Well, I'm an alcohol tester, among other petrochemicals, so over 40 years ago I pioneered the routine use of capillary gas chromatography for most of the commodity chemicals made locally and coming through. Computerized too when lots of the chemical plants still didn't have that either. For a while there I had the only advanced abilities in this type analysis. This is the modern apparatus in use today that was seen only rarely for research purposes when I set it up the first time for routine use.

The technology was very well set to emerge on its own. Nothing that wouldn't have been done without me eventually, and by about 10 years later most operations had progressed in that direction, in many analytical fields besides chemicals, without any relationship to my particular early effort. But I've probably still run more experiments in this field than anybody else who didn't start that early.

With the employee turnover of a measurement bureau having an inherently outdated approach to staff, alternative international testing labs were eager to pick up our people who knew how to do this. Bigger companies knew I was up to something the whole time but I was not trying to hide anything, just not giving away the details.

When it comes to alcohols, at the beginning all the PhD's who were established chided me that it couldn't be done the way I had in mind. Little did they know I had already validated it for a year, so they didn't actually turn out to be wrong in the end. They were all wrong from the beginning and I knew it as I went along.

And that's just the apparatus, which is all over the world now, plus for alcohols well-standardized internationally. Even though the standard allows for lower performance and uses lesser math than I had implemented originally.

Now that I have officially retired from my last employer, I still consult and earlier this week the manager called me about a specialty chemical on the way that nobody knows how to do and there are no publications. We'll see if this ship comes in.

It's really just a non-toxic hiatus for me, I grew up in a retirement community, so unspoiled resort life has already been accomplished and well behind me for decades.

Still deciding whether it's best to present the advanced math at a conference this year or next. That I will be able to take full credit for if I want to, and it could be quite popular now that people have the corresponding apparatus already.

Regardless, the way we do it is slides and lecture only, no publication will necessarily be forthcoming.

That reminds me, I don't disclose much but last time it was 2021, maybe a week after Windows 11 was released. Here's how I did it, being the only one seen with W11 (even up to this year w10 outnumbers it 10:1). Two laptops, neither one fully meeting the stiffest software requirements, one with HDMI, the other much further out-of-date with VGA. Each alternatively multibootable to XP on demand (just in case) with the same Powerpoint, projectable from either OS on either laptop. All slides at the native resolution of the projector supplied by the AV service. HDMI it was, no need for XP arose but it turned out the HDMI cable that was supplied by AV was a worn out POS which would have been a show-stopper except I pulled out a long HDMI cord brand new in the package, manager hooked it up and we kept on going.