They literally "ferreted the pipe" and it was no big deal. There was a rhyme they used for remembering the correct sequence of the colored pairs too.
It wouldn't surprise me if one of the physicist's saw the phone guys doing this during construction.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36173247
It didn't survive.
The article doesn't mention it but a physicist somehow got his hands on it, took it to a taxidermist to have it stuffed, and keeps it in his office.
Maybe a French physicist took the term literally.
Did it come down to a $35+maintenance ferret being lower cost?
They could:
> Meanwhile, the engineer Hans Kautzky created a “magnetic ferret” to deal with the debris in the main ring. He attached a dozen Mylar disks to a stainless steel rod, along with a flexible, 700-meter stainless steel cable—the equivalent of Felicia’s string—and a metal-attracting permanent magnet—the counterpart to the cleaning swab. He shot the device through a section of the main ring with compressed air.
>> Did it come down to a $35+maintenance ferret being lower cost?
Probably, since the guy who suggested it was brought there specifically for that reason.
> Probably, since the guy who suggested it was brought there specifically for that reason.
Meaning it could be the creative frugal solution for which they were hired, or that it was a good faith attempt towards same, or (in some analogous business situations, I'd guess not in this one) there's incentive to do appear to be doing something.
There was also PR value, including the appearance of being frugal, if there was grumbling about cost of the facility.