There was a time when the French believed that any significant scientific discovery had to be made in France, and if it wasn't, it wasn't significant ... e.g. Oersted's work.

I just figured that, as an extension, it was a cultural artifact, that the French assumed all their work to be utterly perfect. I'm not persuaded that ALL French engineers think that way, but who knows ... It's been many decades since I was last in France.

Insisting that their hardware was faultless when their own people couldn't make it work seems a bit outrageous to me, though, and, after all was said and done, they did have to withdraw the very defective product from the market.

This was not a case of being out on the "bleeding edge" and experiencing the obvious risks. This was a case of bumbling incompetents attempting to do what they clearly didn't understand from the outset. They probably went to website after website, when they were in school, attempting to get someone else to do their homework for them. Afterward, they learned that lying can sometimes get them "off the hook." It didn't, in this case, though.

RE