Ever check out your own birth certificate?

I was sorting through papers the other day, as one does in an effort to clear a workspace, or try to fit just one more piece of paper onto an overstuffed pile of to be filed papers.

Ah, that's where I put my birth certificate! 

For some unknown reason I read it through again - though, honestly, I do remember the particulars of my birth day. What I had not registered in my brain before, is what my father's occupation was at the time.

My father was a sales engineer with Revere Corporation of America. Huh, that I did not know. The Revere Corporation of America was based in Wallingford, CT. Not too far from where my family lived at the time in Woodbridge. According to the Smithsonian Libraries Trade Literature Collections, the corporation designed and manufactured "electronic weighing and force measurement systems for industry; load cells for industrial and aerospace electrical engineering applications; readout and control instrumentation; inventory control systems." Later, my father went to work for Northeast Engineering Co., also based in Wallingford. By the 1960's, my father had gone off on his own to build a small company manufacturing fluid dynamic control switches - some of which I actually assembled on school vacations. He later sold the patent he had and moved on to other interests. 

Ah, the things we learn when we really read our documents!