The man with 1,000 Klein Bottles UNDER his house - Numberphile
Numberphile8 HN recommenders · 2015–2024
2.2M views · interview · evergreen · Uploaded 2015-06-22
Numberphile visits Cliff Stoll, the man behind ACME Klein Bottles, and sees how he stores a thousand glass Klein bottles in a crawlspace under his house. A remote-controlled forklift fetches them.
HN commenters love Cliff Stoll's earnest, playful personality and point to this as a delightful look at his unusual warehouse.
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14 comments from Hacker News
You should also watch the related video about how he stores Klein bottles under his house. It's fascinating. [VIDEO]
I thought I recognised the name... turns out Cliff is the guy from the Numberphile videos who loves klein bottles. He is such an enjoyment to watch. [VIDEO]
Numberphile did a video a couple of years ago that featured the forklift in question: [VIDEO] Cliff is a really neat guy. I met and talked to him briefly once (at Dayton Hamvention, 20ish years ago). He's a really, really nice guy.
It's been implemented to some degree by Cliff Stoll for his klein bottle business. Or rather, he started a warehouse in his crawlspace. Same difference... [VIDEO]
To learn about the operation, watch the Numberphile video, “The man with 1,000 Klein Bottles UNDER his house” [VIDEO]
Cliff is an amazing person. Just a joy! Every time I see him on Numberphile , my life is made better. [LINK] [VIDEO] P.S. Cliff, we know you're on HN. Please continue being yourself, it seems like a really great person to be!
> Of course, these days, he's the best dang Klein bottle glass blower in the game. And of course, he hires out the manufacturing. That's why he has (an awesome, little) warehouse under his hour full of them. [VIDEO]
> Earnestness, for example, is pretty far away from my conception of "playful" or "flirty" or even "fun". Cliff Stoll is the most earnest person I have talked to in the past year, and also one of the most playful and fun. See e.g. [VIDEO] I think you have a non-standard personal definition of “earnest”. As I understand the words, earnestness and playfulness are completely orthogonal/unrelated attributes.
Everything this guy does is hilarious and entertaining. See later talk about this event: [LINK] And he drives RC forklift under his house to store Klein bottles he's selling! [VIDEO]
So in 2015 [1] you said you ordered enough bottles for about 10 years, but you're already running out? That's quite the success story you have there! [1] [VIDEO]
No discussion of Klein bottles would be complete without mentioning Cliff Stoll's Acme Klein Bottle company. [LINK] His warehouse is pretty unique: [VIDEO]
Bah they forgot to mention the best bit. He keeps already-made klein bottles in the crawlspace under his house, and built a remote controlled fpv mini-forklift to retrieve them on demand: [VIDEO]
this numberphile/Cliff Stoll video is on a different topic, klein bottles... or maybe more the travelling salesman/knapsack problem, but it's a must see. Cliff is a cool guy (whose geewhiz excitement I can only take in small doses but) he's worth following [VIDEO]
If you don't happen to have the time to visit him, here is a playlist of videos Numberphile did on Klein Bottles, his basement warehouse, the intrinsic curvature of pizza, and a whole bunch of other interesting things: [VIDEO]