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their conversation interesting, particularly Poag's on the lamp business. His account of the trials and tribulations of the Company in the photoflash bulb business was good - how we started it and then some small company got a patent on making them with fine magnesium wire and had us in the hole - and how we finally pulled out by inventing a process for shredding magnesium foil to 2/10,000 of an inch in a machine like a lawn mower cutter. Now we are riding high again.

Talking of Bell of Bell Aircraft in Buffalo, Poag told how Bell came back from Europe a couple of years ago and told the War Dept. what Germany was doing and they bucked him out of Washington for being just an "airplane salesman".

After lunch, we had a talk with St.L. in his office and a couple of prize stories came out:

1.) Poag told how during the last war, he was in a lamp works where they were making lamps for French signal sets and a pompous French inspector came in and informed Poag he was there to see they built the lamps right. So Poag told him to go ahead. After a week, the Frenchman had gotten nowhere - the Americans had an answer for every one of his criticisms. So he came in to Poag and said, "Now, look here. I don't know anything about lamps. What should I look for to make sure they are all right?" Poag got a lamp and said, "You see that piece of solder there at the bottom for the filament? And another one at the top? Well, you see that they are there. If they are there, everything else will be okay." So he looked at these blobs of solder for the rest of his stay.