IEE ELECTRONICS DIVISION: CHAIRMAN’S ADDRESS

Gaslight to gigahertz: seventy=five years of

collaborative foresight

by Professor M. 1. Withers, MSc, FEng, FlEE

Introduction

At the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the major discoveries and inventions which we accept as indispensable to modern life today had been made. The industrial revolution was already history and world trade had been long established. Alegion of lone inventors over the previous 150 years had uncovered many mysteries in the worlds of physics, chemistry, medicine and mathematics.

Not only was the rate of technological change accelerating but the whole process of applying scientific knowledge to solving problems using teams of trained people had been established at the turn of this century. Perhaps one of the most important features of the 20th century has been the concept of contemplating the future and then organising groups of people to bring together all

At the time when the world relied on gas lighting and coalfires for heating, the Institution of Electrical Engineers created the concept of collaborative research to assist the growth of the industry. in 1912, it set up a Research Committee to originate and co-ordinate programmes on electrotechnical matters. This was the start of using technology foresight to yield commercial success. The Research Committee was the foundation from which grew the independent contract research and development company, ERA Technology Ltd. This review looks a t the history of the Company, from its early work on electricity generation to replace gas lighting to the development of some of the most advanced communication systems having bandwidths measured in tens of gigahertz.

the relevant technologies to achieve the objectives. This process of technology foresight has proved to be a powerful method for selecting programmes which yield commercial success.

The dawn of the twentieth century

In 1900, most of the houses and streets of the major citiesof Europe were poorly lit after dark by flickering gas lamps. The softness of gaslight and the warmth from domestic coal fires may seem romantic today but at that time the majority of people were impatient for the amval of that newfangled ‘invention’ electricity, and with it the prospect of brighter, safer streets and cleaner homes.

The great scientific discoveries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had established the foundation of electricity but progress on translating it into applications of

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general benefit was irritatingly slow. Nearly 150 years had elapsed since the American politician and experimenter Benjamin Franklin had demonstrated that lightning was electricity and it was a hundred years since Alessandro Volta had devised his electrochemical battery to create the world’s first source of continuous power.

It was this invention, in 1820, that had enabled the Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to prove that there was a relationship between electricity and magnetism, and subsequently, in 1831, for the British chemist Michael Faraday to discover the principle of electromagnetic induction -the giant step that led to the development of the dynamo, a device which could actually generate electricity, and to the electric motor, a new form of mechanical power that was to revolutionise manufacturing. It was not until the first part of the twentieth century that the move towards a more general electritication of towns and villages was to gain real momentum.

In Britain, an event which was to add impetus to the development of the electrical industry took place at the Institution of Electrical Engineers on 12th December 1912. The IEE Council decided that there was a need to encourage research and for this purpose set up a Research Committee to originate and co-ordinate programmes on electrotechnical matters. Members were invited to submit suggestions for research projects and particular emphasis was placed on the need to investigate the properties of materials used in the electrical industry.

The Research Committee began work in 1914 with 5500, which the IEE had allocated for ‘research concerned with magnetic steels, the heating of buried cables and the properties of insulating oils’.

The year 1914 was also, of course, the start of the First World War and the government of the day was already learning an important lesson: that Britain was seriously deficient in many technical areas and therefore overdependent on countries abroad for the supply of materials and scientific equipment The country generally had fallen behind in the industrial application of scientific research and exploitation.

To remedy this situation the Government issued, in July 1915, a White Paper entitled ‘Scheme for the organisation and development of scientific and industrial research. It provided for the establishment of a Committee of the Privy Council to be responsible for new funds voted by Parliament for scientific and industrial research, and for the appointment of an Advisory Council composed mainly of eminent people from science and industry. The role of the Council was to advise the Committee on the merits of specific research projects, the setting up of research institutions and the creation of research fellowships.

In December 1916, Britain strengthened its drive for greater technical independence by establishing the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research @SIR), which had an initial budget of El million. The job of the Department was to promote co-operation between scientitic establishments and industry, and between individual companies within particular industrial sectors, thus enabling programmes of research to be carried out

which would otherwise be beyond the resources of single organisations.

The IEEs Research Committee was three years into its work when, in May 1917, the DSIRapproved its application to establish the ‘Electrical Research Committee’ consisting of an equal number of members nominated by the IEE and by the British Electrical and Allied Manufacturers’ Association (BEAMA) . The new committee held its first meeting at BEAMA’s offices, Kern House, Kingsway, London, on 4th October 1917.

In November 1918 an advertisement was placed in The Electrical Times for ‘the services of a gentleman of high scientific and technical attainments as Technical Officer to direct and supervise, under the Committee, the research work undertaken by it’. The salary offered was El000 per annum. The candidate chosen was Mr. E. B. Wedmore, who tookup the appointment on 1st July 1919. His title was Director of Research.

Just over ayear later the work of the Electrical Research Committee was taken over by a new body, the British Electrical and Allied Industries Research Association, which was incorporated on 27th September 1920. From the start this lengthy name proved too cumbersome for everyday use and the organisation was swiftly dubbed the Electrical Research Association - or ERAfor short.

A write-up in the Electrical Reoiew of 17th December set out the Association’s financial position: it was to have a guaranteed minimum income of E16 000 per annum for five years, half of which would be supplied by industry and half by the DSIR Furthermore, the Government would match any contribution made by industry up to a total of E32 000 per annum.

Under Wedmore, the company attracted around 150 experts from industry to serve on its research committees. This was nearly all of Britain’s leading specialists in the Association’s field of research and was a major factor in ensuring that projects were accurately focused and efficiently managed, two disciplines that were to prove vital to the reputation and growth of the organisation in the years to come.

The twenties

The Electrical Research Association came into being just at the right time. Industry realised that it could no longer rely on the heroic inventor to come up with the detailed knowledge of materials and design information it needed to sustain profits and fund expansion.

But where were the engineers who could take these steps? And who could afford them? Availability and affordability were not so much a problem for the big companies. Smaller firms seeking to advance their businesses through improved technology had to look elsewhere for engineering resources that they could not afford in-house. They found them in organisations like the Electrical Research Association.

Collaborative research was a completely new concept. By sharing the cost of development with other firms operating in the same industrial sector, individual companies could ensure that they were not left behind.

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Even the multinational companies, when they needed a wider range of skills than could be found in their own research and develop ment departments, turned to the deeper pool of talent that was to be found in the independent research assoc- iations.

When ERA began its operations in 1920 it had no technical resources of its own. Its role was to manage co-operative projects for the benefit of the electrical industry. The programmes were implemented by sub- contracting the work to the research departments of member companies or to other laboratories, such as the National Physical Labora- tory. Although this mode of operation produced results, it was not always convenient. Thus, in 1921, its income

/

Fig. 1 ERA's first laboratory for testing switchgear at Carville Power Station, Wallsend-on-Tyne (1 921)

manufacturers and electricity supply authorities, joined in what had become a worldwide research effort to find a better way of controlling the heaviest loads on the supply system. In the course of undertaking these investigations, ERA develop ed the world's first high- speed camera in order to discover what actually happened when an arc was drawn between the contacts of an oil-immersed circuit breaker.

The photographs revealed that the arc associated with the circuit breaker was surrounded by a large bubble of gas which inhibited any quenching action of the oil. This led to attempts at substituting the traditional oil system and eventually air was found to be an effective substitute. ERA was manted

I

having reached E16 000, ERA set up the first experimental station of its own (Fig. 1).

It was located at the Carville Power Station, Wallsend-on- Tyne and its purpose was to conduct switchgear testing. Prior to the 192Os, those towns or districts in the UK

a patent on the airblast circuit breaker (Fig. 2) in Britain and in many other countries and subsequently the principle was adopted worldwide.

Another invention arising from the switchgear research was the side-blast baffle arccontrol Dot. or baftle switch.

which had electricity obtained their supplies from local generating companies. The local-area switching of electric current was a relatively simple matter and was often done by hand. The more demanding conditions created by the development of high-voltage generation and heavy currents was about to be encountered. These arrived with the coming of the larger power stations which were built to supply electricity over greater distances, and with the interconnecting grid that linked several power stations.

Switching these very much greater amounts of energy safely called for something more scientific than the simple oil-immersed circuit breaker currently in use. ERA's Carville laboratory, backed by British switchgear

Fig. 2 250 MVA airblast circuit breaker, incorporating various ERA innovations, including

side-blast baffles. The unit shown has just survived a 500 MVA test (1931)

which further increased the breaking capacity of the circuit breaker. This was taken up in Germany before it was used in Britain and earned ERA substantial royalties.

In its early days, ERA carried out a great deal of research for the electricity supply industry. These investigations included the current carrying capacity of buried cables, the design of turbine nozzles, the choice of material for turbine blades, the corrosion of steam condenser tubes, the strength of the wooden poles used for aboveground transmission lines, the properties of overhead conductors and the effects of lightning strikes. As an independent organisation, ERA was often called in as an arbiter to settle disagree ments concerning the inter- ference which occurred

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between power lines and telecommunication systems. To appreciate the importance of ERA’s work for the

supply industry at that time, one has to realise that electrification was still in its infancy. By 1919 there were still only 1000 route miles of overhead lines in the UK, despite the fact that the first system had been erected back in 1890. Progress had been hindered not only by technical problems but by the capital cost of overhead transmission lines and local opposition to them. In these circumstances it is understandable that even as late as 1921 only 12% of British homes had electric light.

In the UK it took the Electricity Supply Act of 1926 to bring about the revolution. At last it was going to be possible to ceordinate both the generation and supply of electricity nationwide, and to provide British industry with the opportunity to reequip and to modernise.

One of the first big development projects to be announced was the BO million South-East England Electricity Scheme, which covered an area stretching from Peterborough in the North to the South Coast. It included the industrial sites on both banks of the Thames, the London Docks and the Kent coaliields, and involved a considerable mileage of electrified suburban railway and theTube. The aim was to increase the output of electricity, introduce economies of scale and bring down the price to the consumer by 1940 to an average of one penny per unit.

In 1927, the British Electrical Development Association, a non-trading organisation representing all branches of the industry, launched a campaign to popularise the use of electricity. Lectures were given in schools and town halls all over the country, special shop window displays were organised, and there were regional equipment exhibitions and electric show houses. In December, the Association organised Britain’s first national electric week.

This, then, was the political and commercial climate in which ERA operated during its first ten years. As the electrical industry grew, so did ERA It now had its own fuse research test house at Stonebridge Park Power Station and was preparing to build a laboratory at Acton Lane. The Association’s Director, Mr. Wedmore, and his small staff occupied offices at the BEAMA headquarters at Kern House, Kingsway, London and were to remain there until they moved into the IEE building at Savoy Place in September 1933.

The thirties

ERA began the decade with fewer than 50 staff and an income of E49 000. By 1939 it would reach a staffing level of 150 and an income of 290 000. The early thirties were a continuation of the Depression which began in the mid- twenties, but despite the economic gloom, ERA went ahead with a plan to build a small cables testing laboratory at a site in Harlesden which belonged to the old LMS (London-Midland-Scottish) Railway. The soil in this part of London was clay and provided just the right conditions for the tests proposed. The research that was carried out was so successful that it convinced ERA’s Council to approve the setting-up of a purpose-built, modem laboratory at Wadsworth Road, Perivale, North London.

The country’s economy was improving and the Central Electricity Generating Board paid E21 000 over three years to cover the total cost of programmes concerned with the national grid power distribution system. The new, 1300 mz laboratory was a milestone for ERA whose work for the electrical industry was about to receive a royal seal of approval.

OnTuesday, 22nd October 1935, the Duke of Kent drove along Western Avenue to Perivale in his Bentley convertible to open Britain’s newest laboratory, where he was shown various aspects of the work. In the radio and telephone laboratory, the Duke was shown the progress being made in an investigation into causes of radio interference. A particular concern in the mid-thirties was that the frequencies being considered for television transmission could be vulnerable to interference from London Transport’s trolleybuses. Although the outcome of ERA’s research is not on record, we can assume that the results were helpful, for in 1936 the BBC began transmitting the world’s first regular public ‘high- definition’ television service, using 405 lines - and the trolleys continued to run.

The need for better research and development was certainly uppermost in the mind of the British Government in January 1939, when the prospect of yet another war in Europe began to look very real. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research duly intimated that ERA could expect to be classified as an ‘essential undertaking’.

The first recorded assignment concerned the degaussing, or demagnetising, of ships. When a ship is constructed it becomes a permanent magnet, the magnitude of the field depending on the vessel’s orientation on the dockyard slipway. It had been known since the 1914-1918 war that this field might be used to trigger the firing mechanism of an underwater or floating mine, but it was not until the first German magnetic mine was recovered off Shoeburyness on 23rd November 1939 that it was confirmed that the idea had been put into practice.

Possible countermeasures against these mines included neutralising the ship’s magnetism by surrounding the hull with a current-carrying coil or by using one of the other degaussing methods, such as ‘wiping’. ERA developed suitable magnetometers and constructed the necessary test ranges. One of these stations was established at Tilbury in 1940 and in six years of service ‘neutralised’ around 15 000 vessels.

The forties

In 1943, four of ERA’s senior staff were seconded to the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern where they worked on the development of radar.

One of the tasks for ERA’s engineers was to assist in the development of a device to help in the bombing of enemy submarines. At that time, when the battle in the Atlantic was at its full height, it was beginning to look as if Coastal Command, with its new radar equipment, might succeed in containing the German U-boat offensive. The radar enabled the patrolling aircraft to detect any surfaced

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submarine within a distance of ten miles, day or night. However, the German scientists had developed radar listening equipment which could alert the crews to approaching searching aircraft in time for the submarines to dive and escape.

The answer was equally smart. Research showed that once the radar had located a submarine, transmitter power could be reduced without losing contact. The task then was to devise a means of attenuating the outgoing signal automatically during the aircraft's approach and attack run, so that the fading signal would fool the listening submarine crew into thinking that the plane had turned and was flying away from the boat instead of towards it.

ERAwas also asked to tackle the menace of unexploded, delayed-action bombs. A way of locating the bombs quickly had to be found. The matter was so urgent that no less than nine laboratories were commissioned to solve the problem. The ERA solution was a specially-developed Mumetal magnetometer locator, which was so successful that it formed the basis of all standard equipment.

ERA'S pioneering work on interference suppression came into its own during the war in reducing emissions from electrical equipment fitted to military vehicles which were having a disastrous effect on radio performance, nullifying the gain brought about by the introduction of new wireless receivers having greatly improved sensitivity.

The fifties

As a result of increasing workload, construction of a new ERA laboratory began in 1954 at Leatherhead, Surrey and was ready for occupation by the summer of 1956.

One of ERA'S many contributions towards the growth of the electricity supply industry was the scientific data that facilitated the successful introduction of off-peak storage heating, the concept which brought increased sales ol electrical energy. ERA worked both on underfloor electric heating and on the so-called night storage heaters. The availability of reliable data allowed manufacturers to enter the new market for off-peak electric central heating with the confidence that their products would give adequate performance.

In this decade, ERA worked particularly closely with the supply industry on the development of the market for electrical energy. The projects involved the design of new equipment, devising better ways of using existing equipment and demonstrating to industry and the domestic consumer the advantages of selecting electricity in preference to other forms of energy.

In horticulture, ERA assisted in the development of soil heating for

frames, cloches, glasshouses and in the open ground. Extensive research was also done on the control of light, heat, humidity and ventilation in greenhouses.

As a research organisation, ERA has been able to take a long-term view and often backed more unusual lines of enquiry. One of these was the Bacon fuel cell. In 1932, Francis Bacon, a mechanical engineer, began to examine earlier attempts to generate electricity by direct electrochemical reaction. By the mid-fifties, the Bacon hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell was regarded as having passed from the research stage into its development phase. ERA held several patents on the device but handed these over to the National Research & Development Corporation, to speed the marketing process. It duly secured licences in the USA and this resulted in Bacon cells being used as power sources in the Apollo space programme which put man on the moon.

The sixties

One of the main objectives of establishing ERA earlier in the century was to improve the understanding of materials used in the electrical industry. This had been a major activity over the years, with work concentrating on insulating materials and steels.

In 1960 a laboratory was constructed at Leatherhead to measure the creep behaviour of the various steels used in power generation plants. The task was to carry out creep tests over long periods, typically 60000 hours (seven years) and in some cases extending to 15 years. Valuable data were obtained for use in the design of the many highly- stressed components which are required to operate reliably in power generation plant at creep temperatures.

That same year, the first commercial integrated circuits appeared on the market, followed swiftly by the first microcomputer. The Department for Scientific and Industrial Research provided additional funding for ERA to

Fig. 3 determine the risk to the fuel tanks in the wing (1974)

A simulated lightning strike on a model of the Concorde aircraft to

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extend its capabilities in this new and significant area. North Sea drilling platforms. By the mid-seventies CAPICS By the end of the sixties a drastically reshaped ERA was had been used on seven rigs built for the Shell-Esso

now working in the fields of control and automation, consortium, including the largest oil production platform computer-aided design, thin- and thick-film technology, and at that time, the Brent B Field. Other services provided by such domestic matters as the causes and control of radio ERA involved electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) interference which posed a threat to the boom in colour testing, underwater electrical safety, hazardous TV. Also, a technological planning unit had been formed, atmosphere testing and, later. microwave communica- staffed by those qualified in engineering and manage ment sciences, whose task was to identdy growth areas in electrical and electronic engineering, and to forecast the effects of new techniques.

The seventies

ERA entered the seventies with fresh energy and renewed confidence. This was demonstrated by ERA's financial results in 1971 which showed that the company had grown 30% in a year. It was now a E1M per annum business and had become the

Fig. 4 Surface-penetrating radar derived from the version used to assist the police in the search for murder

victims at Cromwell Street, Gloucester (1 994)

largest independent research institute in Britain. The international oil crisis accelerated the quest for

alternative sources of energy and of these it was mostly the wind-driven turbine which occupied ERA's engineers. In fact, the company had a head start over rival contract engineering organisations; ERA's experience of designing and testing wind turbines went back 25years and there was a useful bank of data available.

As one of the principal test houses for electrical products in the UK ERA moved easily into the area of electronics. When the major defence contractor, Ferranti, developed its serial digital signalling system for warships, ERA was the respected, independent organisation which camed out the extensive testing required to determine compliance with the relevant naval specifications concerning electromagnetic radiation and immunity to external interference.

ERA's steps into more advanced areas of technology became a giant leap in 1974 when the Radio Frequency Technology Centre at Leatherhead was formed. This was a joint venture between ERA and one of America's largest independent research and development organisations, the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute (IITRI). The centre was to provide research, development, design and consultancy services in the technical areas associated with antennas, microwaves, radar and communication systems. The all-graduate team possessed a blend of theoretical expertise and practical experience that was to earn the Centre worldclass status.

The offshore oil and gas industrywas becoming a fruitful avenue of business. The ERA cable-routing design service, CAPICS, expanded its operations from shipbuilding to the

tions. When Concorde took off

from Heathrow on 21st January 1976, the passen- gers and crew were probably unaware that one particular anxiety about supersonic travel had been removed. Simulated lightn- ing tests (Fig. 3) were carried out on Concorde models in the 2 8 MV high- voltage laboratory to study the behaviour of arcs travelling across the aircraft's surface. The tests showed that fears that supersonic airliners might be more susceptible to lightning striking their leading wing edges, thus

endangering the fuel tanks, were without foundation. ERA Ltd. was probably one of the first engineering

organisations to embrace the concept of technology transfer. By the late seventies practical help on a contract basis was being provided to companies in many developing overseas countries. Also, the transfer of knowledge through technical seminars and conferences was started, an activity which in the years to come was to grow into a significant business.

With the approach of the 1980s the Board decided that ERA Ltd., the title that had evolved from the old Electrical Research Association, was no longer representative of the breadth of work done by the company. It was announced that from 1st September 1979 the new name would be 'ERA Technology Ltd.'

The eighties

ERA Technology News, the organisation's journal, opened 1980 with a message from the new managing director, Dr. Alan Rudge: The present economic climate demands that the research and technical services provided by ERA be made increasingly cost-effective. As a self-supporting, independent contract research organisation, commercial viability is a fundamental fact of life.'

Having made that point, he warned that the market which ERA served was both competitive and discerning. For that reason commercial viability could not be the sole criteria. The technical quality and timeliness of the work and services provided had to be 'the very essence of ERA'.

Timeliness certainly applied to a project which ERA had

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just begun in the field of avionics. The task was to write Britain’s first data bus rule book, the objective being to help smooth the introduction of new data bus standards for military aircraft.

Robotics was an area of technology that required wideranging mechanical and electrical expertise, just the subject for an organisation like ERA. The first commission was from the Central Electricity Generating Board for a general- purpose manipulator to be used in reactor maintenance. This was followed by a computer-controlled inspection system, which ERA built for use at the Beech Aircraft Corporation’s plant in the United States to check the integrity of the carbon fibre composite/honeycomb structure of the fuselage of the executive jet, Starship 1.

Electromagnetic compatibility testing

Fig. 5 reporting news direct from the Afghan war zone via the portable ERA satellite uplink antenna seen in the background (1987)

Photograph taken from a television showing Sandy Gall

had grown to become a significant part of the company’s business in the 1980s. In 1981 the Department ofTransport appointed ERA as the UK agent for vehicle ignition interference testing to EEC and United Nations radio interference specifications, and the company gained approval from the US Federal Communications Commission to undertake interference tests on computers.

The Daily Telegraph in April 1984 lifted the curtain on a hitherto secret project which ERA had been carrying out for the military. The article, headlined ‘Radar device planned to clear 15000 mines’, quoted a senior British army officer as saying that a special ground-probing radar was being developed by ERA Technology with the aim of locating the plastic mines which had been buried in the Falklands by the Argentine forces.

ERA knew that there were civil applications where the revolutionary radar could be very effective. It could most certainly be developed to perform quality-control checks on civil-engineering structures, to assist in geological surveys in mining and tunnelling, and for search-and- rescue duties in heavy snowfalls or avalanches. The radar

could even be used to help police search for buried murder victims (Fig. 4).

In 1985 ERA designed and delivered two earth station subsystems to the European Space Agency. The 3.5 metre diameter dual-offset antennas were for use with the Olympus satellite, launched in 1987.

With mobile telephones still several years away from being really affordable and popular with the private user, ERA took the step of investing, in conjunction with the British Approvals Board for Telecommunication, in a fully equipped cellular radio test facility.

Direct broadcasting of television to the home from satellites in space was the next major technological step to hit the world. ERA announced their concepts for the microwave antennas of the future: compact, lightweight, lowcost and plastic. ERA’S flyaway diamond antenna made its debut in 1987 and revolutionised TV news gathering. The dish was designed to fold into a box so that it could travel as ’baggage’ with television news teams flying to remote trouble spots. A familiar sight now, it was a great novelty in the late eighties. ITN was the first organisation to use it when veteran reporter Sandy Gall trekked across

Fig. 6 Powe: amplifier, with 15 GHz bandwidth, used in optical-fibre anticipating the replacement of long- communication systems (1995) delivery items and allowing proper capital

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Fig. 7 ERA Technology’s latest building on the site at Leatherhead, Surrey

expenditure forecasting for more costly components. To improve the service many organisations around the world contribute to the ERA programmes of research into new techniques. The European Commission has strongly supported this collaborative work with grants.

Other obvious growth areas are software and electronics. One notable development was the so-called ‘smart’ antenna, which can adapt automatically to the wanted signal while suppressing interference. This was made possible by advances made in adaptive signal processing and digital beam-forming. ERA’s significant contribution to this technology, arising partly from a major contract carried out for the European Space Agency, has helped to establish the Leatherhead laboratories as a centre of excellence in this field.

Light-rail transport systems - suburban railway trains that become trams when they reach the city centre - are generally regarded as the best hope of easing the congestion and the pollution that has arisen from the use of motor vehicles. Europe has therefore decided to encourage the development of light-rail technology and, in 1992, ERAled agroup collaborative project concerned with high-integrity communications. This is an important area of safety in the task of separating light-rail vehicles from each other and, in the city, from other road users.

In the summer of 1992, the first European Retrievable Camer, EURECA-1 -a 4500 kg satellite, the heaviest free- flying spacecraft from the European Space Agency - was shuttle-launched into a low earth orbit. ERA’S contribution to the success of the new satellite was the unique electronic beam-squint feed, the ‘heart’ of the microwave tracking communications antenna.

An innovation which could improve safety wherever electricity has to be used in hazardous areas resulted from a DTI-supported collaborative research programme concerned with the design of laminar constructed transformer structures in small, off-line high-frequency electronic power supplies. The noncontact energy transfer technique can be used in air, through plastic materials and even under water. One application has been for a battery- charging system in a waterproof, hand-held, emergency lantern for use in explosive atmospheres.

ERA entered 1994 with another world ‘first’. It had

achieved accreditation for safety critical software testing from NAMAS (the National Measure- ment Accreditation Service), The award made ERA the first company to have UK Government approval for testing the highly sophisticated software used in such applications as nuclear power stations, petrochemical installations and high-speed transportation systems.

The growth in overseas business was accelerated in 1992 by opening a branch in Singapore. This was followed by a similar operation in Houston, Texas, in 1994. Both companies have a strong reputation

for providing independent evaluation of high-temperature components used in power generation, oil refining and petrochemical processing. The Government of Singapore, recognising the need to train more electronics engineering graduates in radio frequency design techniques, uses ERA to provide course modules and project-related practical exercises.

As ERA Technology completes its 75th year of operations, it is interesting to reflect on the contributions made by a company that started life in the largely gas-lit world of the early twenties and now develops communication systems having bandwidths measured in gigahertz. It has survived wars and thrived on technological revolution, weathered the worst of the world’s economic recessions, coped admirably with the swings of government policy and dealt with the realities of selling its services in the international marketplace.

Although ERA Technology as a company is no longer recognisable as the Research Committee established by the Institution of Electrical Engineers at the beginning of the century, it still retains the sense of purpose to originate and co-ordinate programmes on electrotechnical matters. The staff are just as inquisitive technologically and even more versed in the skills of foresight to ensure that their work leads to commercial success for ERA’s clients.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Ken Long, recently-retired Publicity Manager at ERATechnology, who extensively researched the history of the company and upon whose findings this article is based.

Also immense thanks to all ERA staff, past and present, without whose amazing efforts there would be no history of ERATechnology Ltd. and many contributions to mankind would not have taken place.

0 IEE:1995

This Inaugural Address was delivered before the IEE Electronics Division on 11th October 1995 at the IEE, Savoy Place, London.

Professor Withers is Managing Director of ERATechnology Ltd., Cleeve Road, Leatherhead, Surrey KT22 7 S h UK.

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