Quentin Daniels

Quentin Daniels, in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged, was a consulting engineer who attempted to reverse-engineer the electrostatic motor that John Galt had invented. When John Galt learned of his activities, he recruited him into the strike of the men of the mind and flew him to Galt's Gulch. That flight almost caused a fatality and was the reason for the unplanned visit to the Gulch by Dagny Taggart.

Background

The novel says little of his background. But it does reveal this salient fact: Robert Stadler, Director of the State Science Institute, tried to recruit him into the Institute. Quentin refused out-of-hand, on philosophical grounds. So he was mildly surprised when Dr. Stadler later recommended him to Dagny Taggart.

Dagny Taggart

Dagny Taggart of the Taggart Transcontinental Railroad contacted him at the recommendation of his old mentor, Robert Stadler. She described to him the ruined prototype of an electrostatic motor, the first practical example of such a device ever built, and the incomplete notes that she had found with it. Daniels was very enthusiastic about working on such a project and asked to see the prototype immediately.

When Daniels received the prototype, he agreed with Miss Taggart that someone had stripped it of certain key parts. He recognized the collecting coil, as Dagny had, but recognized that, as it was, the motor would not run. Dagny paid him handsomely to attempt to reconstruct the missing parts and reassemble the motor.

Time and events (chiefly Directive 10-289) would change his mind. He became so disgusted with the political situation in the United States that he begged Miss Taggart to cease to remunerate him, because he did not wish to have any tax liability. This was probably the most unusual income tax protest ever conducted.

John Galt

In the end of May 1929 (assuming, as is likely, that the strike began in 1917), a young but no-nonsense man came to see him in his laboratory. At first Daniels ignored him, until the man abruptly erased his blackboard and wrote one single mathematical equation on it. Daniels realized, with a shock, that that equation was the key to making electrostatic motors practical. Daniels demanded to know how his visitor knew this. The visitor's reply:

“

I'm the man who made it in the first place.

”

The visitor then introduced himself as John Galt and proved conclusively to Daniels that he was in fact the original inventor of the motor. Several minutes of discussions of theoretical physics later, Galt asked Daniels directly whether he was willing to follow Galt to a new existence and leave behind everything he knew of the old.

John Galt would not (and indeed could not) have threatened to prosecute Daniels for patent infringement, because John Galt had not obtained a patent on the motor (and probably would not until the post-strike militia coalition was able to reactivate the United States Patent Office). Nor did he even criticize Daniels for an offense tantamount to plagiarism. But Daniels found his argument so persuasive that he forgot that he had pledged to Dagny that he would wait until she had a chance to see him in person. In fact, he forgot to mention to Galt that Dagny was on her way. That would have a result that was very nearly disastrous.

Flight to the Gulch

Quentin Daniels agreed at once to join John Galt in his great strike. John Galt had flown in to the town in which Daniels lived, and now proposed to fly Daniels out to what Galt might have described as a "secret place of rest." The two men climbed into John Galt's aircraft, and John Galt took off.

Neither man noticed another aircraft (a Dwight Sanders monoplane) taking off in pursuit. Galt flew into a mountainous region, and probably scared Daniels very badly as he began to descend into what to all appearances was a valley of jagged rocks. But Galt spoke to someone on his radio, and suddenly a green meadow appeared below them. They landed safely, and there Daniels met Midas Mulligan, the owner of what he came to know as Galt's Gulch.

Daniels would later receive the shocking news that another aircraft had tried to follow them, and had intercepted the refractor-ray screen responsible for projecting a false vista to any pilot approaching from above. The pilot had spun out of control and had barely regained sufficient control to make a hard belly landing. The pilot was, of course, Dagny Taggart. To Daniels' immense relief, she was uninjured except for a twisted ankle.

Life in the Gulch

Quentin Daniels would not leave the Gulch for several months. John Galt immediately hired him at the valley's electrostatic power plant, first as a janitor, then as an electrician, and presumably as the officer-in-charge when John Galt left the valley for the last time. When John Galt was later arrested in New York City, Daniels probably participated as a member of Ragnar Danneskjold's hastily assembled militia in the rescue operation that followed.

Daniels would remain in John Galt's employ through the winter. Then in the springtime of 1930, when John Galt determined that "the road [was] cleared," Daniels would probably take the post of chief manufacturing engineer in the company that John Galt would form to build electrostatic motors for a variety of transportation and stationary-power applications. Among the very first products would be a line of electrostatic locomotives.

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Spoilers end here.

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Typology

Quentin Daniels is a type of an individual of remarkable, even outstanding, but still relatively minor talent. Though he accepts the challenge of reconstructing the electrostatic motor, he does not attempt to reinvent that motor. Discerning the ideas of another inventor is one thing. Using one's own ideas to accomplish the same thing is quite another.

In addition, Quentin Daniels is not a leader. He is one of many men of excellent (but not superior) talent, who might be open to persuasion to withdraw their talents from the world, but who would wait for a strong-enough leader with a compelling-enough message to convince him. John Galt is that leader in Atlas Shrugged. One can well wonder how many modern Quentin Daniels might be ready to follow a modern John Galt, should such a person appear.