Page 154 - MY STORY

his name and phone number! He went on to explain that

he worked for the US Government, and was aware that I
was going to act as a rapporteur at a session that included
a major paper from the Soviet Union on welding of very

thick titanium alloy plate. He thought it might be in the
best interests of the US Government if I would be willing
to meet the Soviet engineers, accompany them at dinner,

and maybe even provide some trinkets of friendship in
order to open a dialog. Oh yes, every evening after
meeting with the Soviets, I was to go to a specific hotel

within walking distance so I could review my
conversations with some friendly chaps. I agreed.

Before I left I was given a sack of Douglas goodies
including cigarette lighters, pens, collapsible pointers,
matchbooks, golf balls. My presentation as session

rapporteur of five or six papers was interesting. A couple
claimed so much “proprietary” information of processing

parameters, that I summarily ignored a review of those
papers. One from the welding folk at the Wright
Patterson AF Research Labs was OK experimentally but

was dead wrong on how the data was interpreted and
graphically presented. I replotted their data and showed
my interpretation which pissed those guys off. I really

got yelled at.