As usual, exactly half an hour before the start of the lecture, he emerged from the lobby of the Baumanskaya metro station and slowly walked along the path familiar to him down to the smallest detail towards the institute. More precisely, the higher educational institution where he headed the department was never an institute. At first it was called the Imperial Moscow Technical School, then - after the victory of the progressive system over the regressive one - it was renamed the Moscow Higher Technical School. N.E. Bauman. Then - shortly before the next victory of the next progressive system over the previous one, which, in fact, turned out to be even more regressive than before it - to the Moscow State Technical University named after the same N.E. Bauman. But the professor, like many of his colleagues, called it an institute - it was shorter and simpler, and, in any case, everyone understood.