A non serious look at the things I did at work.
Now that I have taken early retirement, it is easier to look
back on so many years of work with happy memories. When
you are actually doing the job, you are wrapped up in
deadlines and there seems no time to have fun.
Actually, I have been very lucky to have done a wide range
of different things, most of them interesting. However, it is
the people I remember most. Perhaps you were one of them.
This page looks back at the things I did and the people I
worked with in words and pictures. I hope you find it
interesting. .
My First Job at Silverhill Colliery
Silverhill was a coal mine near the village of Teversal in Nottinghamshire.
Attached to it was the laboratory where scientific work was carried out. I
worked in the Instruments Laboratory. We maintained the instruments from all
the local mines. For the most part, these were methanometers which measure
the amounts of methane in the mine atmosphere, but we also dealt with gas
alarms, pumps, safety lamps, self rescuers and anything else that needed
making or fixing.
Every Monday afternoon, George the van driver would arrive with boxes and
boxes of things needing maintenance. Paul Elliott and myself would then set about fixing them all. Our boss
was Dave Cooper who organised things and ordered all the spare parts. Dave was noted for whistling the
same tune all the time and George was an expert in swearing. We once counted over 50 individual swear
words during the delivery of a single box of methanometers. I have lost touch with all these people now, but if
you see this guys, drop me an e-mail. Details on my home page.
Sorry, I have no photographs from my time at Silverhill. If you have any, please let me know.
Silverhill Colliery is now closed and is now a country park and wood. It really is hard to imagine now all the buildings, winding gear and spoil
heaps.
Where has the pit gone? - Silverhill Wood
TXE4
After studying for my degree at Liverpool University, I joined Post Office Telecommunications (now BT). My first
job was in the development department where we were working on a new type of large telephone exchange
(central office) called TXE4. This was the early 1970s and up
until this time, most telephone calls were handled by electro-
mechanical systems based on the Strowger system.
Strowger exchanges were full of moving parts and if they
went wrong you had to clean and oil them. TXE4 changed all
this. It was an electronic system controlled by a simple
computer. By modern standards, the technology was crude,
but this was the first use of electronics on this scale in the
UK phone system and it was a revolution.
In their early days. TXE4 exchanges were not very reliable
and I became part of the "Panic Squad" (unofficial title). We
were sent to various parts of the country to sort out problems
some of which were so serious that the whole town had lost
its phone service. Gradually, these things were all sorted
out.
The picture on the left shows me standing in front of a cyclic store rack at Manchester
Blackfriars exchange in 1979. Note the flares and beard.
TXE4 was put together by a young team and I was the youngest. We had a lot of fun. All things
come to an end and in 1998 was all gathered together again in Leigh on Sea, to see the last
TXE4 taken out of service. Twenty five years later, we did not look so young. The picture on the
right shows the team surrounded by the last TXE4. This is one of the official pictures taken at
Leigh on Sea in March 1998. It shows (top down), Gerry Gaule, Adrian Jolly, John Watts, Andy
Papaspyru, Bill Mayes, Quin Collier, John Goodman, Barry Trawford, Dennis Carpenter, Colin
Jackson, Nigel Pope
Payphones and Chargecards
After leaving the TXE4 team, I did various jobs, some better than others. Then in 1986, I joined Payphones. I was in charge of the Cashless
Services Team. We looked after all those payphones which took their payment by electronic means rather than by traditional cash. At first, this was
done using a pre-paid card called Phonecard (remember all those bits of green plastic). Later, we started taking Credit Cards and, in addition, we
launched our own credit card called BT Chargecard.
These products were a major success and we were selling millions of cards every year. I had to deal with everything from engineering to marketing
and I realised that marketing was going to be the thing of the future and this would be my future career path.
The people in Payphones were a great team and we still keep in touch. Here are a few pictures of the team in action:
Telex
After leaving all those millions of cards behind, I did various marketing jobs and then one day in 1995, I got the chance to move back into product
management again. This time working on Telex.
Now Telex is a very old product. It is a text message service where you type a message into a teleprinter at one end and it comes out of a
teleprinter at the other end of the world. It was launched in the 1930s, and many people were surprised to hear that it was still going. In fact, it was
still very much alive and making a lot of money.
Once again, I was fortunate to work with a great team. Here are a couple of pictures:
Above left - Typical Office Scene Right - Carolyn, Hardeep, Pearl
KVSA (Royal United Ship Agencies)
Despite being retired, I am still doing a bit of consultancy work for a Dutch
company, KVSA (Royal United Ship Agencies). This has been interesting
work and lots of fun.
It's mostly marketing stuff, partly telecommunications and partly shipping
(which I don't know much about). The misunderstandings have all been part
of the fun and I can tell you that the team at KVSA are a great bunch of
people to work with.
If you have never been to Amsterdam, I can strongly recommend it.
Electronics Engineer
From about the age of 8, I
always knew that I wanted to be
an electronics engineer. I used
to make all sorts of electronic
gadgets in my spare time and
later I became a radio ham
which involves taking an
electronics theory exam (or it
did back then).
Marketing
Although I worked for many
years as an engineer, I have
always enjoyed doing
marketing work, product
management in particular.
Engineers are often good at
marketing as they bring good
planning discipline (or at least I
like to think so)
Things that interest me
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The pictures I have shown so far might suggest that I have not always taken work all
that seriously. As you can see from the photograph on the left, I have always tried my
hardest, and I am happy to report that this costume won first prize in the Office silly
shirts contest in 1989. What further proof could you want?
