Chapter One
"Call your first witness."
"Your Honor, I call Gordon Gould."
Gould pushed back his chair and walked toward the witness stand. The courtroom
was not as large as some of the others he had seen. It was modern and
low-ceilinged, with blond wood trim and polyester fabric on the chair seats,
hardly grand enough, he thought, for the impact the trial would have, one way or
another, on his life. But it would do, if only it were the last courtroom he
ever had to see.
Six federal court jurors and two alternates watched Gould make his way to the
enclosed area beside the judge's bench. They saw a man in his late sixties,
sixty-seven to be precise. He wore a two-piece charcoal gray suit — that or
blue, his lawyer had told him, no brown, no vests, and for God's sake none of
those little thin-soled loafers that look like dancing shoes, wear lace-up shoes
so the jury knows you're serious. It made him look serious, all right.
Professorial. His high forehead topped by wavy gray hair and heavy dark-rimmed
glasses hinted at the inventor his lawyer had described in his opening
statement. "A very great inventor," he had said. A handsome man, t ... read full excerpt from Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War ebook
