows up in the camera.
The other thing therefore is to send to my customer. - (Brady: I say you've put lots of automation)
(in place in various ways but it still seems like a really time intensive purpose with all the)
(handwritten messages and the drawings) - Brady, it's time intensive, it's a labor of love. I can't say I
make the glass bottles myself - at my age I'm tired of burning my fingers. And they didn't do that
much anyway, but everything else: um packing them, making sure that it's going to the right person,
making sure that it's not going to break along the way - - (How often do they break?)
How often does do my Klein bottles break? - (In the post) - Oh in the post?
Um about 1 in 200, 1 in 300 is broken on delivery. I mean of course you know if I take it like this
uh my floor is cushioned so I'm not worried about it breaking on my floor,
but I'm also not worried about- when I first started putting these in boxes I chose the
box and I chose the method of cushioning them by taking- by going to a stepladder and standing
five feet - about a meter and three quarters - off a concrete- on top of concrete dropping them from a
ladder. First on that end, than throwing it up like this, and letting it drop a lot of times.
You know, you know, over and over again - well on here this is a cushiony floor but I did
it over concrete. Needless to say I also guarantee these Klein bottles; you know if it arrives broken-
if it arrives broken I'll replace it immediately. In fact one thing I say is, look
I want you to be happy. I want my customer to be smiling. So if it breaks in the first three months
send me a picture of the broken thing, send me 10 bucks,
I'll replace it. Here's my little forklift robot to go pick Klein bottles from stock. Tilt the
thing - if you look carefully at it, let's see if I actually show this, I mean this is just homebrew,
this is only incidental, this is not Klein bottles, it's how to run a warehouse really.