By me @ Wired: The Superconducting Super Collider

Finally, my story about the Superconducting Super Collider, in Texas, makes it into the world. I first pitched this story to Wired in October, 2006, on the back of an interview I conducted with Johnnie Bryan Hunt.

JB Hunt was a multimillionaire and former member of the Forbes 400, who I interviewed him for All The Money in the World, in 2005. If you live in America, I guarantee you have seen one of his white trucks, with a yellow-and-black “JB Hunt” logo, on the road somewhere.

During our conversation about Hunt’s extraordinary career, which saw him rise from a poor sharecropper’s son, who left school at the age of 12, to become one of the wealthiest men in America, Hunt mentioned that he had recently bought the Superconducting Super Collider.

The collider is a half-built ring particular accelerator in Waxahachie, Texas, similar in scope and ambition to the accelerator at CERN. It was abandoned by Congress almost 20 years ago after the project went billions of dollars over budget. Hunt intended to turn the site into one of the most secure data storage facilities in America. Not bad for a man who didn’t even know how to use email.

My interview with Hunt, who lived in Arkansas, was conducted over the phone. But of all the people I spoke to for that book project, he was the one I most wanted to meet in person. I felt sure there was a feature story waiting to be written–about a 79-year-old man who had made a fortune first in poultry litter, then in trucking, and who was now turning his attention to data storage (as well as oil, real estate, importing 4x4s). Quite simply, he was an incredible character. Here’s an excerpt from our telephone interview:

I don’t have bad days. That’s just not me. If I did, I must have forgot them. When I get up in the morning, about 4.30am, I read the bible and pray for about an hour, then I go out — and I come home when it’s dark after working 10, 12 or 14 hours a day, and it doesn’t bother me.

I think I am a true entrepreneur. I can start any company I want to but I’m not good at running it. I’m good at hiring people to run companies that did go to school. The smartest guy on earth is the guy who wants to do something but he knows what he doesn’t know. So he goes and finds a guy who can do it for him and he gets it done.

Sadly, soon after our interview, Hunt slipped on a patch of ice and died. Today, his companies continue to do well. But Hunt’s plans for the collider appear to have died with him. You can read about that story at Wired.