[mark_in_manc]

I'd be very interested to hear more about where these designs came from. I worked with a Romanian engineer (a postdoc at a university where I was working) who (pre 1990) had been employed for a while in connection with an agency whose work was to reverse-engineer products bought-in from the west, and recreate them with what was available within the soviet bloc. This struck me as a considerable engineering challenge all of itself. Today the Chinese have it somewhat easier, as companies formerly in the west export production (and subsequently sometimes R&D) with full support and insight into where the product comes from and how it is wished to develop it. Although un-credited knock offs also abound!