Forgotten Voice

One day at Hursley in the early nineteen eighties two of us, from Product Assurance were involved in electro-magnetic compatibility (EMC) testing of a display product developed in Yamato Laboratory, Japan .We were working at the EMC facility located just south east of the sunken garden and two Hursley EMC engineers accompanied us. The product was to be manufactured for Europe in IBM Greenock and this sample was from early production but had some possible design problems . Hence we had requested help from Yamato and on this particular day a Japanese EMC engineer arrived to identify the problem and suggest a fix.

He duly reported at Hursley House and was met , signed in and escorted to the EMC facility . As one of the tests called for the display to be just outside the southern entrance to the building we were all there assembling the set-up equipment. Then it happened!

The Japanese engineer produced a very expensive Nikon camera from inside his bag together with a tripod. We all looked at each other with a little surprise but then assumed that he was taking a record of the set-up. Fate then intervened, in the form of a passing security guard who, seeing the Yamato man and his camera, came to us and requested his camera pass. Whoops!

As his official escort I had inadvertently forgotten to ask if he had a camera with him. At this point events took an hilarious turn. Due to a language misunderstanding our Japanese man, assuming that his camera was being admired took the security guard by the shoulders, placed him by the display and arranged the rest of us on either side and was about to take a group picture. The penny then dropped after it was explained to the Yamato man that we should have registered the camera and issued a pass when he arrived.

All was restored after the guard, the visitor and myself went back to The House to make the camera legal.

In “The Dolphin“, public house at lunchtime we all reflected with some mirth on, “The Day of the Camera”.