In the 1960's, high technology and sophisticated computer programming were the stuff of NASA's space race and not much else. The information that can now be carried on a tiny silicon chip was stored on tape machines in huge, air-conditioned rooms. At that time, when Joe O'Brien started working at Gibson Engineering Co., Inc., electro-mechanical actuation was still the name of the game in industrial automation. Microchips were years in the future, and the pulleys and gears that operated assembly lines were little changed from the time Henry Ford set up the first lines in Detroit. O'Brien started working in sales for William Gibson, who founded the Norwood, Mass.-based distributorship as a manufacturers' rep agency in 1945. It handled lines of electrical and fluid power control devices mainly for injection molding machines and metalworking machine tools. The company's customer base consisted of about 20 companies, which accounted for 80 percent of sales. As the years passed and the pace of technology accelerated, O'Brien took over the company and needed people who could learn quickly and pass that knowledge on to customers.
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