WEBVTT

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Houston, 1965.

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The Astrodome, home of the Houston Astros baseball team, is the world's

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first fully enclosed domed stadium.

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They called it the Eighth Wonder.

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Look up.

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Four thousand, five hundred and ninety-six skylights engineered to

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put exactly enough sunlight on the field to keep real grass alive.

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They worked perfectly.

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Then the Astros played an afternoon game against Baltimore.

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The fielders looked up into the glare and lost the ball in the roof.

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Four fly balls dropped untouched.

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They tried orange baseballs.

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They tried sunglasses.

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Nothing worked.

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The engineering was flawless, but the problem definition had been wrong.

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They had asked how to grow grass indoors, not how to play baseball indoors.

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Define the wrong problem, and you'll solve the wrong problem brilliantly

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So they painted the glass roof.

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The glare went away, but so did the sunlight.

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Within weeks, the grass was dying, and the groundskeepers

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were spray painting it green.

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It never recovered.

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So in 1966, the Astrodome became the first major professional stadium to install

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synthetic turf, giving AstroTurf its name.