In my early career I worked for a vey large consulting company. One of my assignments included Firestone Rubber in Pottstown Pa. I did multiple projects for them and over time got into every area of their one million plus square foot plant.
The original plant had been the home of Jacobs Aircraft Engine Company. The building that had housed Jacobs during WW II had a dead flat roof with parapet walls around the perimeter--with no drains. It was designed to be flooded and appear to be a reservoir from the air in the event of an attack. The boiler room was remote from the main building and all underground. An underground tunnel connected the two buildings.
In the basement of the production building were rows of test cells. These cells were about 8' wide and 8' deep with about 2' thick concrete walls on either side. They would put each engine, mounted on a test stand, in one of these cells and run them at full throttle for some period (I never found out how long) to assure quality. It was obvious from the condition of some of the walls that not all those engines survived their test run.
When I was working there a few former employees of Jacobs were still there working for Firestone. They always enjoyed sharing their stories with me and I sucked them up with great interest.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
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