On his return Mark was guaranteed that he would work full time as a designer.
While working on a design for an ultra-high vacuum ultra-cold Seya Namioka monochromator Mark was baffled by how to design a moveable slit that could not have any lubrication. He kept working around that part of the project. Then, one night he wolk up with the solution. Fortunately he sketched it out. He went to work early and hand the solution sketched out on his drafting board by the time Jerry Nihen, boss and owner, arrived. Taciturn Jerry looked over his shoulder and muttered, “Interesting idea.”. Nothing else.
The next morning when Mark arrived he found a Xerox copy of an article from a German optics journal from the 1880s sitting on top of his drawing. You didn’t have to read German to see that this article sketched out a design for a moveable slit that was identical in principle to Mark’s nighttime vision.