After a few years, and a few million pounds, his colleagues suddenly stopped laughing. Overnight, “float glass” made all other methods of manufacturing obsolete.

Emerson was much impressed by this piece of technological history, recognizing its parallel with his own breakthrough. And he was honest enough to admit that it had required far more courage and commitment than his own modest invention. It exemplified the difference between genius and talent.

He was also fascinated by the ancient art of the glassblower, who had not been wholly replaced by technology and probably never would be. He even paid a visit to Venice, now cowering nervously behind its Dutch-built dikes, and goggled at the intricate marvels in the Glass Museum. Not only was it impossible to imagine how some of them had been manufactured, it was incredible that they had even been moved intact from their place of origin. There seemed no limit to the things that could be done with glass, and new uses were still being discovered after two thousand years.

On one particularly dull board meeting Emerson had been frankly daydreaming, admiring the nearby dome of St. Paul’s from one of the few vantage points that had survived commercial greed and architectural vandalism. Two more items on the agenda and they’d be at Any Other Business; then they could all go to the excellent lunch that was waiting in the Penthouse Suite.

The words “four hundred atmospheres pressure” made him look up. Sir Roger Parkinson was reading from a letter which he was holding as if it were some species of hitherto unknown insect. Emerson quickly riffled through the thick folder of his agenda and found his own copy.

It was on impressive stationery, but the usual polynomial legal name meant nothing to him; he noted approvingly, however, that the address was in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. At the bottom of the sheet, like a modest cough, were the words “Est. 1803,” in letters barely visible to the naked eye.