Dad used to be head of QC at Kemet (he retired from there in the early 90s). They were known for high-reliability Tantalums (used in various ICBMs, undersea cab

Dad used to be head of QC at Kemet (he retired from there in the early 90s). They were known for high-reliability Tantalums (used in various ICBMs, undersea cable repeaters, and the System 360). These days they make many different styles of capacitors and other components. They did 100% inspection - twice, to ensure they shipped a good product. Like many electronics production lines, the yield of working product was important to track. And they didn't have the ability to ship a capacitor with part of it disabled, like Intel used to do with the 80486DX and 80486SX (the SX was a DX with a non-functioning floating-point math processor). Story time: They received Tantalum via truck delivery. And one day the truck driver failed to clear a rail crossing in time and was hit by a train. He was fine, but the expensive metal was scattered along the rail bed. Obviously they couldn't use it after the accident, as it was contaminated. So they paid employees to go out there and pick up the pieces so they could be returned to the smelter and get credit for it.