Marconi Instruments - 1962 Diary and Notes.

I started at the Longacres site of Marconi Instruments Limited, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, an autonomous subsidiary of Marconi Wireless Telegraph at Chelmsford which in turn was owned by English Electric. The company was relatively small in size but big in ideas. As Chief of Advanced Development I had the job of building up a research and advanced development team to inject new ideas into the mainstream of product development. My starting salary was £2500 p.a.

I lived in Cambridge and the 50-mile journey to take up my appointment in St. Albans was very difficult. Heavy snow had fallen overnight. I couldn't even get my car out of the garage and so, setting out at 0715, I managed by trudging along treacherous roads and going by a circuitous rail and bus route to arrive at Marconi Instruments in time for lunch. From a paper bought on the way I learnt that my boss up to the day before, Nevill Mott, had received a knighthood which, according to Jack Ratcliffe, also of the Cavendish Laboratory, had been much sought after. I wondered whether or not I should write. [I didn't, but I wish I had].

On arrival I reported to the Managing Director, R. E. Burnett, who took me to lunch in a pleasant, light and airy annexe to the works canteen. Thus I had the first of my regular free waitress-served lunches in what was called the Managing Director's dining room. Places at table were allocated daily to senior managers and visitors by the M.D.

R.E. Burnett was a Oxford graduate in Physics who after teaching experience, wartime service in the R.A.F. and an appointment as a technical civil servant, joined the Marconi company at Chelmsford. He worked his way up through Personnel and Training to his appointment as M.D. of Marconi Instruments, in 1959. He was active in SIMA (Scientific Instrument Manufacturers' Association) and was a J.P. on the St. Albans Bench. He had also attended a postgraduate course in the USA.

Everyone at Marconi Instruments was very welcoming. One of the first discussions I was asked to enter into was about a projected tour of the United States. I had not crossed the Atlantic before so I was greatly looking forward to it.

The rooms allocated for my office & laboratory were in a single-storey prefab building. They were rather decrepit and uncomfortable but they were to be put in order a.s.a.p. Experience at the Cavendish showed me how much conditions could be improved.

At the end of this first day I stayed overnight at the Pea Hen, a hotel at the top of Holywell Hill, St. Albans, arranged and paid for by M.I.

I was introduced to all the development engineers - a very friendly crowd - at a meeting in which a scheme for controlling the introduction of new items into the company's range of products was 'sold' to the engineers by A.G. Wray, Deputy Chief Engineer.

The scheme had been devised by Jim Wickens who had been a lecturer in Management at Hatfield Technical College as well as a consultant to M.I. and had then joined the company as P.A. to R.E. Burnett. A local Labour Party officer (named Landman?) was consultant to R.E. Burnett and had a small office next to his.

Coffee for senior managers was served each day in a small conference room close to the Managing Director's office. In this way most of the managers, including the M.D., met up each day they were on site so there were plenty of opportunities for communication.

I stayed overnight at The White Hart hotel on Holywell Hill, again arranged and paid for by M.I. Like the Pea Hen, its pipes were frozen.

I attended my first meeting of the Product Policy Committee (PPC), which consisted of the top managers of the company, i.e.

The main purpose of the PPC was to control the progress of each product from idea stage to its introduction to the market. Discussion on this occasion was mainly on Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes (CROs). As REB remarked, I was 'blooded'.

Over the next 4 years there were about 60 meetings of the PPC; there will be no reference to these in what follows except where my records show that it was of particular personal significance. Similarly with Design Appraisal meetings - I first made an entry in my diary of such a meeting on 9th May 1962. There were probably 20 to 30 a year.

In the afternoon I travelled to London to attend a meeting of the Science Masters Association on behalf of another Company. I was negotiating a consulting and licence agreement with Scientific Teaching Apparatus Limited (STAL). J. de T. (John) Vischer, a Director of STAL, wished to harness my reputation and experience in the practical class field in the service of STAL and to manufacture and sell an educational or instructional CRO and other apparatus which I had produced at the Cavendish for use in its practical classes. The CRO was designed to enable pupils and students to learn as quickly as possible how an oscillosope works, to explore the characteristics of semiconductor as well as thermionic devices and to discover the effects of transient waveforms. The instrument did not conflict in any way with the CRO interests of M.I. and on this basis Ray Burnett had agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to the STAL arrangement.

I made my way in the cold light of dawn back to St. Albans for a day's work at M.I.

I worked on a proposal for a protected transistor input stage and discussed it with Doug Willis, a senior engineer. I noted that the standard of electronics knowledge in M.I. seemed rather low - there was very much an empirical outlook.

I stayed at the Pré Hotel which though not too comfortable was congenial and had excellent parking facilities. For the next eight months I stayed there fairly regularly on Monday to Thursday nights, paid for by M.I.

I had a talk with E. Garthwaite, the Chief Engineer, about the budget for my section. He told me I was not to worry unduly about finance. I had a long talk with J. Bliss, Personnel Manager, about recruiting staff.

I received a Hewlett Packard present (a timer and an hp diary) from Livingston Laboratories, who were agents for several major American electronic instrument companies, including hp and Tektronix. The present had been sent on to me from the Cavendish.

Norman Rider of the Meteorological Office, Bracknell, my next door neighbour in Cambridge, picked me up in his mini van on his way through St. Albans in the early evening and conveyed me, bumping through hard-packed snow, back to Cambridge.

I showed the Hechts over parts of the Cavendish and my wife and I entertained them to lunch at the Garden House Hotel, followed by a tour of the Colleges.

A very pleasant evening with the Owens (I wonder if we met daughter Tuppy on this occasion! We did sometimes meet a devout son).

At home in Cambridge with the family. The children appear to have picked up an American accented Hansel and Gretel from a record of the opera which Mary & Michael sent them for Christmas.

Up at 0625 for the drive to St. Albans. Arrived on time - snow had cleared. Checked the script of my paper on Practical Class Work at the Cavendish Laboratory (published in Contemporary Physics in February 1963), then went to a Doug Willis meeting.

A modest desk arrived so I had a base from which I could operate. I was full of hope for, including overheads (of which my salary was part), I had a £30,000 budget (equivalent to £½m to £1m nowadays) and an open brief. I set about recruiting staff.

Spent the day at the Cavendish on Physical Society Exhibition apparatus. While negotiating with R.E. Burnett over my job at M.I. he had strongly supported my honouring a commitment which had been made months before to be involved in the Exhibition on behalf of the Cavendish Laboratory. It was unusual for Universities to exhibit at that time. I had stimulated the Cavendish to so do and was anxious that all would go well. I noted in my diary that I was very doubtful if the pulse stability apparatus was "demonstrateable".

At 1800 I attended a Committee meeting of the IEE Cambridge Group. There was a discussion on the cessation(?) of the Group - I noted that it might be that A.H.W. (Bill) Beck, who had taken over from me as Chairman, was unduly reliant on the old boy network to give the required result.

On duty at the Cavendish Laboratory Stand at the Physical Society Exhibition describing and demonstrating the exhibits.

Again on duty at the Cavendish Laboratory Stand at the Physical Society Exhibition.

Digging in at M.I. I recruited the first member of my staff, a 1st Class Honours physicist.

G. Christopher came to see me for some reason which I cannot now recall. He was on the Commercial side of M.I. I have an idea he lived in Markyate and that his wife ran a riding school in Harpenden. I had met the Christophers at the IEE Banquet in December 1961, at which Shockley was the flamboyant guest of honour. This was when I had an uneasy feeling that there had been some behind-the-scenes manoeuvres to get us placed at the same table.

Christopher left M.I. not long after he came to my 'office' - there was no prior announcement about his departure and I never did hear why or where he went to.

I was busy househunting - I called on a Phillip Hill, a partner in one of the estate agents in St. Albans, who, Ray Burnett had told me, was a close personal friend of his.

Also I went to the premiere at M.I. of a film for 'selling' M.I. X-ray image intensifiers. Richard Baker, the commentator in the film, was present. A year or two later there was a premiere of a similar film in which another commentator, Raymond Baxter, was present.

I was taken by Ivor Gardner, Export Manager, to Mayfair for lunch with a friend of his, Dennis Gibbs of Fairchild Products.

I soon experienced Ray Burnett's technique of communicating indirectly. I had been to see him in his office. I was wearing a lightish blue suit of not very good material. As I was about to leave his office he slowly, silently and with an expression of considerable disdain looked me up and down. I took the hint and bought myself a formal suit which I wore from then on. I later realised REB was obsessed with indirect communication and came to the conclusion that it had been a mistake to respond so quickly to the hint.

On Monday 5th February I had my first one-to-one meeting with S.G. (Mick) Spooner, the Works Manager, in his office. He told me straight away that his communications set-up was such that he had known within seconds that I had walked through part of his production area some days before. Later in the meeting he surprised me by remarking, apropos of nothing, about the whereabouts of Billy Thorburn, a music-hall pianist with whom my family was connected - my father was his first piano teacher and in fact it was because of a massive discount Billy got from H.M.V. as a performing artist that I started my collection of records. I was not reticent about mentioning this to friends and neighbours but I certainly hadn't told anyone at M.I.. At the time I considered the mentioning of the name by Mick Spooner as an extraordinary coincidence but later I was not so sure.

I do not think this invention was ever exploited (though had I succeeded in getting M.I. to go into the VLF instrumentation field it would have been a valuable asset) and I have since come to the conclusion that the £500 may well have been an additional inducement for me to join Marconi Instruments - the rules of the English Electric Group no doubt precluded the offer of more than a certain salary but virement enabled money to become available for different purposes. I did hear later that the patent had enabled MWT to make up its numbers in a regular exchange of patents with the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

Soon after arrival at M.I. I was invited to visit other parts of the Marconi empire, such as the main works at Chelmsford and the research side at Great Baddow.

Thus in mid-February 1962 I paid my first visit to Marconi Wireless Telegraph at Chelmsford. It was probably on this occasion that I was taken to an empty office in which there were two desks. It was explained that one was for the Chief Engineer and the other had been for the Engineer-in-Chief! The C.E.'s post was vacant and the E-i-C's had remained unfilled from the time Maurice Wright, father of Peter Wright, had left the company.

Two weeks later I visited Marconi College at Chelmsford and was entertained to lunch by Roland Kemp, its Principal. Ray Burnett had previously held that post. Two months later I was given an extensive tour of Great Baddow, in the course of which I had my first meeting with Dr. I.G. (Ian) Cressell who was head of the semiconductor section.

Soon it was in connection with M.I. and Marconi projects that I was visiting the Chelmsford works, Great Baddow, the Maritime Division and the Writtle site . One occasion I remember with particular pleasure was in June 1962 when I went to Marconi, Chelmsford, to see Mr. Morcom, a senior engineer. Morcom commented favourably on my paper on Two Practical-Class Waveform Generators, which had just been published in Electronic Engineering. His commendation made me feel it had been worthwhile my intense struggle with the paper's rotating vectors explanation of the behaviour of non-linear circuits. F62f00 .

The Chief Engineer, E. Garthwaite, was a force to be reckoned with. His power in M.I. derived from long empirical experience in telecommunications measurement and persistence in finding solutions to technical problems, coupled to a dominant personality. He was not greatly enamoured with qualified people. He was not a forename person - it was a long time before I heard his.

I soon fell foul of him. Following discussions with him and others but principally with Ray Burnett, I drew up Terms of Reference for my job as Chief of Research & Advanced Development. Ray Burnett asked E. Garthwaite to circulate the Terms of Reference. E.G. refused.

At a Product Policy Committee meeting around the same time E. Garthwaite vetoed my 1st and 2nd product proposals. He did not advance arguments why they should be rejected - the Chief Engineer had spoken and that was that. Ray Burnett accepted the edict.

E. Garthwaite advised me to live up to the hilt on borrowed money. I disregarded his advice - Sheila and I were determined to pay in cash out of income. Our house was bought on a mortgage basis and later we obtained a straightforward loan towards the purchase of a car but we did not and have never bought any goods on hire-purchase.

In 1962 the house market conditions were such that I had great difficulty in finding a suitable place to purchase. I continued my search after I started at M.I. and meanwhile the Company paid for me to stay at the Pré Hotel in St. Albans as long as was necessary.

The problem was not just in buying a house in the St. Albans area, which was then much dearer than Cambridge, but in selling the house at 48 Windsor Road, Cambridge. By early March my wife and I had found a house in Harpenden at the drawing board stage (Plot 19, which became No.6, Manland Way), due for completion in late 1962. Our plan then was to move when we managed both to sell 48 Windsor Road and obtain rented accommodation in Harpenden until our new house was completed. Just before departing for the USA, in addition to making a will I gave the OK on the Manland Way house if finance can be raised.

To U.S. Embassy, armed with a letter from the company stating that I was travelling on its business. I obtained an indefinite visa.

I started a 4-week tour of the U.S.A. Arthur Wray was with me for three of the weeks. The weekday itinerary was organised by M.I. - no doubt R.E. Burnett had a hand in arranging some of the calls. We were free at weekends to do what we liked, except on one Sunday when there was a Sales Conference. Travel and accommodation arrangements were left to Arthur and myself. I made notes in my diary of impressions and some events during the tour.

A report on the Sales meeting on Sunday 25th March appeared in the June 1962 issue of the Marconi house magazine. 62f00 .

[It was in 2005 that I discovered from a website that the President of Tektronix, Howard Vollum, endowed an institute for biomedical research, which bears his name. He is described as an Engineer and Philanthropist and it is clear from the tributes to him that he was noted for the qualities I picked up in the few hours I was with him].

I ran into more trouble at M.I. with E. Garthwaite soon after I returned from the U.S.A., this time over the purchase of equipment.

I had a budget and a programme. This programme included the development of a 300 Mc/s counter and I ordered a very high frequency oscilloscope for this work and passed it to the Chief Engineer for authorisation. It was not until several weeks later when I was getting impatient for delivery that I learnt he had not authorised it. I tackled him and was told that I could use a low frequency oscilloscope or scrounge the only high frequency oscilloscope possessed by the Engineering Department - one that was already in constant use by the design engineers.

In mid-1962, as a guide to the choice of advanced development projects in my Department and to enable me to contribute more effectively to meetings of the Product Policy Committee, I gave much thought to M.I.'s product policy.

Nearly all products produced and sold by M.I. were Proprietary Instruments - they were designed by M.I. engineers and the company had full rights over them. There were one or two products made under licence from other manufacturers, with restrictions on the countries in which they could be sold; likewise there were a small number of products made to specification for particular customers which could not be sold to anyone else.

With the Company's objective of rapid and sustained growth, the long-term future lay in providing competitive general purpose as well as specialised instruments. M.I. had specialised in telecommunications measuring instruments but had begun to diversify. X-Ray image intensifiers was one of its newer interests and there was the rather 'oddball' moisture-in-grain meter. The most significant departures from telecommunications, however, were in general-purpose cathode ray oscilloscopes , digital counters and the like.

I tried to get a much more careful consideration of projects so that they were not accepted or rejected at the drop of a hat, to get instruments designed for use by clots rather than on the assumption that the user had the same love for them as the designer and to be biased, where appropriate, away from telecommunications. Some progress was made in these directions but not nearly enough to obtain worthwhile results.

As manager of a Department I had regular meetings with E. Garthwaite, Arthur Wray and Ray Burnett about the Research and Advanced Development budget, salaries, accommodation in a new building that was to be constructed and such details as project identification numbers.

From 27th to 29th June 1962, at Ray Burnett's suggestion, I went to Brussels to attend an American Management Association Seminar on R & D Management. I found it interesting, but nothing special. I think at that time I considered writings about management and management training as just formalised common sense. However, considering the number of notes I wrote to myself on management topics in the months that followed, perhaps the Seminar was more effective that I had thought at the time.

I spent one of the evenings with a rather gung-ho participant who revealed that his method of interviewing was to invite applicants to see him on a Saturday morning at his home and give them a tumblerful of gin before he asked them questions. Having dined together well at Le Cygne (or Maison du Cygne), he took me to a night club. It was quite an eye-opener.

I resolved never to go to a nightclub again - a very effective way of resisting temptation is to avoid situations where it might occur. When, months or a year or so later, I was taken, unsuspecting, by an M.I. representative in Germany or Holland to a similar establishment, I left immediately.

On my return from Brussels, I became concerned about estimating the time likely to be taken to reach particular stages in the development of a new instrument. Another concern was the acceptance of new ideas and technology, a notable feature of the electronics field. On 3rd July 1962 I wrote a note to myself:-

Only experienced research and development workers can estimate the time required to complete a project.

The best prediction is made by a person with an integrating type of mind - examines all input information before putting it into store (i.e. interprets or finds reason behind facts whereas non-integrating person accepts facts - his experience is a collection of facts).

Target for specific progress to be made, set by experienced person. (Initial undefined exploratory period - almost dabbling - then target set to crystallise something definite out of the investigation).

Raw graduate requires experience in basic circuit techniques i.e. building block.

All graduates require experience (immersion, insight) in new class of techniques (transistor circuits generally) or new system (sampling waveform generator). Possibly longer period required for more experienced person for immersion in new technique to overcome stultifying effect of past experience - this is particularly true of non-integrating type of mind. A person with an integrating mind may well be quicker than others to absorb new techniques by building on consolidated facts.

The next day I wrote another note to myself on graduate training and product research:-

The exploration of a system is a good project to start a raw graduate on. The principles of a system can be demonstrated by circuits which are not the ultimate in performance - the new graduate will be introduced to circuits in a fairly painless way and from a start will take a fairly broad view of instruments. One thing though, it is best that his supervisor should have a fairly clear idea of the ramifications of the new system and of the circuits involved - but not in too detailed a manner or the graduate may not come up with new ideas.

How to find out what people want of instruments. A visit per week? Research into product research?

In early July 1962 I was asked by Ray Burnett to set up a Working Party on future proprietary instruments which could become available for sale in 1965 to 1967 and present a report to the Product Policy Committee. All members of the staff co-operated except the Chief Engineer, E. Garthwaite, who declared his opposition and went around stirring up trouble (e.g. he wanted to set up rival working parties). I convened many meetings with senior managers and engineers.

Also around July 1962, after further consultation, I drew up and circulated a paper on the Basis of Operation and Tentative Programme for Advanced Development. It incorporated the 6th March paper on the Terms of Reference for the Chief of Research & Advanced Development. The paper included a case for reducing overhead charges for Research & Advanced Development in relation to Engineering. Arthur Wray said he had thought my analysis would show that R & AD should have a higher overhead and that he had been surprised that I had shown the reverse.

Again, despite the writing of two memos by the M.D. asking him to circulate the paper, the Chief Engineer refused to do so. However, he did approve the projects listed therein - I suppose that could be regarded as progress.

During 1962, as a member of the PPC and as Chief of Advanced Development I got involved in decisions about a wide variety of instruments.

Many were in the telecommunications field - e.g. Signal Generators (replacement of TF867, 801D, 1066), Harmonic Generator, Wave Analyser and Distortion Factor Meter. A NASA Generator project was considered but not proceeded with. In view of the takeover of Sanders by M.I. it is interesting to note that there was a visit from Austin of Sanders about Wave Particle equipment.

Voltmeters of one kind and another were regularly reviewed, some telecommunications related, others more general purpose e.g. Digital Voltmeters, Valve Voltmeters, RMS Meters, and Digital Readouts. Counters were also a major field of interest, including one for low-frequency work.

There were many meetings on Cathode Ray Oscilloscopes e.g. 100Mc/s CRO and CRO TF2201. Flexible oscilloscope design and modular design were among the features considered.

Nucleonic Test Equipment was looked at as a new specialised field of instruments and included a visit to Marshalls of Cambridge to see a Pulse Height Analyser or kicksorter.

During 1962 I was busy interviewing and recruiting graduates to staff the Research and Advanced Development Department. In mid-1962 Keith Hemingway accepted an offer. I also tried but failed to recruit A.H. Headley, a PhD student at the Cavendish who had impressed me. A little later Chris Davidson joined the Department. I then began negotiations to recruit Harry Sutcliffe as a consultant; agreement was reached and he became a valuable member of the team. H.S. was later was appointed to an Engineering Chair at Salford. By the end of the year I had also recruited Brian Smith, Peter Broderick and Colin Yarker.

Visits to and from companies, Government departments and Education institutions were part of the way of life at senior level in Industry. Attendance at exhibitions and at technical meetings were also the norm.

Thus I visited ICT and British Schering (to see Dr. Gordon Fryers who I was to get to know through one of my brothers). I went to see Ian Harris in a Government establishment at Harefield (who I later knew well in connection with electrical standards). I attended the Instruments, Electronics & Automation Exhibition and an Integrated Semiconductor Circuits Symposium, both in London. I also, at Ray Burnett's suggestion, paid a visit to Northampton College of which he was a Governor.

There were many opportunities for networking within the instrument industry itself. Thus in July 1962 I attended the Scientific Instruments Research Association (SIRA) Luncheon & AGM. A SIRA Members conference on Research at Chislehurst provided further opportunities and a different set of contacts came in late 1962 from the Scientific Instrument Manufacturers' Association (SIMA) convention in Eastbourne.

THE LORDS NELSON OF STAFFORD

On 16th July 1962, George Horatio Nelson, the 1st Baron Nelson of Stafford and Founder and Chairman of the English Electric Group, died.

The Founder was succeeded by his son, Horatio George Nelson, as Chairman of the E.E. Group. This development occasioned some adverse comments from Ray Burnett, who expressed to me his disappointment at the succession, adding that the old guard had carried the day.

I did not realise until years later how critical the passing of the 1st Lord Nelson of Stafford was to my career.

By the end of June 1962 finance for the purchase of the Plot 19 Manland Way, Harpenden, house had been arranged and we looked forward to moving into it on its completion. A keen prospective purchaser for 48 Windsor Road, Cambridge, had appeared so that seemed a problem out of the way. However, finding rented accommodation in the Harpenden area continued to be a great problem.

In mid-July 1962 a crisis regarding our Cambridge house occurred. A woman who was very keen to buy it decided not to go ahead. Then, much to our surprise, our agents chased the matter up, travelled South to call on the lady and persuaded her to change her mind. On 3rd August 1962 Gray, Swann & Cook, the agents for the sale of 48 Windsor Road, wrote confirming that the lady had purchased the house for £3700 cash. 62h03 . Not only that, some rented accommodation suddenly became available. Thus by the end of August 1962 my week-night sojourns at The Pré came to an end when we moved at very short notice into a small rented bungalow at 37 Meadow Walk, Harpenden. All was then plain sailing and on 28th December 1962 the builder issued an invoice for our new house. There is a practice of identifying by house numbers - an obvious one is No.10 and there was also a tailor I used who filed first under house numbers and then by names. In my case the numbers are 19 and 6.

I have reason to wonder if there had been behind-the-scenes moves to get 48 Windsor Road, Cambridge, off my hands and provide rented accommodation so that I could move expeditiously to the St. Albans area. I got the impression that the tenants had been moved to make way for us - he was a flying person with BAC, which was then owned by English Electric.

Around this time there occurred an event that brought home to me an awareness of another side of R.E. Burnett. We had happened to meet in a corridor at Longacres and had just concluded a brief conversation about staff recruitment when Ray Burnett said quietly and deliberately, apropos of nothing we had discussed, that the neighbours of my predecessor had reported adversely on his behaviour at his home. Having made this extraordinary statement the Managing Director walked quickly away, thus deliberately preventing any follow-up on my part. I took it that the remark related to me rather than my predecessor, who I hardly knew, and was intended to instil disquiet or fear.

Either just before or just after this communication Mick Spooner told me that Arthur Wray's neighbours thought very highly of him. Did M.I. have a habit of taken soundings of the neighbours of its senior managers?

This was not the only occasion Ray Burnett and Mick Spooner made extraordinary remarks on the same topic close together in time.

Life was interesting and I was progressing rapidly yet because of the very puzzling remarks being directed at me and the anarchic opposition of the Chief Engineer, I was beginning to regret my move to M.I. It was dawning on me that something was very much amiss - relationships between people were of a kind which I had never encountered or been aware of before.

The report on Proprietary Instruments 1965-67 was circulated and considered by the PPC. It was accepted with the request that I look at each product group in more detail, to bridge the £2M gap between target and estimated turnover. AGW thought it was no different from what my predecessor had done but in fact it contained some new ideas and, more importantly, it estimated the probable development spend/expected business ratio and went into much more detail for each proposal.

I started a tour of companies in Germany and Holland, calling in at Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart, Reutlingen, and Amsterdam. REB proposed the tour, much of it with Arthur Wray, as compensation for an E. Garthwaite action which later E.G. admitted was wrong. REB must have realised that I liked foreign travel so he gave as a lollipop to counter adverse events in the company. We were met by an M.I. representative at each place.

Arrived back home. My report was favourably received. I was asked to follow up my suggestion about collaboration with Wandel and Golterman. This clashed with the Export Manager's (Ivor Gardner's) plans for Germany and I did not press (my failing).

During the trip I had been very impressed by the knowledge a Siemens Director had of English Electric. I had not by then caught onto the idea of asking Head Office for details of a Company from which I was about to receive a visitor or which I was about to visit.

On 3rd October 1962 I wrote a note to myself about Categories of Resources for product evolution. 62j03 . Then on 8th October I wrote a memo to REB on cost reduction. On 17th October 1962 I held the first of many meetings to which all members of the Advanced Development Department were invited. My department was growing and the meetings were held to discuss projects, facilities, journals etc. There will be no further reference to them except when useful details were noted in my diary.

Around this time I had some remote contact with Cambridge Consultants Limited in that I recommended STAL to have some apparatus made by CCL. I also discussed CCL with J.B. (John) Davis (my former colleague at Cambridge Instruments and a member of my Lodge) in connection with one of his projects. In addition, I heard adverse reports of CCL's publicity-seeking methods from a friend, Dr. Gabriel Horn, Lecturer in Anatomy and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

For future reference in connection with the CCL episode, it should be noted that the Frontispiece of the June 1962 issue of Marconi House Magazine refers to AIM (India) 62f00 .

Another thought-provoking event occurred around the time we had moved to Harpenden but not yet into 6 Manland Way. We received a pressing invitation to a drinks 'do', which surprised us for we hardly knew the persons concerned. There we met a youngish man (a lawyer?) who had just been appointed to a Chair in Cambridge. I recollect that the venue was a smallish house on the even number side of Manland Avenue or Carisbrooke Road.

One particularly disquieting incident at M.I. concerned Freemasonry. When I mentioned to Ray Burnett that I had been to Cambridge one weekend, I was greatly surprised when he surreptitiously gave a secret masonic sign. I had in fact attended a meeting of my Lodge. Clearly, he knew about my Masonic activities and, most significantly, he symbolically informed me that he knew.

On 1st November 1962 I circulated a report on Additional Proprietary Instruments 1965/67. The Appendix contained a summary of what needed to be done to set M.I. on a path of growth in general purpose instrumentation.

One result was that a Working Party on Sweep Generators was set up to examine that type of instrument in more detail. Towards the end of November 1962 the report of the W.P. on Sweep Generators (Additional Proprietary Instruments 1965-7) was considered. If there was any outcome from the reports it was in the nature of tenuous influence rather direct action.

On 3rd December 1962 there was a Design Appraisal meeting on the TF2201 Cathode Ray Oscilloscope. I presented an analysis of existing competitive CROs which indicated the shortcomings of the forthcoming M.I. design. It went down like a lead balloon. 62l03 . I think it was in connection with this instrument that there were jeering remarks when orders came in good numbers as soon as it was available for sale. Later it was realised that there were very few repeat orders - regular purchasers of other M.I. instruments had ordered one or two of the new CRO to try them out and had found them wanting. I later used this experience in the Alpha Displays Limited management development exercise.

It was in December 1962 that I first met J.R. (Jack) Thompson of the Electrical Engineering Department , Hatfield College of Technology. He came to see me at M.I. and a few days later I went the College, probably for a session with one or more of his students.