Read an Excerpt
Chapter 9
Experimentation&Innovation
Radar development and the secretive war work feature in many of the
memories of former employees of EKCO, as well the freedoms they had to
experiment and innovate. Not to mention the social life offered to employees
resulting in quite a few marriages.
Rose Henstridge, (employed 1942-1970)
“I joined EKCO at Southend in 1942, although most of the factory had been
evacuated to Aylesbury, Malmesbury and Aston Clinton. I was allocated to
office work in the temporary Drawing Office. Mr Burtenshaw was in overall
charge of the office, although he was based at Aston Clinton, and I also
remember writing to Stan Lind and Ron Kemp (I think) at Malmesbury. As
production had just restarted at Southend on the Type 19 wireless sets and
wiring looms for Lancaster bombers, we had to keep asking Aston Clinton for
drawings and eventually we were allocated six draftsmen and three 'tracers'
who were 'arty' people conscripted in because of their watercolour painting
skills (and not their knowledge of mechanical or electrical items - of which
they knew very little). Because they had been told to faithfully trace what was
on the original, I remember one incident, which caused quite a laugh, when a
lady tracer faithfully traced the outline of a fly, which had been swotted on the
original.
“Working in the Drawing Office came in very handy in 1944, because when
I got married my bridesmaids’ dresses were made from 'rejected tracings' that
had been washed out, and these were covered with 'lace' – coupon-free from
Petticoat Lane Market near Liverpool Street Station in London. I left the
company in 1948 to start a family, with the intention of returning to work in
the early 1950s, but in those days no part time workers were allowed in the
offices so I went into the factory making televisions. I loved working there and
found it far more interesting than writing letters and filing, etc. My skills at
reading technical drawings helped together with a good memory so I soon
went 'full time' and became a supervisor. I joined the entertainments committee
of the EKCO Social&Sports Club and well remember the children's Christmas
parties where there were mounds of sandwiches made with sliced bread,
margarine and tins of raspberry jam, although there were also jelly trifles and
fruit cakes.
“In the late 1950s, I got to know Ken Hendry who had started up the
avionics section in the Research&Development Labs at Southend, and he
would often stop by and proudly show off new the bits and pieces. I well
remember him showing me a small box of transistors, which he told me would
do away with valves ('glass bottles', he called them); he was so excited that
they had been sent to him from Malmesbury.
“When the Rochford factory opened in 1960, my husband went to work
there; they were doing both avionic and nucleonic work. To be nearer the site,
we bought a bungalow in Rochford and shortly after this I again left work.
After about a year, Ken Hendry heard that I was not working and asked me
to work at Rochford as a supervisor, which I did and again I loved it. The work
was so much superior to the television work I'd done previously.
“Towards the end of 1960, we heard that Malmesbury was relocating to
Southend and Rochford. As we had just settled into our ways of doing things,
we were not looking forward to this at all, but in the event all was well. After
a couple of years my name was put forward to run a section in the R&D
Laboratories at Southend working on 'first off's' and bits and pieces for the
Engineering Labs. This was wonderful since it also allowed me to renew some
old friendships with people I had previously known in the television Drawing
Office.
“In the mid-1960s, I found myself working on the E-390 project under Eric
Golding, which was the radar destined for the Concorde; here I was with six
good operators and we made the systems for the first two Concordes. As part
of this I remember going to a seminar at the Café Royal in London, which was
held for all those involved with the Concorde project.
“Shortly after this, the effect of the Pye takeover became apparent, and
brought with it many unwelcome changes. I was offered a job on the factory
floor making televisions - needless to say I left. By the end of 1970 it was
apparent that all radar manufacture was going to be relocated to Mullard
Equipment Limited (MEL), which was owned by Philips Electronics, in
Crawley, West Sussex, and my second husband, Roy Henstridge, was offered
a job there. This we accepted, so we moved to Crawley.
“Again Ken Hendry heard that I was there and persuaded MEL to offer
me a job as a supervisor, which I of course took. With various re-organisations,
radar work ended up moving to one of their associate companies in Scotland,
so Roy and I moved there to teach radar assembly techniques. This wasn’t too
bad because we met some of our old engineer friends, as well as quite a few
'test' men, some of whom I'd worked with way back in my television days.
“I'm eighty years old this year and my local library gave a party to all the
townsfolk who had reached that age. We all had to say something of what we
did from the war onwards and when Concorde was mentioned, I told everyone
about my contribution to the radar, which resulted in a lot of men telling me
about their radar experiences in the war.”
(Rose Henstridge, née Fisher, November 2006.)
Pete Terry, (employed 1961-1964)
I joined EKCO Electronics in 1961 as an indentured apprentice, starting in
the television production lines, and I developed an interest in radar whilst
working on secret airborne radar in the test department at Rochford. I was
introduced to V J Cox, the chief engineer, through the agency of one of his staff
with whom I shared a digs in Brightwell Avenue. There was a protocol for
addressing Himself. Senior engineers and departmental managers were
allowed to call him 'VJ'. Everyone else had to use 'Sir'. Apprentices were
expected to treat him as God.
“The following people were already there, as far as I remember: Ray
Moxon, John Churchill, Robin Wilcox, Colin Pike, Brian Linge, John Wallace,
Ken Simms, Frank Burnhill, and Ron Lee (who always seemed to be shaking
things and squirting hot brine at them for long periods). The 'Gaffer' was Jack
Halsall, who lived in the adjoining office with Bill Graville and Ray Southgate.
“From my school days in the early 1950s I had an interest in electronics
and learned that there was a colour code for wires: Red for Line (as now
wrongly called Live); Black for Neutral; Green for Earth. When graduating to
the use of valves, I discovered that actually Red was for High Tension positive,
Black for Earth, and Green for Grid, all very confusing. When starting on a
wiring job in 'Radar 1', I enquired whether there was any sort of regulation
colour code. I was advised that there most certainly was. It stated that the
colour of any particular wire was immaterial, but… it shall be the same colour
at each end.
“Also lurking about was the resident laboratory assistant we nicknamed
'Yogi Bear', who was even more of a tearaway than I was. He had developed,
to the level of an art form, skiving - the technique of discretely disappearing
when anything half resembling work reared its ugly head; or else he went off
sick with some improbable reason such as hard pad or distemper.
“A few other people I remember include Sid Parr in the winding shop. He
was the only known person able to roll his own cigarettes using only two
strands of ‘baccy’. We developed a scale of calibre in 'Parr' units for roll-ups,
based on his technique. Zero Parr was equal to the empty fag paper, and one
Parr was equivalent to a Player's Navy Cut. Few of the others who rolled their
own could get much below fifty Parr.
“There was a chap called Armstrong in the Standards Lab downstairs. He
and his department moved to somewhere round the back of the Research &
Development (R&D) block, and his old lab became the Inverter Lab. Yogi was
permanently assigned to him, shortly after which Armstrong went off
permanently sick! I spent much of my time testing scanners in the radar shack
on the roof. The shed was built with one side made of Perspex, presumably to
be transparent to 10GHz, which is not far off infrared, so the atmosphere in
the shed was like that of a greenhouse in summer.
The Electric Fence
“A major project I remember developing was the Electric Fence. 'VJ' was
going camping and his wife apparently didn’t like the cattle to approach the
tent too closely, so the EHT experts in Radar 1 were directed to build an electric
fencer unit as Priority One. The output power and PRF (Pulse Repetition
Frequency) was to be similar to that of the new radar being developed for
Concorde. The device was duly built and was found to be many times more
powerful than the best commercial unit. Should a cow have chanced to touch
the wire with its snout and got away without frying, it would probably have
jumped clean over the moon.
Secret Drawings
“Nearly all of the drawings in Radar 1 were restricted or classified. One
came up from the Drawing Office which had been stamped in big red letters
TOP SECRET along the top margin above the standard notice directing DO
NOT SCALE. It was not long before some wag had scribed along the opposite
margin BOTTOM NOT SO.
Security
“'Old Harry', as he was affectionately known, was the security officer. He
had been issued with an impressive uniform, a comfortable armchair and a
desk on a bit of carpet in the foyer. His function was to greet any visiting
dignitaries and to lock up at night. One day, a new engineer joined the lab,
and whilst still green, he pinned-up some drawings on the wall behind his
desk. The trouble he got into for doing this was nothing compared with what
he got next. All drawings were considered to be secret, whether marked so or
not, and were not to be displayed on walls where they could be viewed through
the windows by spies with binoculars in helicopters. When finished with
drawings had to be replaced in the filing cabinet. Our green engineer was told
to get rid of them, so he tore them down and deposited the shreds in the
waste-paper bin. This resulted in a very stern rebuke indeed from the
management. All obsolete or damaged drawings must be taken down to Old
Harry for proper disposal. When asked how he disposed of old drawings,
Harry replied, ‘I tears 'em up and chucks 'em in the waste-paper bin.’
“It seemed to me that practical joking was a main occupation of everyone
in the department. I was told that this discipline had been imported along with
those transferring from Malmesbury some years before. I particularly
remember the case of the ‘Little Gem Fuse Blower’ where a nice little box the
size of a half-brick was obtained and sprayed with radar black crackle paint.
The engraving shop supplied a regulation label marked Little Gem Fuse
Blower, followed by a suitable military part number. A mains cable came out
of a grommet at one end and was terminated with a plug, which fitted the
sockets around each bench. Inside the unit the three wires of the cable were
soldered together and the lid screws 'araldited' in to prevent removal. The
device was placed in a strategic position on one of the benches by the door. By
their very nature, engineers are an inquisitive species and tend to interfere
with anything that does not require fixing before it's broke. Hence, no one was
able to resist this device. The usual procedure was:
1. Inspect device
1.1 Pick it up
1.2 Read label
1.3 Mutter, “Wonder what this does?”
2. Plug it in
2.1 Discover what it does
2.2 Pull out plug and carefully replace device as if untouched
2.4 Furtively slink back out through door
2.5 Avoid eye contact with the crowd falling about behind the glass partition
3. Get stepladder and roll of fuse wire to repair the power supply to the room.
