Blue Streak, Black Arrow

Bill Higgins is boasting about buying a very cool secondhand book indeed; Manned Spaceflight Operations, stamped "Edwards Air Force Base".

I'll see that, and raise him the best comment ever. We didn't track down the Texas Instruments thing, but Colin in comments brought us this:

Well, I watched this one: In the bad old 60's when tubes (valves to fellow Yorkshiremen) were top technology and our missiles needed lots of them, me and my fellow tech men had to sort out the best from the worst in large vibrating testers. The 97% not-so-good one's were either used for the parking lot improvements or were spirited away for the booming home stereo market.
The parking lots eventually became too high to use so they found some other way. This occurred in my sight at DeHavilland Lostock and DeHavilland Hatfield. This all sounds very similar to your TI story. Colin.

I have a reader who worked for De Havilland Dynamics? That's ridiculously cool. Where were you on the 17th? Eh? Eh?