Kent Instruments

Kent Instruments, (a first view of industry)

The Job
Ian Hutcheon, Kent Instruments' Technical Director had the foresight to see that a degree in chemistry was no impediment to a career in electronics for a young lad with the right sort of interests. So I was taken on as a Junior Electronics Engineer.

I initially produced some design enhancements for the Flexel range of Process Controllers, and then documented these to the approved Kent house style. This was followed by some time spent designing and carrying out accelerated life tests of Nicad batteries.

My first (and as it turned out, only) major design was for the electronics for a 2-wire (4-20mA) pressure transducer, based round a diaphragm and an LVTD.

There were a number of very experienced engineers at Kent's and a friendly atmosphere prevailed in which it was easy to learn. I learnt a lot. However this was all to change ....

The Bombshell
As an engineering department, were we kept fairly well shielded from the overall fortunes of the company and some of the political moves going on beneath the surface. It therefore came as somewhat of a suprise, one fine morning when 75% of the development team, including the technical director and all his management team found themselves redundant! Only a few of the youngest engineers (including myself) remained. It was generally agreed that this was because we were cheap and had not been there long enough to upset anyone.

A good result was that the earstwhile development department formed Measurement Technology Ltd. (MTL), which is now an extremely successful company in the field of Intrinsic Safety products. Kents meanwhile went through various disasterous takeovers and are now no more.

After the redundancies the atmosphere was never quite the same! So in 1972, I left to join Oxford Instruments.