We Only Needed One
A friend of mine was getting rid of a bunch of equipment racks because his company needed more space, so I grabbed three. Nobody knew where any of them were from.
One of them had a marvelous set of switches and lights and an aerospace-grade wiring loom on massive multipin connectors. The front panel simply said, “BOMB BAY DOOR TEST APPARATUS ROCKWELL B-1B.”
My best buddy down in LA was making a space movie, and I knew the wiring harness would look great in his film, so I shipped it to him. At the time, he was sharing a loft space in the fashion district. The fine art photographer who lived next door was over. He turned and looked at the table where the wiring harness was sitting and turned white as a sheet.
My friend asked him, “What’s wrong?” He responded, “That’s the wiring harness for a Rockwell B-1B ALCM deployment bay test apparatus. It was assembled for Eldec Corporation in 1981 in Mukilteo, Washington.” My friend was surprised and asked him if he had photographed them, wondering how he knew what it was and where it came from.
His friend replied, “No. Before I decided to be a photographer, I was an aerospace engineer. At Eldec. In Mukilteo, Washington. It was the last project I worked on.
Actually, it’s one of the things that made me go back to school.” When my friend asked if he had built a lot of them, the photographer replied, “No. We only needed one. That one.” Story credit: Reddit / kleinbl00