[Richard T. Eger]

Dear All,

Even with a good collection of dictionaries, one can run into the situation of specialty descriptions and abbreviations used at a specific aircraft company or research laboratory. Then one is left to the hoped for revelations in accidentally uncovered documents that provide glossaries so that all will be able to decipher the contents of the various related reports.

Knowing who had what position can be difficult to uncover and there are always the changes that occurred over time. A person might also be known by several job titles. A job title may seem to indicate that the person held an important position when he did not. Of course, personality clashes and attempts to get the upper hand can explain otherwise inexplicable decisions.

Organization charts can be very hard to come by with all their acronyms that provide the keys to who was doing what.

Decisions at major meetings had incredibly short half lives. Whether the new direction set forth actually was put into action requires finding the subsequent action documents.

And, of course, we just don't have everything. Someone like Peter may have privy to information that wasn't available to Art and vice versa. Collecting information is a hit or miss thing. A gem might be uncovered in the unlikeliest of places with, upon retrospect, no discernable path to discover its existence being available.

Further, not everything in archives is indexed and documents that are may be indexed very poorly, hiding the fact that key information lies there-in.

The analogy I've always used in describing my hobby pursuit is as follows: Imagine that you have a jigsaw puzzle. There are no edge pieces. A lot of the other pieces are missing and you've lost the boxtop art to help guide you.

That's what we are all faced with. If we had everything and understood everything, we'd lose the thrill of the hunt. We've all had that eureka moment when something falls into place. It makes our day.

Regards,
Richard