At first, Eugene Bourdon was annoyed when he saw what his worker had done to the metal tube. The tube was in the shape of a spiral and it was to go into a laundry machine they were building in Bourdon’s shop. But the worker had somehow managed to flatten most of the tube, and that was not good. The worker, of course, was nervous as Bourdon looked at the tube and thought about whether or not this was a total loss.
But then Bourdon had an idea. He closed one end of the spiraled metal coil and connected the other end to a water pump. He figured the water pressure might be able to make the tube round again because the metal was thin enough. And to his delight, it worked!