One of my students mailed me a newspaper clipping three
or four years ago about a man called Ray Hammerstrom, a
roller at the steel works in Pittsburgh operated by Jones and
Laughlin Steel Corporation. He received $15,000 for his dream.
According to the article, the engineers could not fix a
faulty switch in a newly installed bar mill which controlled the
delivery of straight bars to the cooling beds. The engineers
worked on the switch about eleven or twelve times to no avail.
Hammerstrom thought a lot about the problem and tried
to figure out a new design which might work. Nothing worked.
One afternoon he lay down for a nap, and prior to sleep he
began to think about the answer to the switch problem. He had
a dream in which a perfect design for the switch was portrayed.
When he awoke, he sketched his new design according to the
outline of his dream.
This visionary catnap won Hammerstrom a check for
$15,000, the largest award the firm ever gave an employee for
a new idea.