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John Saunders |
Manchester University.
I was admitted to the Honours School of Physics at the University of Manchester, famous for being the place where Lord Rutherfield first "split the atom". This was against the wishes of my father, who had neither any interest nor ability in anything not connected with money, gardening, or golf. If his son was not to follow him or his father's footsteps, and do something technical, it should be building bridges.
An Honours degree requires all required courses to be taken in three years, and the examinations passed on the first attempt. For one of my electives, I selected a course in the electrical engineering department which emphasized electronics. I still had to study electrical machines in order to meet the requirements of the professional societies! I did scrape through and graduated with Honours in Physics, in 1957.
I was able to live with my parents, although by that time they had moved further away from Manchester, to Blackburn, and later to Rochdale. This was a long commute, and I traded my Matchless for a more economical 250 cc 2-stroke James.
Work Experience
Because of my stipend, I only worked during summer vacation. The first summer I went to the employment office of the Mullard vacuum tube factory in Blackburn (English branch of Dutch Philips). I got a job in the quality-control department, which had big racks for testing samples of production. This was a most interesting experience. We employed several thousand persons in ten huge hanger-like buildings. One made the glass from scratch, another the special wire and metal plates. Another, very dusty, building ground Ferroxcube, Philips' proprietary magnetic material, which is essential for CRT yokes and flyback transformers. Mostly they had hundreds of women welding the parts together under microscopes. I was warned to keep out of these buildings when they were on their break!
The second summer, 1956, I got a job at the Mullard Research Laboratories in Reigate, Surrey, south of London. This was on the recommendation of my former mentor Harold Knowles, at the Amateur Radio club, who by then was working there. There I got to use transistors, which were not yet generally available, being made in experimental quantities by Mullard. There was no information yet on designing with transistors. Yet I got the assignment to make a transmitter for the Consumer Electronics Show in London that summer. I was in competition with a regular employee who made one with minature vacuum tubes. I did make one in a clear pexiglass case. It was much smaller than the vacuum-tube design, used smaller batteries, and had a better range. It was a hit at the show.
I was offered a job there on graduation. However, I already was thinking of emigrating. We tried to dissuade me, offering me sure lifetime employment, whereas I might fail abroad.