The Power of Resonance.
In September 1967, I’d completed the first year of my apprenticeship. Until I became conditioned to it, I found being shut up in a factory all day a struggle. Luckily, along with a World War Two bomb-shelter, Headley’s Engineering was still wired for the morale lifting ‘Music While You Work’. For the first part of the year, it had played the BBC’s Light Programme. Later in the year, the pop-orientated, Radio 1 came online. Despite the efforts of Engelbert Humperdinck and Val Doonican, my sanity was saved by the Beatles, Hollies, Who, Monkees, Four Tops, Stones, Small Faces, and others. Plus, I had a day each week at college, aptly called ‘Day Release’.
Three of us finished the first year of Dunstable College’s experimental ONC course that combined Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. To stay on the course, I had to pass ‘O’ Level Physics. However, the lecturer was the same person who’d taught me while I was in full-time education at Dunstable College, and I had failed. In truth, that was my own fault, the tutor had no control, the class was a riot, and I went along with it. This time, I decided to study at home by myself instead of attending the evening classes. I got the physics ‘O’ level, and I passed the first year’s ONC exams, so in August, I presented myself at the college to sign on for the following year. The tutor looked at the class list, there was a problem. He told me I couldn’t sign onto the course.
“Why not?” I asked, “I passed the exams”.
“It’s the physics” he responded.
“But, I passed physics”.
“Yes, you did. But, look at this” he held up my report “Class attendance, ZERO. If you’re studying at this college, you’re supposed to attend the classes. You should have a minimum attendance of sixty per cent”.
This was ridiculous. I’d passed my exams, and I was being expelled. I almost said I didn’t go to the classes because the teacher was crap but thought better of it. No matter how much I complained, I was out.
Oh shit, I thought, how am I going to explain this one to the foreman.
The next evening after work, I hitched a lift up the M1 and then on to Bedford. I took my Dunstable College term report to Mander College, there they arranged for me to continue with a mixed Mechanical and Electrical ONC. Mander thought it was very enterprising of me to cross the established engineering boundaries. The question of my attendance never came up.
I told Roe Wilson, the foreman, I’d signed on at Bedford because it was more convenient and closer to home. I didn’t have to wait around in Dunstable after work to go to evening classes, which was true.
The Electrical Engineering class at Mander had twenty students all working for electrical or electronic companies. I now had others to give me practical insights into the mysterious world of the electron.
The factory in Dunstable was 42 Km from Mander. Evening classes started at 19:00, so I had two hours after work to get to Bedford. If I hitched a quick lift up the M1, I could stop off at home for tea. If I was late, I’d thumb it from the M1 at Brogborough straight into Bedford. Most evenings, things went well. However, on rainy, foggy or snowy winter evenings, it was sometimes difficult to get a lift. I would often squelch into college late and sit through class cold and soaking wet. After class, still damp, I had to thumb it 16Km home. The full day at college was better for me. One of the GPO guys had a car and passed Brogborough, so I generally got a ride into college and one home again in the evening.
I continued my double life of mechanical and electrical engineering, with a leaning more towards the field of electronics. This made having to work on production machines all day frustrating for me. I was sure I wasn’t going to continue on that career path when my apprenticeship finished. However, I had no idea what I wanted to do.
Around November, while reading a local newspaper, I came across a classified ad for a trainee position with an electronics company in Dunstable. On an impulse, I phoned them. Living in fear of the shop foreman, I said I could only see them outside working hours. They must have been desperate. The following evening I had an interview in an industrial unit not much bigger than a double garage across the road from the Halfway House pub.
The interviewer explained that the company made microwave devices for satellite communications, spacecraft, radar and other military applications. Things were going alright, but I felt the man was building up to the killer question, and then up it came.
“This is all very well,” he said “but we are really looking for someone more into electronics. You’re doing a mechanical engineering apprenticeship. If I asked you what the resonant frequency of a capacitive-inductive circuit is you’d probably have no clue what I was talking about”.
I looked at him for a moment, dumbstruck. I’d only just done resonance theory in class the previous week. I replied. “Well, I do. At resonance inductive and capacitive reactance are equal. The frequency is the reciprocal of two times pi times the square root of L times C. Where L is the inductance and C is the capacitance of the circuit”.
Now, momentarily he was dumbstruck, then “That is absolutely correct”.
The interview took a turn for the better. I walked out with a new job and three times the pay I was currently earning.
Confidently, I walked into Roe Wilson’s office the next morning and told him I was leaving Headley’s. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair.
“And where do you think you’re going” he demanded.
When I told him, he said caustically, “I know him. He’s always messing around in his garage with bits of wire. He’ll never get anywhere”.
He then went on to tell me I was far better off sticking to real engineering instead of fiddling around with a soldering iron. He finished off with “You’re not going anywhere. Your indenture papers legally bind you to this company until you’ve finished your apprenticeship”.
And, that was the end of that conversation.
Over the following years, Microwave Associates Ltd expanded into a massive factory and office complex along Poynters Road in Dunstable.
In 1970, I finished my apprenticeship. I got my HNC in Mechanical Technology, Properties of Materials, Manufacturing Technology, and Machine Tools. That qualified me to go to sea as a Junior Engineer Officer. In 1975, thanks to Texas Instruments, I got an HNC in Electrical Engineering, Advanced Electronic Principles, Control Theory and Digital Techniques, plus the Mander College prize for achievement. My father died in April of that year, so he never saw me collect that prize. Sandy, my mum and my boss at the time, Don Sims, were there though.
I hate to admit it, but Roe Wilson was right. There is a distinct difference between Electronic and Mechanical engineers. If you make a mistake on an electronic development you can desolder some components and patch in a modification, it’s called adding a wart in the trade. You then incorporate all the mods into a production Printed Circuit Board (PCB), and no one is the wiser. If you get a complicated mechanical development design wrong, you end up with an expensive pile of junk.
I never understood why mechanical engineers were reluctant to study electronics, the maths is the same. Everything revolves around Newton’s Integral and Differential Calculus.
Regardless of being expelled, I’m eternally grateful to Dunstable College for, the happy accident, of putting me on my path towards electronics.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d been allowed to take that job with Microwave Associates.
In the end, it’s all academic. One branch in the road inevitably leads to another, you have little control over the vehicle, so you never know where you will end up. There’s a multiverse of possibilities, but ultimately ‘now’ is the only reality. Of the millions of possible random outcomes on life’s path, I’m quite happy with my current destination, temporary as it is.