Cleaning an old keyboard

Noel Chiappa jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu
Wed Sep 25 10:29:00 CDT 2019


    > From: Al Kossow

    >> This is documented in NASA's official history of Project Mercury, for
    >> which it was invented.

    > could you post a pointer to the document where this appears?

If the reference is to:

    Lloyd S. Swenson, James M. Grimwood, Charles C. Alexander; "This New
	Ocean: A History of Project Mercury"; SP-4201; NASA; Washington; 1966

"WD-40" does not appear in the index. There's another less likely book
("Project Mercury: A Chronology", or something like that), but I can't be
bothered to drag it out and look, because I'm pretty sure that's incorrect.

My understanding is that WD-40 was invented to protect the stainless steel
skin of the Atlas ICBM (which was often left un-painted), built by Convair. I
do recall seeing this in one of my Atlas books, which is alas currently not
shelved, and I don't have time to find it. FWIW, Wikipedia agrees.

The rest of that post (about how it's a waxy material in a solvent) is I
think correct; it certainly agrees with its original intended usage (above).

	Noel


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