Besides the possibility of seeing with our own eyes the technical wonder of it, visiting Boulder Dam was of special interest to us for another reason as well. We expected to meet there engineer Thompson, one of the few American engineers to have received from the Soviet Government the Order of the Red Banner.

The little white houses in Boulder City reflected the eternal sun of the desert so blindingly that it was impossible to look upon them. Although the city was built for temporary abode, was already half deserted, and after the end of the installation work at the powerhouse would be entirely deserted and most likely taken down, it made a much more pleasing impression upon us than the asphalto-petrol fraternity (of the Gallup type) which expects to exist for ever. It had many lawns, flower-beds, basketball and tennis courts.

We met Mr. Thompson at the hotel, and at once departed for the construction.

Thompson, the chief installation engineer of General Electric, a thin, black, forty-year-old man, with long coal-black eyelashes and very lively eyes, in spite of the fact that this was his day of rest (we arrived on a Sunday), was in his working trousers and a short leather jacket with a zip fastening. We were told that he is one of the best and perhaps the very best installation chief in the world, a kind of world champion at installing colossal electrical machines. The champion had sunburned calloused hands covered with fresh scratches. Thompson grew up in Scotland. In his faultless English one could easily detect the burring Scottish "r." During the war he was a British aviator. In his face lurked that shadow of sadness which is the attribute of all those who had given several years of their life to war. He smoked a pipe, and occasionally rolled his own cigarettes in yellow paper.

His profession had almost deprived him of a homeland, or so at least it seemed to us. Here is a British man who works for an American firm and travels all over the world. There is probably not a single part of the world in which Mr. Thompson had not installed several machines. He lived in the U.S.S.R, for several years, worked at Stalingrad and Dnieprostroi, was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and now he was here in the desert, under this appalling sun, installing machinery for the Boulder Dam hydro-electric station. He would work here another year. What would he do then? He did not know. He might go to South Africa. Or, maybe, General Electric would send him to some other place—India, Australia, China.

"I should like very much to go to the U.S.S.R.," said Thompson, "and see how things are there now. After all, I left a part of my heart in your country. You see, my wife and I have no children, so I call the machines that I install my children. I have several children in Russia, my most beloved children. I should like to see them again."

He began to recall some of the people with whom he had worked.

"I'll never forget the moment when the installation of the Dnieper electric station was finished and I transmitted the switch to Winter, so that he would turn on the electricity with his own hands. I said to him: 'Mr. Winter, the soup is ready.' There were tears in Winter's eyes. We kissed each other, Russian fashion. You have many good engineers, but Winter is an altogether exceptional figure. There are few people of his kind in the world. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. What is he doing now? Where is he?"

We told him that Winter was working in the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) and was in charge of the Central Energy Trust.

"That's a great pity," said Thompson. "A man like that should not work in an office."

We explained that the Gosplan is not an office, but something much more significant.

"I realize that," answered Thompson. "But anyway, that's no business for Mr. Winter. He is a captain of men. He must be on the battlefield. He must be the chief of some construction. I know, you are still building a lot. Now it's all in the past, so we can talk about it frankly. Most of our engineers did not believe that anything would come of the first five-year plan. It seemed incredible to them that your untrained workers and young engineers could ever master the complex and complicated production processes, and especially electrical technique. Well, look at it! You did it! Now it's a fact which no one can deny!"

Thompson asked Mrs. Adams to let him take the wheel of the automobile, since we had quite a dangerous part of our journey ahead of us, and he skilfully guided us down the dizzying descent to the bottom of the canyon.

Several times along the. way we caught a view of the dam.

Imagine the rapidly flowing mountain river coursing on the bottom of a huge stone corridor, the walls of which represent the highest, almost overhanging, dark-red cliffs. The height of the cliffs is six hundred and fifty feet. And so, between two walls of the canyon fashioned by nature, the hands of man have reared a third wall of reinforced concrete, which bars the flow of the river. That wall runs in a semicircle, and it looks like a petrified waterfall.

Having admired Boulder Dam from below, we went up to walk across its top. Mr. Thompson asked us to keep to the right. From a tremendous height we saw the dried-out bottom of the canyon littered with remainders of the great construction—mill ends and pieces of building waste. A railway car hanging on a steel trestle was slowly being lowered to the bottom of the abyss.

We walked to the end of the dam, and turned back.

"Now you may pass to the left side," said Mr. Thompson.

This was a well-prepared effect.

On the other side of the dam lies a large, crystal-clear cool lake.

Going up to the centre of the dam Mr. Thompson suddenly stopped, spread his feet wide apart on either side of the white mark.

"Now," he said, "I am standing with one foot in Arizona and with the other foot in Nevada."

Boulder Dam, located between those two states—and close to two more, Utah and California—gives the desert not only electricity, but also water. Besides the electric station, this will be the centre of the irrigation system of the Ail-American Canal.

"Tell me," we asked Mr. Thompson, "who is the author of the Boulder Dam project?"

To our surprise he did not answer that question. He could only tell us the name of the joint stock company which was doing the work under contract with the government.

"No doubt," he said, smiling, "if you were to ask some builder here who was installing the turbines, he would not be able to give you my name. He would simply tell you that the installation was being done by the General Electric Company. With us here in America, engineers don't enjoy fame. Only the firms are known."

"Excuse me, Mr. Thompson, but that is a great injustice. We know who built the Cathedral of St. Peter in Rome, although it was built several centuries ago. The authors of Boulder Dam, where such remarkable technique and such amazing construction art are united, are entitled to fame."

"No," said Mr. Thompson, "I don't see any injustice in that. As for me, personally, for example, I am not looking for fame. I am perfectly satisfied if my name is known by two hundred specialists in the world. Apart from that, contemporary technique is such that actually it is not always possible to determine who is the author of this or that technical production, The epoch of Edison has come to an end. The time of separate great inventions has passed. Now we have general technical progress. Who is building Boulder Dam? Six companies—and that's that."

"But in the U.S.S.R, engineers and workers enjoy great popularity. Newspapers write about them, magazines print their portraits."