[ml/nj]

The Twentieth Century Motor Company’s plant is a ruin. Dagny’s exploration screeches to a halt when she uncovers the wreck of a motor and a paper description of its purpose. It is like no motor she has ever seen, except in college, where it was said that such a thing was impossible. It is a motor that runs off static electricity. Hank and Dagny realize that no one but the designer could make it work.

So Dagny finds the wreck of a motor, and she knows instantly that the motor had a designer. A tree, an ant, &c., are incredibly more complex but these supposedly had no designer; and people who believe they did apparently cannot view things "objectively."

(And PS, to the guy who mentioned that all the "good" companies are named after people and all the "bad" ones have names like Amalgamated Something or other. What about Twentieth Century Motors? It may have become "bad" but it was "good" at one time.)

ML/NJ

[Publius]

The story of the Twentieth Century Motor Co. gets covered in future chapters that chronicle the decline of the company from Jed Starnes to its becoming a financial football tossed back and forth between crooked financial operators.

It's a story for our time.

[Still Thinking]

That was me. I noted the exception to myself at the time, and maybe attribute it to different position of that company in the story (already closed by the time we find it, ongoing involvement in the story due to the motor, etc.) Or, one might surmise that it was just the result of a general rule of Rand’s (that the greatness of companies springs from the genius of the top man), and not a completely absolute rule.