Thoughts On Alstom At Derby
In the 1970s, I worked at ICI Plastics in Welwyn Garden City in a section called Computer Techniques.
We had a unique mandate from the Divisional Board, that allowed us to stick our nose into anybody’s business.
We certainly weren’t short of computing power, as in addition to the Division’s IBM 360 and dial-up services to GEISco, we had one of the handful of PACE 231R analogue computers in the UK.
Note.
- These machines didn’t use many semiconductors.
- These beasts could solve up to a hundred simultaneous differential equations and display the answers as graphs on the printers.
- Other UK companies and institutions with a PACE 231 R, included BMC, British Rail Research and Cambridge University.
- Two were linked together and these did the calculations for the Apollo flights.
- Their finest hour would surely have been to use their flexibility and power to bring home the stricken Apollo 13.
I got an interesting introduction to the industrial world in my three years at Welwyn.
One of our problems, was recruiting enough specialist engineers and programming staff.
So in the end, at one of our Monday morning meetings, we wrote our own advert for the Sunday Times.
We got all the staff we needed, but they weren’t the sort of recruits, you’d normally expect in the 1970s. Two were Indian and two were American, but all were recent immigrants. But they were certainly good enough to solve our problems.
I don’t think the Personnel Department were amused at our independent recruitment exercise.
I sometimes wonder if Bombardier (now Alstom) in Derby has a similar recruitment problem.
I am a Control Engineer and all these hybrid systems, that will power the transport of the future, be they trains, planes or automobiles, need lots of engineers with similar skills to myself and those of computer programmers. So do local companies; Rolls-Royce, JCB and Toyota, who probably have their own skill shortages in these areas, nick the best from Alstom.
It should be noted that in the railway press, it has been said that the Aventras from Derby were late because of software problems.
The Anonymous Widower 