A freak chance in education

Many of the UK scientific research centers, which were set up during World War 2 to develop advanced defense systems, continued in operation after the war had finished.

The Radar Research Establishment at Great Malvern in Worcestershire, was one of these research centers where the initial development work on radar was progressing towards the development of guided weaponry.

An emerging problem with these research centers was the communications gap between the scientific minds who were working on the theoretical aspects of the newly emerging technologies and the engineers who had to put these theoretical ideas into practice.

To plug this communications gap, a special college - The College of Electronics - was set up in the middle of the research center at Great Malvern, to train selected students to provide the communication link between scientists and engineers: to span the all important gap between theory and practice.

I was fortunate enough to have been chosen to be in the first group of students chosen for this unique educational experiment and embarked upon an amazing five year education. Fifteen of us were taught, by the scientists themselves, all the newest theory and practical applications which had emerged from the frantic war time research.

To a boy of just sixteen years of age, the research establishment was a place of wonder. Two rooms of one laboratory contained nothing else but banks of glass thermionic valves. This was "TREACLE", one of the first electronic computers in the world.

In another laboratory a "nest" of wires surrounded the "egg" of a giant magnet where they were experimenting with the spin resonance of atoms. Somewhere else a magnetron was pumping high frequency radio waves through a maze of rectangular wave guides and in another building a model factory, made from Mechano parts, was purifying germanium to make transistors.

I spent time in many of these laboratories during my education at the research establishment, but, three projects were to have a particular influence on my later life.

The first of these was associated with my spell with the computer "TREACLE". When I first met the chief scientist responsible for the computer division I was ushered into a maniacally untidy laboratory where a small wizened man in a white lab coat was staring intently at a revolving spherical network of strands of straw which appeared to be suspended from a glass rod.

It turned out that the straw sphere was not directly connected to the glass rod, but, was being held by the feet of a small black beetle which was glued to the bottom of the glass rod. With great excitement the head of the computer division alternatively waved black and white cards in front of the beetle causing the rotation of the straw sphere to change direction.

To my surprise, this eminent scientist then started to draw boxes on a nearby black board and proceeded to explain how this experiment was giving him clues as to how the beetles brain was responding to environmental cues and causing it to move in a particular direction. In a few minutes more the scientist had progressed on to explain the electronic circuitry for simulating a simple biological learning mechanism.

From that moment on I was conscious of the possibility that electronic circuitry could simulate the workings of the brain.

Much of the work of the research establishment was actively engaged in the development of the, then, newly emerging weapons or war: guided weaponry. Heat seeking missile heads were mocked up on lab benches and antenna would track you around the room if you walked in with a lighted cigarette. It was in these labs that I first became interested in feedback mechanisms, automatic control, servo systems and that whole area of system theory. They seemed to hold a peculiar fascination for me.

The oddest laboratory I worked in appeared, at first sight, to be the most boring place in the whole establishment. The work consisted of placing finished electronic assemblies into ovens, into freezers and onto vibration tables for days at a time. Then each component was laboriously tested to see if it was still working properly.

"Is this to test how long equipment will last in combat conditions?", I'd asked when I first went into the lab.
"No, it's to see how many duplications of the equipment have to be taken on a mission to be reasonably sure that there isn't a fatal breakdown", was the reply.

The subsequent understanding of the subtle difference between these two paradigms was my conceptual breakthrough in the understanding of probability theory which would eventually lead me into the incredible worlds of game theory, evolution and genetic algorithms.

So it was, in the early 1960's, that I found myself at the birth of all the science and technologies which were to emerge and dominate technology for the rest of the century.

Perhaps it is this unusual education which accounts for some of my unconventional paradigms?

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