Leon's Bio

Born 1942, in London, in the middle of WW 2.

Evacuated to Liverpool in 1944, because of the V1s falling on London. I remember being with my father in Regents Park in 1945 when a V2 exploded a mile or so away!

1951 - 1952

Attended the now Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle (French Lycee) in South Kensington. It was the Lycee Francais de Londres at the time. It's an expensive private school established by the French government for their citizens living in London. My parents didn't have much money but got the fees reduced because my father had been an interpreter in the French Army. He escaped at Dunkirk. Many of the children there were not French but the children of diplomats representing other countries. It was a very good school.

All the lessons were in French and we had one English lesson a week! I don't remember having any problems learning French.

Like French schools lessons finished at midday on Wednesday. Unlike French schools though we didn't have lessons on Saturday morning. On Wednesdays, rather than go home, I used to wander round the nearby museums - the Science Museum, Geological Museum and the Victoria and Albert.

At the time pupils could only take French exams such as the Brevet and  Baccalauréat which was why I transferred into the British educational system. Now they also study for GCSEs and A-levels.

1952 - 1953

St Mary Abbots Primary School , Kensington. Another very good school. Passed the 11+.

There were still a lot of bomb-damaged houses in Kensington and another boy in my class persuaded me to explore them with him after school before going home. They weren't properly fenced off and we had no problems getting into them. This activity, I now know, was extremely dangerous as many of them had unstable walls and staircases. We could have been severely injured or killed and no-one would have found us!

1953 - 1960

St Clement Danes Grammar School. Left with A-level pure and applied maths, physics and chemistry. State Scholarship awarded for pure and applied maths and physics. Another very good school. The headmaster, Mr J. McGill Clouston MA JP, was a racist and all the pupils except three were white, although that part of London had a large immigrant population. One of my classmates in the VIth form was a Sikh, another was Chinese, and another, younger boy was West Indian. He was only allowed in because he did well at his 11+ and was very good at cricket.

1960 - 1961

University of Nottingham. Failed first year of a physics degree. Too much drinking and partying!

1961 - 1964

Student apprenticeship on a "thick" sandwich course with English Electric-LEO-Marconi Computers (EELM), Kidsgrove. Failed one subject in the final six months of my electrical engineering HND course at Staffordshire College of Technology. Too much drinking and partying! Repeated the six months. Passed the subject I'd previously failed and failed one subject I'd previously passed with over 80%! Gave up exams for a few years.

During my time with EELM I worked on a couple of interesting computers - an old LACE (Luton Analogue Computing Engine) using valve technology and the then new LEO III which used transistors.

The Kidsgrove LACE had been used to simulate the electric motors of the Deltic and solved a problem with them burning out. I got very proficient at setting up the analogue multiplier unit - several interacting potentiometers!

In my third year I was seconded to the famous LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) factory in Minerva Road, Acton.

I designed a small part of the LEO III - an audible monitor circuit which enabled operators to tell if a program was stuck in a loop by the sound generated. The LEO I and II were valve-based and were so  slow that an amplifier and loudspeaker could simply be connected directly to the CPU. The transistorised III was so fast that the pulses had to be divided by 100. I was tasked with designing a suitable circuit. Binary dividers were deemed to be too expensive so I simulated a unijunction transistor (recently invented and not yet available) using a PNP-NPN pair and connected it to a diode pump integrator. That divided pulses reliably by 10. I used two of those circuits to give the required division by 100.

I also constructed a logic probe by modifying a staticiser package. The probe itself was a Bic ballpoint pen with the ink removed and a wire soldered to the point running up the pen and connected to the staticiser.

Another, rather boring, job was testing microcode assemblies using an automated tester. To alleviate the tedium I used to repair them myself instead of sending them back to Kidsgrove to be reworked!

1964 - 1966

Contract Estimator in the Contracts Dept. at EELM, Kidsgrove. Whilst there I developed Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), and was in hospital for about three months - one month at the Barony Hospital, Nantwich and two months at the marvellous Gordon Hospital in Pimlico, London. The Gordon specialised in the treatment of IBD. When I was back at work the company sent me to the English Electric convalescent home for two weeks.

1966 - 1972

National Workshops planning engineer, Rank Xerox UK. Started a part-time psychology (subsid. pure maths) degree at Birkbeck College, University of London in 1969 because I was getting bored with my job. The other planning engineer and I designed a contraption for refurbishing the photoreceptor drums used in the copiers using pneumatic logic control (similar to fluidic logic) instead of electronics.

Whilst there I had another attack of my Crohn's disease and was in hospital for a couple of months.

1972 - 1973

Studied full-time for the final year of my psychology degree. My final year project was very interesting (to me at any rate) - an investigation of perceived and imagined random shape similarity. It was quite novel at the time but since then there have been lots of studies using a similar paradigm.

1973 - 1975

Human factors consultant in the ID/HF (Industrial Design and Human Factors) Group at Xerox Research (UK) in Milton Keynes. Worked on user interface design and copy quality.

Another attack of Crohn's disease required major surgery (resection of my ascending and transverse colon) and I was in the Westminster Hospital for two months or so. I was left with an ileostomy. I had about two weeks to live when they operated. It would be 20 years before I needed another operation or treatment. My surgeon was Prof. Harold Ellis, a lovely guy and very famous surgeon! He annoyed the nurses when he said to his students at my bedside "a patient's recovery is 10% due to the surgeon and 90% due to the patient". He didn't mention the nurses! In those days the bedclothes at the foot of the bed were turned back so the consultant could examine one's feet. He used to tweak one of my big toes when he walked past! He's still teaching anatomy at 96!

1977 -1982

Human factors engineer in Roy Kalawsky's Advanced Cockpit Research Group (ACRG) at British Aerospace Military Aircraft Division Ltd., Brough, Humberside. BAe (MAD) for short! I had to wait six months after they said that I'd got the job to get my security clearance and start work.

Had my ileostomy reversed by Prof. Ellis' successor at the Westminster Hospital, Prof. Wastell - a 3.5 hour operation. It's normally a lot quicker but I had a lot of adhesions. In hospital for a week and back at work a couple of weeks later!

Roy got his PhD during my time in the ACRG and is now a Prof. at Loughborough University:

https://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/meme/staff/roy-kalawsky/

While I was at Brough I had a flight in a Pilatus PC-9 turbo-prop military trainer with one of our instructors. The RAF didn't use them for training, but BAe used to supply them too Middle Eastern countries as part of a package deal including fighter jets. I had to wear a flying suit, helmet with oxygen mask and a parachute. Before we took off Dave, the pilot, talked me through the ejection procedure. He said he'd shout "Eject! Eject! Eject!" but I'd probably not hear the last "Eject!" and he'd have gone! He also showed me the handle to pull if I needed to eject.

Dave took off and took us out over the sea, climbed to about 3,000 ft and gave me the controls. I'd never flown a real aircraft but I had spent a few hours in the simulator in our lab. I did some aerobatics - a loop and a victory roll. It was a very easy aircraft to fly. I then dived into a cloud but I was told that wasn't a good idea as there could be another aircraft in it. Dave then showed me what a stall was like - he reduced the speed, the plane yawed two or three times and the nose dropped. I was then nearly sick into my oxygen mask!  Dave cut the flight short and took us back to the airfield. I'd recovered by the time we got back. I asked him how the PC-9 compared to a Spitfire and he said it was about the same as an early model. Steve, one of the junior engineers in our group, also had a flight. He put the plane into a steep dive, and burst an eardrum!

1982 - 1984

Research associate in the HUSAT Research Group, Dept. of Human Sciences at Loughborough University, working for Tom Stewart on the human factors of VDUs used in the newspaper industry. I and another research associate's positions were financed by the INCA-FIEJ Research Association (IFRA) in Darmstadt, W. Germany as was. IFRA was financed by the newspaper industry.

Computerised phototypesetting was being introduced into newspaper production at the time and the human factors of the VDUs connected to the computers was very important. Tom, David Hart of IFRA, and Dr Ahmet Cakir of the Technical University of Berlin collaborated in the production of a tome entitled The VDT Manual. A joke that was going round at the time was that VDT stood for the two things that journalists feared most - VD and DT!

I had a memorable three weeks working for David Hart at the IFRA HQ in Darmstadt. I'd learnt German at school and I had to translate all the captions to the illustrations in the book into English using complex typesetting software running on the IFRA computer. I stayed in a traditional German hotel and after work I often spent time with David, his wife and their three very nice children at their large flat.

One evening David and his wife took me to a night club some distance from Darmstadt owned by a friend of theirs who had an attractive English wife. A hypnotist was part of the entertainment and he called about six of the audience including David forward into a large area surrounded by the audience, seemingly at random, put them into a so-called trance, and got them to do silly things! He asked if he had any problem he'd like sorted out David said that he wanted to stop smoking (he was a chain-smoker and had one lung removed). He put David into a "trance", told him that he'd find cigarettes had a disgusting taste, and took him out of the "trance". He then told David to have a cigarette. David took one puff and had to do stop - he said it tasted horrible. The next day he was back to his usual two to three packets a day! I spent some time chatting to the club owner's wife about England and then she insisted that I took her onto the dance floor. I told her I was concerned about her husband objecting to this (he looked like a gangster with slicked back black hair, a black suit and shirt, and a white tie) but she assured me that he wouldn't mind. I spoke to him later and he was actually a very nice guy!

On the way back to Darmstadt with David and his wife in their car, with the club owner and his wife following us, David, who'd had a lot to drink, lost control of the car on a bend and hit a tree. The tree stopped us plunging down a steep drop which could have killed us! The car was still driveable. I refused to get back in the car with David driving - the club owner and his wife took me back to my hotel.

On my last day I took a taxi to Frankfurt airport for my flight back. Unfortunately, all flights were cancelled because of ice on the runway. It was getting late and I asked the BA desk if they could recommend a suitable hotel. They suggested one that the aircrew and cabin staff used so I got a taxi there, booked in and went up to my room. It was a nice hotel but it was on the edge of the red light district and I could see what was obviously a brothel from my window - all lit up with red neon!

It was about 22:00 and I was feeling hungry so I went to find somewhere to have a meal. There was an enormous building like a warehouse with lots of photos by the entrance and I realised it was a gay club. Across the road was about a dozen guys and they were obviously buying and selling drugs, quite openly!

I eventually found a salubrious-looking small bar, went in and ordered a beer. It was quite crowded

To my horror an obvious male person with facial skin like a woman's and wearing a miniskirt asked me to buy him/her a drink in excellent English! I gulped down my beer, mumbled something and rushed out. Everyone in the bar fell about laughing! Nowadays I'd buy him/her the beer and have a chat.

1984-1988

Human factors engineer at Racal Communications, Western Road, Bracknell. This was where Racal started, manufacturing the famous RA17 communications receiver. They had a museum containing most of their radios, with an RA17 in pride of place.

I worked mainly on the ill-fated Bowman project - the replacement for the Army's Clansman radio system. Siemens-Plessey were the lead-contractors and I spent a lot of time at their Christchurch facility.

We had days out with various regiments seeing how they used their existing comms. systems. Most memorable was a visit to the Royal Artillery. We were taken to where several gunnery teams were firing large field guns. We were assigned to a gun and an NCO told us what roles we were to perform. I was one of the loaders. He picked up an enormous shell and gave it to me - I nearly dropped it! I gave it another guy in our group and he put it into the breech, rammed it up the barrel, and then inserted the charge. The breech was slammed shut and someone else pulled the lanyard to fire the gun. We then got into cars and drove about 12 miles to about a mile from where the shells were exploding. They were firing them over a village. Once there, we got into a bunker and were warned that there was a very small chance that we'd get hit by a shell splinter! We then saw the shells exploding on a hillside. They looked quite innocuous!