Saturday, January 28, 2017

What was the strangest thing you found cleaning out your parents’ house after they died?

So it wasn’t me who did the clearing out, but I think I can still answer.

When my Great Grandfather died, my Granddad and Dad took on the task of cleaning out his house (his wife had died a couple of years before so he lived alone).

There wasn’t much out of the ordinary… Until they got to the shed.

(I should say my Great Grandfather and my Granddad were both chemistry lecturers.)

In the shed they found a huge number of rocks with varying sizes. My Granddad immediately recognised these as rocks containing uranium ore, which is reasonably commonly found where they lived in Cornwall.

What he was doing with them - they have no idea. When they took them to the lab for testing, the Geiger counter went crazy, there were about 100kg of these rocks altogether.

They also found a computer. It turns out my Great Grandfather was designing a code which he was planning on selling to the security services. It seems like it was based on prime numbers, but none of us really know.

I wish I had met him - he sounds like a real enigma!



Read other answers by Fred Shirley on Quora: Read more answers on Quora.

from Quora http://ift.tt/2jhvODe

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