Earlier this week we posted about a letter we received from Sophie, a 7-year-old girl. All she wanted was a dragon.
Sophie’s very polite letter.
“Our work has never ventured into dragons of the mythical, fire breathing variety. And for this Australia, we are sorry,” we replied.
Sophie’s letter, and our response, made an unexpected splash across the globe. It was featured on TIME, Huffington Post, The Independent, Yahoo, Breakfast TV, the list goes on. People contacted us offering to help, financial institutions tweeted their support and DreamWorks Studios phoned (seriously), saying they knew how to train dragons and wanted to speak with Sophie. The dreams of one little girl went viral.
We couldn’t sit here and do nothing. After all, we promised Sophie we would look into it.
So this morning at 9:32 a.m. (AEDT), a dragon was born.
Toothless, born today, is a blue female dragon. Species: Seadragonus giganticus maximus
Toothless, 3D printed out of titanium, came into the world at Lab 22, our additive manufacturing facility in Melbourne. The scientists there have printed some extraordinary things in the past—huge anatomically correct insects, biomedical implants and aerospace parts. So they thought a dragon was achievable.
“Being that electron beams were used to 3D print her, we are certainly glad she didn’t come out breathing them … instead of fire,” said Chad Henry, our Additive Manufacturing Operations Manager. “Titanium is super strong and lightweight, so Toothless will be a very capable flyer.”
Toothless is currently en route from Lab 22 in Melbourne to Sophie’s home in Brisbane.
Sophie’s mother Melissah said Sophie was overjoyed with our response and has been telling everyone dragon breath can be a new fuel. “All her friends are now saying they want to be a scientist and Sophie says she now wants to work at CSIRO. She’s saying Australian scientists can do anything,” Melissah told the Canberra Times.
We’d love to have you in our team, Sophie. For now, stay curious.
* * *
UPDATE: Dragon delivery complete.
Sophie and Toothless.
Media resources: More images and video: A 3D printed dragon
2nd March 2015 at 11:59 pm
Let’s hope for Sophie’s sake that science becomes a bit more of a priority in this country by the time she is older. As a young lab tech who is a few weeks out from starting a PhD I can say I am not very optimistic about my future career in science. Which is sad, because it is my true passion in life, but a girl’s gotta pay the rent…
13th February 2014 at 3:20 am
Reblogged this on mintvalf.
4th February 2014 at 7:43 pm
All the above, and … also ..
How many parents would have corrected her mistakes and made her write a ‘neat’ copy and then not gone any further when she lost heart, and interest?
Come to think of it, how many parents make their kids … write .. at all?
Big, fat, fire breathing kudos all round.
Spesh to Soph 🙂
25th January 2014 at 9:10 am
Reblogged this on aimeejones96 and commented:
this is the sweetest thing i have ever read! And the 3D dragon is amazing