Shoe manufacturing in the New England region of the United States was a major industry in the early 1900s. Automation of shoe assembly was needed to keep costs low while producing large quantities of shoes. Shoes of many styles and sizes. Flat materials of leather and cloth needed to be cut to the proper sizes. Some materials needed to be bent or formed to odd shapes. They needed holes to be punched in the materials. They needed to be held together in alignment while being assembled. And if the shoes had laces, they needed eyelets for the laces to pass through. Well, building electron tubes required pieces of metal and mica cut to the desired size and shape, holes to be punched and needed them to be held together for assembly. Sounds as if some automation equipment may be already have been developed for automation of tube assembly.

And a major designer and builder of automation for assembly of electron tube innards was a company known as "USM." Yup, United Shoe Machinery. So, look down at your shoes, notice the eyelets the laces pass through, then look back at the images of the Selectron. See all the stamped layers. You may not be able to see the storage eyelets buried inside, but you'll see the small eyelets holding the layers together. Your sneakers and Selectrons share a common heritage.