Kyle Accardi asks:

> I've been waiting for this TLA (Three Letter Acronym) to be expanded since
> it's come up frequently lately.  What means DAT?

My bad-- I thought this was in the FAQ, but it's not.  Sorry about that...

DAT is "The Dictionary of American Toolmakers", published by the EAIA.  Bob
Nelson, Phil Cannon, and a few others spent years organizing and
cross-referencing hundreds of thousands of paper references, to create the
definitive list of who manufactured what, and when.

I've talked to Phil a couple of times about what went into the creation of
this, and the effort required to organize and analyze the data is mind
boggling.  It's sort of the Oxford English Dictionary of tooldom... ;-)
-- 
Ralph Brendler, Chicago, IL - OTLM, ENB, FOYBIPO
"Every team has their bad centuries"-- Jeff Torborg, former Cubs manager