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Acme Klein Bottle

kleinbottle.com

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If you have the time and the inclination, one of the best things you can do is go talk to Cliff Stoll at his home in Berkely from which he operates Acme Klein Bottle. He not only sold me the bottle, but gave me a tour of his "warehouse" - Actually the foundation of his house, which he drives a custom RC forklift around to store his bottles.

This is the same Cliff Stoll of The Cuckoo's Egg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Egg_(book) - Which inspired me as a child to pursue my calling of being a systems administrator (Or Site Reliability engineer, in a slight evolution that would look more akin to what he was doing than what the Sysadmin title has come to mean)

His Klein bottle site has of course been discussed on HN before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20246665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14014218

Cliff is a national treasure!

Here here. I love Cliff and have my own Acme Klein bottle, a wedding present from my wife.

I read the book ages ago of course, but I just discovered the NOVA documentary last week. It's quite amazing to see the original people involved recreating events just a few years after they took place (docu was released in 1990). So... I can't believe Cliff's wife agreed to do a shower scene as part of a recreation for the documentary... Just sayin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe5AE-qYan8

Oh Man of DOS, you don’t know the half of it: that Nova was filmed (yup, 16mm Kodachrome) maybe a year after I quit chasing those hackers. So it was not only fresh in my mind, but the technology was properly state of the 1988 art: 9 track tapes on Dec Vaxes, dial up modems, my trusty Mac plus with 512k of memory. Heck, pay phones and 1200 baud modems. I do remember that shower scene - it happened in in our 1915 era claw foot tub.

Yep, I’m a fossil.

I was meaning to ask, was the group of German hackers you encountered affiliated with the CCC/Chaos Computer Club at all? It's been a while since I read the book and NOVA didn't go into any detail there.

I know some of the CCC folks went on to start the SSDev lockpicking club. The first time I attended the TOOOL lock picking conference in Sneak NL I met some of the SSDev guys and their then-president mentioned that they "learned lessons" from the early days of the CCC and applied those when they started SSDev. Lessons such as having members/friends "disappeared" by the Stasi/etc. and trying to play nicer with the authorities this time. It had never occurred to me until recently that the guy who met an unfortunate end in the woods in The Cuckoo's Egg could be related to these other stories I had heard years later.

I've not followed the German hackers who I tracked. A couple years ago, I heard that one or two of them were active in the Chaos Computer Club, at least they showed up to a meeting and described what had happened to them.

Every now and then, I think about doing a talk on "Stalking the Wily Hacker 40 Years Later". It'd be fun, but I'm not sure about a venue.

A legend in his own bathtime.

According to my Amazon order history, I've bought 4 copies of The Cuckoo's Egg. One was for me, and I gave the other 3 away to friends/family.

I'm genuinely considering buying another 10 copies so that I have a bunch on hand to give away to anyone who I think would benefit.

Thanks for writing such a great book :)

Hmmm: Thank you, Complex Lamda! Assuming they’re paperbacks, you’ve contributed the munificent sum of 24 cents to my kids’ tuition and/or bail fund. Yep, royalties generate about six cents a copy.

When the mailbox money is less than the stamp it is mailed with =)

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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU&list=PLt5AfwLFPx...

Video of the warehouse for anyone interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

Yes, oh wizard of gauntlets, I pretty much have an open door policy (well the lock doesn’t work very well). Visitors stop by and I’m delighted to learn about everything from homotopy theory (thanks Aaron) to lizards need for ultraviolet light (thanx Arlene).

It’s an honor to be a member of this tribe.

You and met at Kepler's way, way back when you were talking about your "Silicon Snake Oil". You signed my book and wrote in it "I hear you, John!". I have no idea what we talked about or what you agreed with me about.

Alas, but I too have forgotten ( though I do remember Kepler’s; I purchased the Oxford world atlas there, and all their employees signed it. )

I keep meaning to buy one of your bottles but my wife says we don't have any room for it. I keep telling her it has zero volume.

[edit] I went ahead and ordered one :-)

You’re awesome! I’ll order a bottle as soon as I’m less acutely broke ;)

Hey Cliff, it’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide!

Thanks for being a truly great guy. Your passion and curiosity over the decades has been nothing short of infectious... in a good way. ;^)

Take care!

Hmmm: I know that phrase all too well! But where was I associated with it? Whoever you are, I suspect we met at one of these places:

A whiteboard at Newfield Wireless around 2015 (amongst LTE geolocation wizards)?

Space Telescope Science Institute during the pre-launch doldrums (I scribbled it on one of the VAX-780's)?

While an exchange scholar in Nanjing in 1980, I tried to translate this into Mandarin, to the confusion of my astronomical colleagues at Purple Mountain Observatory.

Either way, thank you for your smile this morning! - Cliff on a windy Monday morning in Oakland, California.

Thank you, Cliff - Coming by is one of my treasured memories, and as I've already attested, you're a major inspiration.

Cliff - would you be interested in a swap?

I have a signed copy of the South Carolina Hall of Fame bulletin when Charles H. Townes (of maser, laser, and Nobel prize fame) was inducted, and would be happy to mail it to you in trade for whatever size bottle you'd care to send my way [0].

I was in high school at the time (1980) and I think he was a little amused by someone my age asking for an autograph.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1964/townes/biogra...

[0] He lived in Berkeley in his later years so you may have known him. And not need or want an autograph. Ehh, the offer stands.

Of course you should buy a klein bottle from Cliff Stoll. Mine came with a nice note. You won't find less orientable decor at a more reasonable price.

Where yesterday’s tomorrow is here today!

Seconded. Great quality and the perfect gift for people who are into mathy things. I have bought two as gifts. Maybe I should have said thirded?

The additional paperwork - commentary and notes from Clifford Stoll -that accompanies these bottles are fun too!

The bottles are beautiful. My dad still has one in the kitchen that I gave him for Christmas 25 years ago. I don’t think the website has changed any since then either.

Pretty much. I am always happy to see sites that are hand-maintained HTML.

> 12) My website looks old-fashioned because it loads faster this way and (mainly) I'm too lazy to rewrite it. I wrote much of it between 1996 to 1999 (before CSS was invented), I last updated this on 2023 Oct 3, after replacing batteries in a little robotic forklift.

Still true. Someday I’ll modernize it, but right now there’s too many other cool things to do.

Worth mentioning here: my website, kleinbottle.com is hosted on a raspberry pi at my home. Cloudflare does a great job of keeping its content available while reducing bandwidth to my place. FoxyCart handles all the secure e-commerce stuff.

Advice and comments from HN makes all the difference —- thanks to all!

One of my favorite parts of this was actually the peripheral material he sent the Klein bottle with. A packing slip, invoice, a list of "quality assurance" checkboxes, all brimming with math jokes.

As you realize, I run this zero-volume business for fun: somehow it attracts crazies and quirkies whose sense of humor maps onto mine.

Well since there are no margins you have to make up for it in no volume.

Did you ever have a discussion with your teachers about coloring inside/outside the lines?

I bought one of these for a mathematician I know. He immediately weaved some water in it and said: "look, there's water outside the bottle".

When I bought it some months ago, it came with a fun note, some hand written comments, and a sticker.

“Glass Klein Bottles for sale - inquire within”

Still puts a smile on my face, every time.

It's so fun to see Stoll enthusiastically still participating in forums like this, commenting, adding anecdotes; just hanging out. A wonderful person and a true legend.

My smiles back to you ... in 1964, I coded our high school's IBM-1620, to solve a pythagorean triangle. Yep: punch-cards, assembler, and a very finicky Selectric. The computer couldn't even add (you had to load arithmetic tables first).

Since then, I've had the delight of learning from so many people - in computing, physics, and math. Like so many on HN, I appreciate the astonishing accomplishments in our field, and recognize the troubles and challenges which we've created.

Across sixty years of computing, I'm honored to spend time (usually as a lurker) on Hacker News.

The best part, after placing an order:

Thanks again for entrusting your delicate topological needs to Acme - happy home of handles, holes, and hyperbole. -Cliff Stoll (and Pat, Zoe, and Danny) [any profits go directly into Zoe & Danny's College and/or Bail fund]

I've got a Klein Stein, and it's really cool, but I wish I had bought a regular bottle instead because it's not quite as interesting when you show it to people who have never seen one before. They just think its an all-glass insulated mug.

how do you explain people why it is really cool?

You don't explain why it's cool. You just explain it, then you wait to see if the person you explained it to is cool or uncool.

Gorkish, now imagine receiving furrowed brows and the hairy eyeball whenever you tell someone what you do. “What do you mean, it doesn’t have any use?” And then I try to say that lots of things don’t have any use: a sunset, for instance. (I don’t mention that most modern math also doesn’t have any practical use)

i'm not questioning the artisanal challenge or general visual appeal. there are just some subjects that are popping up so often that i just wonder if i'm missing something.

it's basically an elaborate mobius band ... i don't have those lying around at home

And I judge their coolness by what kind of drinks they prefer to put in it. It's a Möbius thing.

That reminds me, I've been meaning to order a portrait of Gauss from him. (https://www.kleinbottle.com/gauss.htm). I'd order a Klein Bottle but with small kids in the house that's just asking for trouble.

I also regret never stopping by when I lived literally right down the street.

(Apparently you can get portraits of Gauss cheaper on eBay! But I would like to overpay for this one for the cool story.)

His "TOP OF PAGE" button is just a link to the page ...

also, bonus Minecraft bottle: https://www.kleinbottle.com/images/Minecraft%20Klein%20Bottl...

Got a Klein hat a while back, got a nice picture of Cliff mailing it out along with. If you get one, make sure to hang dry.

I have one of these lovely bits of glassware proudly on display in my house, up on a high shelf where the cats can't reach it, next to a volumetric flask full of obsolete currency.

One of the best gifts you can ever gift yourself.

why?

i've just noticed the truly teeny tiny size that you can buy as a pair of earrings!

I purchased these for my wife years ago, they’re excellent.

Genus-1 earlobes !

i totally fail to understand what's so fascinating about those bottles and why they show up on hn regularly. could someone explain?

they have only one side and no volume!

I'm more of an infinite volume half full kind of optimist myself.

well, i'm aware of that actually. still don't get it. you look at it, realize this thing exists and that's it afaiac

People look at beautiful sunrises that way too, sometimes

Some people just have good taste. You apparently are not one. Do you look at an Escher piece and think what's so fascinating too?

That's an unnecessary insult to what could well be an honest question.

Trying to explain is dodgy - it never works for jokes, either. But I think they represent a bundle of interesting contrasts that hits a sweet spot for a lot of us. Most people have made a Mobius strip out of ephemeral paper and thrown it away after fiddling with it; these are hard-wrought, complex artisinal craftings from the same family of ideas. The idea of "Klein bottle art" at first sounds rigid and limited, but the variation shows lovely creativity and artistic sense. They riff off the low humor of a dribble glass by mixing it with the sophistication of advanced math. The artist stays down-to-earth and accessible, even though he's clearly walked quite a way down a particular road of practice and experimentation that the rest of us are only going to admire from afar.

because physical embeddings of mathematical concepts are quite enjoyable to nerds and others.

You probably wouldn't also see anything interesting here (Henry Segerman http://www.3dprintmath.com/ or even https://www.mojoptix.com/2015/10/25/mojoptix-001-digital-sun...

Personally, I can't visualize things in my head easily but having a physical object I can hold/rotate/inspect helps a ton

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