Post by ronturner on Dec 9, 2010 12:34:15 GMT 1
This item is a follow up to a discussion on CAT III in the main Liverpool section. Some of you may find it of interest.
As an illustration of the bureaucracy under which we all suffer from time to time, I made reference to my experiences in industry. Hanging on the wall of my hangar, I have a framed copy of Electronics Weekly dated 12th November 1969, with the headline as shown in the title line.
I worked for an innovative company, a division of Philips, where we invented and manufactured the world's first push button telephone. Until then, everybody was using rotary dial 'phones. We built up a great export market but we could not get the Post Office (Predecessor to British Telecom) to buy into the concept. How ridiculous does this seem today? It took years to get an order from the monopolistic operator. Their final excuse was that since we were the only supplier of this device a competitive tender could not be issued. We ended up giving (Yes..giving) our technology to STC in Northern Ireland so that we could both tender for supply. Because of the subsidies offered to STC at that time in the troubled province , we ended up with the smaller share of the business, but it was still worth it.
On another occasion we suffered from internal stupidity within Philips itself. Our division was headed by a brilliant engineer, Professor John Rhodes, a man who in previous years headed up a research unit at Pershore, and had under his control several aeroplanes including a Meteor, Canberra and Lancaster, all of which he flew himself from time to time. By the time I met him he was spearheading the use of integrated circuits in telecommunications, devices which we had to design ourselves and have manufactured at specialist companies. Fast forward to early 1980's and Rhodes was campaigning in Philips for huge sums of money to develop a range of personal radio operated personal communicators. He was adamant that within 10 years everybody would have their own little personal mobile 'phone and land communications would become secondary means of voice communication, thus leaving it free for data traffic. The great men of Philips refused us the money. What a mistake to make. Rhodes left Philips and I joined him later in a mobile communications company, but by then the initiative had been seized by Motorola and a little upstart outfit called Nokia.
Hope this hasn't bored you.
As an illustration of the bureaucracy under which we all suffer from time to time, I made reference to my experiences in industry. Hanging on the wall of my hangar, I have a framed copy of Electronics Weekly dated 12th November 1969, with the headline as shown in the title line.
I worked for an innovative company, a division of Philips, where we invented and manufactured the world's first push button telephone. Until then, everybody was using rotary dial 'phones. We built up a great export market but we could not get the Post Office (Predecessor to British Telecom) to buy into the concept. How ridiculous does this seem today? It took years to get an order from the monopolistic operator. Their final excuse was that since we were the only supplier of this device a competitive tender could not be issued. We ended up giving (Yes..giving) our technology to STC in Northern Ireland so that we could both tender for supply. Because of the subsidies offered to STC at that time in the troubled province , we ended up with the smaller share of the business, but it was still worth it.
On another occasion we suffered from internal stupidity within Philips itself. Our division was headed by a brilliant engineer, Professor John Rhodes, a man who in previous years headed up a research unit at Pershore, and had under his control several aeroplanes including a Meteor, Canberra and Lancaster, all of which he flew himself from time to time. By the time I met him he was spearheading the use of integrated circuits in telecommunications, devices which we had to design ourselves and have manufactured at specialist companies. Fast forward to early 1980's and Rhodes was campaigning in Philips for huge sums of money to develop a range of personal radio operated personal communicators. He was adamant that within 10 years everybody would have their own little personal mobile 'phone and land communications would become secondary means of voice communication, thus leaving it free for data traffic. The great men of Philips refused us the money. What a mistake to make. Rhodes left Philips and I joined him later in a mobile communications company, but by then the initiative had been seized by Motorola and a little upstart outfit called Nokia.
Hope this hasn't bored you.
