The Black Hole......

Turns out my brother, an ME, runs a small custom lens and mirror manufacturing business across town. What they do is not classified, but some of things their product is used for is. A non-classified lens he told me about making was for the Boeing 747-housed military test laser that was in the news some years ago. Anyway, he says they have the best surface finish in the business as standard. They have lens grinding and polishing machines in tightly temperature regulated rooms. The lenses and laser mirrors are still made in mostly traditional ways by old German artisans who know how. A sister company also in Northern California are the experts at coatings.
 
The modern advantage is diamond dust. Cuts fast and can be with lots of effort found in a wide range of grits.

My father used to prepare and lap samples for huge castings like hydro-electric generators. My mother threw out his collection of diamond grits as well as his Lietz microscope which he took when Allis Chalmers was shut down. I did manage to save his platinum crucibles.
 
I am teaching three of my guys hand lapping to restore some machine tools. The modern advantage is diamond dust. Cuts fast and can be with lots of effort found in a wide range of grits.


That's precisely why it was considered not good for polishing astronomic grade mirrors, it's way too aggressive, red ferric oxide and ceric oxide were the only good options, at the time. Otherwise, diamond dust was available 40 year ago as well.
 
They refused to hire me in the early '80's because I did not attend MIT, or apparently another similar university. They were very territorial back then, I presumed. At least this is what I was told then by Scott Wurcer.
Most likely now, too. Apparently, they are somehow connected with this school of knowledge. Yesterday I was looking for PSpice models for operational amplifiers on their website. And they only have models for very old products. And they still constantly refer to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Perhaps their leaders ended it. And they are recruiting the same. I remembered that they had a warning about risk, responsibility and the use of the computer model. They pointed to Massachusetts law. Thanks.
 
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I lived and worked in Massachusetts for 15 years. The closest I ever came to working for ADI was when I dated the daughter of an engineer that worked there. He was famous in that family for seasonally boiling down maple syrup, until the wallpaper started falling off in their kitchen.

Sounds like an "analog engineer" to me. I too was an analog engineer - at Digital.