Nice find Dave!

Eccl. 2:24
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.

Thank you for sharing this with us.

I used to be an industrial lubrication engineer - aka, TRIBOLOGIST. One of my accounts was Hitachi Corp. in Greenville and the operations manager was interested in what I collected as a hobby. I told him model trains and railroad pocket watches. He asked if I was concerned with the value of my collection depreciating as the Federal Reserve was flooding the economy with confetti currency and the USA was on a collision course with "deflation" just like Japan. He was Japanese, of course, and told me he collected Noritake Porcelains and Lladro porcelain figurines. I answered that I was aware of value and scarcity when I obtained a new addition for the collection. He then said to me: "Ah! You Americans believe that money is a measure of a man's wealth . . . but we Japanese know that goods are the measure of a man's wealth and money is merely the simple tool to acquire what is really true wealth. That is the priceless satisfaction of enjoying something that pleases you and brings that smile as you admire the object of your pursuit. It matters nothing if the rest of the world thinks you are insane, because they have not found contentment nor happiness, therefore they must blame you for making them all miserable for the brief moment that they see you as completely satisfied with your own goods."
I now believe the ancient wisdom that says "Many know the price of everything - but value of nothing"

Clark, Nice post! Tribology has always been a special interest of mine. I really admire watch oil which has to keep everything moving but only 1 or 2 % of the time . . . 18,000 "stop-start" actions an hour. I do have patents on <1 Molecular mean-free path Gas hydrodynamic bearings now used in EVERY Computer disc drive. In the late 1970's a few Tribologists said I was nuts until they saw them work. That was not their fault, however as you know Gas HD bearings (especially mine) can NOT be lubricated by anything but HIGHLY energetic rarefacted gas molecules. btw, the patents on that were conferred to Fuji from my client (Lincoln Laser, Phoenix) via Xerox Corporation. The Tribology "discovery" I really enjoyed were lubricants for racing engines and named Tungsten DiSulphide. 25 years ago or so, a nice Lady in Kansas City did my 300 MPH 250cc race engine parts for my large scale "Unlimited" Model Racing Airplanes. AMAZING STUFF! Did you ever use Tungsten DiSulphide? Shown below, a "Real" Fiat G59 (above) and one of my scale models (below). The model is ~50 pounds takeoff weight, 100 Inch wingspan, fully fitted for all flight conditions.

David - I was involved with industrial machinery for the most part, but represent 2 competitors - Shell and Mobil was sometimes problematic with the poiltics. I had some applications for aircraft as Mobil makes Mobilgrease 28 - synthetic extreme low ambient temp grease for Boeing in landing gear and shock struts. From 45,000 altitude to 100 feet in a matter of minutes creates problems with the deployment speed of gear. 28 is red and non-PAO so it works great, also both Shell and Mobil make a Trent and G E jet engine oil, and Shell has made Aeroshell 15W-50 for a good while for recip engines. The most daunting application I faced was at G E Gas Turbine Plant in Greenville where they developed the "Harriet" Turbine Generator, which singly can power 600,000 homes. General Electric has this in their product developement PR release: The latest of GE’s H-class turbines, when partnered with a steam generator Harriet can run a 600 megawatt steam power plant capable of supplying 600,000 homes, burns a variety of natural gases from shale gas to liquid natural gas, and instead of generating electricity, blasts out hot air at speeds of a Category 5 hurricane that could fill a Goodyear blimp in about 10 seconds.

To achieve this, Harriet has superalloy monocrystal turbine blades with thermal barrier coatings capable of withstanding 2,900° F (1,600° C). It has variable stator vanes originally developed for supersonic jet engines that direct the airflow, and a modular design with blades that can be replaced individually. In addition, it's designed for automated operation, has a combined cycle efficiency of over 61 percent, and low emissions.
My role was lubricating the stator before it was placed in pillow block bearings with a no vapor pressure product from Shell named VSI 32. I was a bit unnerved as the Sikorsky Skycrane hovered outside the plant with the base unit on a sunken center 60ft. flatcar with double sets of trucks on each end while I applied the lubricant to the shiny polished bearing surface which was squeezed out as the stator was held in place by 3 cap bearings with 3.875 inch diameter grade 8 cap bolts with 32 threads per inch and a 5.625 inch head and 33.585 inches long to "hold 'er down' for the jet engine to spin it. Lots of fun. Most of my tribology accounts were textile related.

Impressive work, you guys are geniuses! Some textile bearings went hydrodynamic without the people even knowing it. The Harriet is impressive beyond words. I worked on the B70 engine blade sets when I was at a branch of SIFCO in 1960. Turbines are still SciFi as far as I am concerned.

Thank you for the compliment, David.
FYI, there are a couple of guys I worked with at Mobil, before Exxon bulldozed every creative effort out of the way of "profit per product" in 2003. there was a new effort on a laminate product called GRAPHENE that was stirring tribologists back then with the task of finding a non-staining product, that was also not naphthenic, nor aromatic either.
The last I knew or heard was that the Boeing and Gulfstream engineers had tried some of the old lock cylinder lube called Dri-Slide with Paratac in it for mechanical stability. Without the Paratac it was a migration nightmare. Don't know much about the process, but Airbus is doing some trial work with Graphene.