I am absolutely delighted to learn of your planned celebration of the centennial of the Singer factory in Wittenberge. Singer was an extraordinary company. Indeed, it was among the first to appreciate the central important of "fit and finish" in the marketing of a major consumer product--a central concept that decades later Japan would put at the center of its industrial development policy. Ironically the first place that Japan used that approach was in manufacturing sewing machines!!!

Singer--and its factories--had a huge impact on the quality of life of people virtually everywhere in the world--because Singer's remarkable marketing organization reached almost everywhere in the world. Thus the machines of Wittenberge--and of other Singer factories in Podolsk (Russia), Kilbowie (Scotland), and Elizabethport (USA)--spread across the world, giving people the ability to create quality textile products far faster with far higher quality than ever before. Singer, quite literally, was peacefully transforming the world.

It is a real pleasure to know that your community is celebrating this centennial; it stands as a strong symbol of how we have long touched each others' lives and reminds us of how local history twines with the histories of people in distant lands.

My best wishes, Prof. Fred V. Carstensen (grandson of an immigrant from northwestern Germany and great great great grandson of another from near Hamburg--Kruse was the family name; my father grew up in a Germany farming community in eastern Iowa and spoke German until he went to school).