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Unfortunately I live in a graveyard of industrial giants. The payrolls that used to support Pittsburgh are almost all gone, just the empty manufacturing sites and the crumbling mansions of the powerful men that built them. I only got a glimpse of it as a child and have watched it disappear ever since.

Yeah, me too, I live here in Pittsburgh and I'm turned 40 this year. I do remember all or most of the industry here at one time. Westinghouse had their labs here in the Pittsburgh area, and IIRC, back in the 1950's, they were working on things like electroluminescent panels. I remember the row of the old Westinghouse logo in Pittsburgh's Northside where the computer controlled the lighting of the logos and bits and pieces of them would light up randomly. My father was an industrial photographer and he went to Westinghouse a lot, even been to their atomic labs. One time, he told me that he accidently knocked a canister open, had he got the contents on him (very radioactive), I might have not been born. I also remember J&L, US Steel, Blawnox, Eazor Express (my aunt worked for them), Mesta Machine, Babcock and Wilcox and others.

Hey, we're just about the same vintage, I got a couple on you. I'm a mechanical designer and have had the opportunity to work in and visit some of the industrial sites around the area. It gives me the chills to walk through these places. They're going to tear down the atom smasher at the Chalfant Westinghouse facility someday soon and I'm going to hate to see that landmark go away.