Did you ever notice any kind of impressions that either the general public or maybe the scientists at the other labs you worked at---for instance in Japan---how they perceived the U.S. Forest Products Lab?

Yes. I was directly involved with two laboratories, one at Swiss National Laboratory and through some mutual friends who were scientists as well. They also came to the Forest Products Laboratory and that's how some of these contacts were made and they came and studied for a year or two. The Japanese connection I had was actually with a fellow graduate student at the University of Wisconsin who knew who I was and knew what type of work I was doing. So your question was---I think that most laboratories around the world that were fairly young looked to the Forest Products Laboratory as the center of excellence, including European laboratories who had been probably functioning for as long as the Forest Products Laboratory has gone. But they did lose out during World War II. The Swiss lab was probably up there all along because they didn't have any war history. The German labs, the British labs, French labs I was very closely allied with because of the tissue culture work. And they all looked to the Forest Products Laboratory as a place to come and as a place of excellence. This is also especially true of the Asian laboratories, China and India and Japan, which were actually just starting out and they did not have the European history.