when we were young

One of the interesting aspects of my job is learning about new companies every single day. You would think younger companies are the most interesting but it's not true. If a company has survived for 30 years or more they tend to have gone through some amazing changes.

I looked at two interesting companies today.

One makes some plastics used in the semiconductor industry. Fairly straightforward boring stuff. Turns out the company was founded in 1832 as a paper mill. I'm looking at a corporate history right now. Page one gets you up to 1947. Amazing.

The other one makes some application software for gas companies and supplies geographic information. They started in the late 60s. Doing what you ask? Making maps of the moon for NASA and helping them use digital computing to perform real-time guidance of the spacecraft. I imagine they had some employee retention problems after the NASA stuff wound down.

"Say Bob after you get that whole flux capacitor problem figured out for Mr. Armstrong can you head over to Exxon. They need you to help them with some piping."