As a boy I loved to build model airplanes, not the snap-together plastic models of today, but the old-fashioned Spads and Sopwith Camels made of balsa wood and tissue paper. I dreamed of EDDIE RICKENBACKER and dogfights with the Red Baron as I sat there sniffing airplane glue. Mother thought I would never grow up to make an honest living, and mothers are never wrong. Thirty years later I sit in a research laboratory surrounded by crystal models and...