Gillette histories

From the Nov. 12, 1953 News Record:
Puzzle: Who got the hundred million dollars? He walked into our office seven years ago, sat down. We knew the customer. And a wonderful credit rating he had, too. Said he wanted airplane engines. By that time, blueprints were scattered all over the place. He was taking no chances. Not one engine would he accept without testing first, stripping apart, building up again, and testing once more. And more. Every engine he bought would be overhauled after 15 running hours. He didn’t say so, but he must have known we would have ideas, too. The climax was last August. The customer announced that he would allow 1,200 hours flying time from these G-E engines before an overhaul. In other words, 80 times as many hours without overhaul as seven years ago. Oh, yes. The hundred million dollars. With General Electric engines now giving extended service, not so many are needed. Improvements have saved the customer that much in five years. Who’s the customer? The U.S. Air Force. And what was the engine? The J-47 jet engine. And who got the hundred million dollar saving? Who profits from more Air Force per dollar? The taxpayer, everybody. General Electric.
From the Nov. 20, 1969 News Record:
Development of new electric supply for the growing needs of Black Hills Power and Light Co.’s customers in South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana reached another milestone this month as the No. 5 unit of the company’s Wyodak power plant went into production. The 20,180 kilowatt generating united located at the Wyodak coal mine, 6 miles east of Gillette, was constructed at a cost of nearly $6.1 million. The widespread interest results from a unique feature of the new unit — an air cooled condenser — which permits electric power generation using minimum amounts of water. This feature makes Wyodak No. 5 the first unit of its kind in the western hemisphere. BHP&L officials are confident that the generating unit will become a major breakthrough in the economy of the company and will open the door to similar generation by other companies serving areas where water is expensive or non-existent. For many years, BHP&L, through its totally owned subsidiary, Wyodak Resources Development Corp., owned or had under lease tremendous coal deposits in the Wyodak area. Called by many “the world’s largest coal seam” this extensive deposit is a thick seam (70 to 90 feet) of coal. These deposits, however, were never totally developed because large amounts of water needed for conventional power plants were not available.