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Aperture ScienceInnovatorsWe Do What We Must Because We Can
Established 1943Upper Michigan, U.S.A.
Telephone ENrichment 9-0943
Form No.ASI-400
DepartmentResearch & Development
IssuedSpring 1959
ClassificationUnrestricted
Research & Development

Research Divisions

Six divisions, four hundred and eleven technical staff, and one standing instruction from the Office of the President: if a man tells you a thing cannot be done, write down what it would cost to be wrong about that, and bring the figure to the third floor.

The divisions below are listed in order of the President’s present enthusiasm, which is reviewed weekly and has been known to reverse entirely between a Tuesday and a Wednesday.

Form ASI-401

Quantum Tunnelling

The physics of putting a hole where a hole was not, explained for the layman and the shareholder.
See page →Form ASI-402

Materials

Gels, resins, curtain fabrics, and the department that keeps setting fire to the third floor.
See page →Form ASI-403

Computation

Eleven tons of relays, one punch-card reader, and an idea the President will not let go of.
See page →Form ASI-404

Lunar Program

We bought the moon rocks. All of them. Do not ask what they cost. Ask what they conduct.
See page →Form ASI-405

Applied Biology

Human enhancement, mantid husbandry, and the long-term storage of a personality.
See page →Form ASI-406

Publications

What we have published, what we have patented, and what we have merely gotten to first.
See page →
“We’re throwing science at the wall here to see what sticks.”
— Cave Johnson, to the Materials Department, 1954

On Publication

Aperture publishes when Aperture has finished, and not before. This is occasionally described by others as secrecy. We regard it as tidiness. A paper published mid-experiment is a paper that has to be published twice, and the outfit in New Mexico publishes four times a year and has yet to finish anything.

computation isnt working on computation. ask them what theyre working on. dont ask them twice